Apparently the minimum wage in Korea is going up. The new wage is 3,770 won (about US$4.00), up 8.3%.
The other day a reader reminded me of the post I did on beef a while back. I estimated how long an average Korean would have to work for a kilogram of beef (it was over 5.5 hours). With the above, I figured it may be entertaining in a manner to compare what it takes for the person on the lowest wrung on the economic ladder to get a kilogram of beef world wide.
As a reminder, an International Labor Organization gave these figures for the cost of beef in five coutnries:
Korea $56.44Japan $40.50
Italy $10.36
UK $11.15
US $ 8.94
Mexico $7.85
Now this page on wikipedia (take it for what you will) gives the following figures for minimum wage (I coverted into US dollars, and used the new above referrenced Korean minimum wage)
Korea: $4.00 (the new minium wage)Japan: $4.96
Italy: n/a
UK: $6.61
US: $7.25 (recently passed new US minimum wage law used)
Mexico: 4.40
And finally the calcuation:
Korea: 14.11 hours
Japan: 8.17
Italy: n/a
UK: 1.69
US: 1.23
Mexico: 1.08
Viva la Mexico!
Update: Kids, let this be a warning. Never try to juggle a blog post, calculations, and software unfriendly with your browser five minutes before your train leaves. I had feeling something was screwy with the Mexican figures.
Anyway assuming an 8 hour day (wrong or right) the figures for Mexico are:
Wage per Hour: $0.55
Hours for a kilo of beef: 14.27
What is interesting though not that it puts Mexico above Korea, but that in my original post the “average” consumer in Mexico scored quite well (1.5 hours a pound). Says something about income distribution there perhaps.
Big thanks to the sharp eyed comment writers who keep me honest as always.
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12 Comments
Not so fast, friend. If Mexicans were making a minimum of $4 an hour, do you think so many would pay coyotes hundreds of dollars for for a three-day hike through the Sonoran desert?
The minimum wages of 47-50 pesos ($4.50) were per DAY, not per hour, hence, the hourly minimum wage is about 50 cents. A Mexican worker would need almost 8 hours of labor to buy one pound of beef.
Vive La Gringolandia!
Great post, minus the issue pointed our above. Forget the Big Mac Index, this is how economies should bve measured.
[Not to nitpick, but México takes no article, and if it did, it wouldn't be feminine: ¡Viva México!. Also, sans article: ¡Viva Gringolandia!]
“Forget the Big Mac Index, this is how economies should bve measured.”
I disagree. Beef is not a globally consumed foodstuff, nor should it be. Beef consumption is best suited to countries like the US, Canada, and New Zealand, which are naturally endowed with grasslands to support cattle-raising. Korea, Japan, and most of China can’t even grow corn to make the feed that turns a cow’s stomach acidic, providing an excellent environment for dangerous pathogens like Ecoli.
Chicken is far more widely consumed than beef and thus would provide a more universal comparison.
Yo prefiero pollo.
As long as we’re on the Spanish kick…
¡No te olvides de la Argentina!
Yeah, Sonagi. You beat me to it. 4.40$/h is darn good money in some parts of Mexico.
#3 — Points well taken, but even more so, neither is the Big Mac “a globally consumed foodstuff, nor should it be.”
Pienso que voy a vomitar.
#4 — “¡No te olvides de la Argentina!”
De acuerdo. The best beef I’ve ever tasted.
How do you get upside down punctuation marks on a keyboard?
The Big Mac Index only measures purchase power parity, and even The Economist admits it’s far from perfect. Yet as a globally-consumed standardized foodstuff, that’s practically the same everywhere, and managed by one corporation, it’s hard to find a peer outside the fast food industry that provides a decent idea of how over/under valued a currency is. Me like Big Mac.
Compadre, you’re assuming the beef is available at the same price globally, which is OK for a general comparison. But Koreans will work longer than Americans for their kilo of steak simply because they cannot buy cheaper beef.
¡Muchas gracias!
#7 - It’s easy on my Mac: Option-! or Option-?. On a Windoze PC, you have to either memorize an Alt+[4 digit code], pick it out on Character Map, or get a hotkey utility for diacritical marks.
Apropos of #10 - Isn’t everything easier on the Mac? Honestly, I can’t understand why people continue to use Windows PCs. I’ve been using personal computers 30 years now and IBM-type PCs almost 20 years. I can build a PC out of a box of parts in 10 minutes and install any OS including BeOS, OS/2, Linux or Windows. But why would I want to, when Mac OS X works so intuitively and with such power?
But for seismic effect, nothing in the history of my experience with computers can compare to the thrill of seeing (and hearing) Psygnosis’ “Shadow of the Beast” on an Amiga 500 in 1989.
#11 - Damn straight. I was a dyed-in-the-wool DOS/UNIX guy, which was the only reason I stuck by Winblows for so long. OS X brought me around 2 years ago, and I’ve never looked back.