Mac attack

This morning I happened to read a news item online about Iceland's economic crisis forcing McDonald's out of the country (hurrah!).   This reminded me of the 'Big Mac Index' sometimes used as a lighthearted way of comparing the cost of living in countries around the world.  I gather the idea was originally started, and is still continued annually, by the financial institution UBS; but in the past decade or so, The Economist's version has probably become more widely known.  I'm not sure where to get hold of a full version of the UBS country list (not on their website, as far as I can discover), and The Economist's is only available to subscribers (although the latest list appears to have been pirated - or perhaps reprinted with permission? - by the Oanda exchange rates website here).   Also, at present, this related index on how long it takes to earn a Big Mac in different countries is available free on The Economist website (although the stats come, in fact, from UBS).   There's a little interesting background on the UBS and Economist indices on Wikipedia, and a good article explaining their significance can be found here.     I suppose we should count ourselves lucky that here in China we still enjoy (hardly the right word) one of the world's cheapest (exchange-rate adjusted) Big Macs.  When there was a big spate of McDonald's openings shortly after I arrived here 5 or 6 years ago, I think the Big Mac was originally priced at around 18 rmb; but that proved too much for the local market, and the price was soon slashed back to 10.50 rmb.  In the last year or so, it's crept up again by small increments, and it's now about 12 or 12.50 rmb.  Not much over USD 1.50!  Of course, you might not get quite the same experience for your money here, whatever the Franchise Lords back in Illinois protest: the quality of the meat here is quite atrocious (yes, even worse than in the US), and the service is often extremely slow.   Not that I really wanted to talk about hamburgers anyway.  No, this was all just preamble - to introduce a post I just wrote over on parallel blog Barstool Blues describing my similar (but far more useful) idea for the Beer Equivalence Index.