On Wed, 13 Aug 2003 23:24:57 +0200, Torsten Brinch
posted:

On Wed, 13 Aug 2003 12:25:46 GMT, Mooshie peas
wrote:

On Tue, 12 Aug 2003 13:21:57 +0200, Torsten Brinch
posted:

On Tue, 12 Aug 2003 09:38:42 GMT, Mooshie peas
wrote:

Well, Gordon's original comment, in response to which you provided the
price list in US$, was "We do pay a price for having the cheapest food
on the planet"

To me, cheapest means most affordable. Comparing prices using
arbitrary exchange rates is far less relevant than comparing them as
minutes of average workers' wages. YMMV.

Bill Gates goes into a bar where nine unemployed workers are nursing
their beers. "Whoopee!" shouts one of them. "This room now has the
cheapest beer on the planet."

If you wish to take it to ridiculous extremes by individualising it.

The whoopee guy compares the price of beer in the room with elsewhere,
using your suggested aggregate measure. I reckon one could nitpick if
now the room has the absolute rock bottom cheapest beer on the planet.
But, I understand his point that it must come pretty close to it, on
that measure, and also his pointed expressing of its non-applicability
to measure the affordability of beer to individual members of the
population the measure is aggregated across.

We were comparing nations, remember?

Yes, yes. Same thing, rooms, houses, neighborhoods, cities, regions,
nations, continents. Some area with a group of people in it, with
some aggregated income and some aggregated number of working minutes.

Except that we were comparing nations, and not "rooms, houses,
neighbourhoods.... The scale is surely the thing here.

Within each area, prices can be expressed as price in
currency/aggregated wage in currency*aggregated working minutes,
and compared. Is that not what you are suggesting?

Just working minutes of the average worker, or some suitable measure
such as mode or median. The currencies throughout the world are set on
arbitrary exchange rates decided by dictators, or to the whims of the
market, where the rate can fall through the roof if a president
sneezes. Minutes of workers time is just a much better measure of
affordablilty or cheapness in a nation. But if you have a different
take and want to argue till the cows come home, you'll need to find
another ball returner.