Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Labor Theory of Beer

The graph above shows the number of minutes that workers have to work to buy 500ml of beer (h/t to Renata Lins of chopinhofemenino, great blog if you read Portuguese). By the way, a pint in the US is slightly less than that (around 473ml). Note that the amount of time a worker needs to work depends on the price in dollars. So, for example, China is at the bottom of the list, with workers getting to bliss (yep a General Equilibrium concept bitches) in less than ten minutes, because beer is cheap in dollars, not as a result of high wages. Japanese workers, on the other hand, with higher wages, need to work more like 15 minutes because beer is really expensive.
By -
Labels: , , ,

6 comments:

  1. JW MasonNovember 13, 2012 at 2:53 PM

    Cool! I am surprised at how expensive beer is Europe. My impression when I was in Berlin this spring, was that the beer was pleasingly affordable...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Matias VernengoNovember 13, 2012 at 4:01 PM

      Yep, but part of the price is the exchange rate. So it depends. Maybe the euro is appreciated in beer purchasing power, and so is the yen. Mind you, beer purchasing power (bpp) is a more important concept than purchasing power parity (ppp).

      Delete
    2. PGBNovember 14, 2012 at 10:36 AM

      Everything is cheaper in Berlin.

      Delete
  2. PeterPNovember 13, 2012 at 3:22 PM

    You also need to take into account the quality chasm between Czech and US beer :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Nick RoweNovember 13, 2012 at 6:12 PM

    Typo. It should be PISS, not BLISS. Paralytically Incapable Stationary State. (Sorry, old and bad joke).

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

Elon Musk (& Vivek Ramaswamy) on hardship, because he knows so much about it

I noted (here on the blog and also here ) that I didn't think predictions about inflation acceleration and a recession as a result of a ...

  • Blog Moving to Substack (and first post)
    "Where is Everybody?" The blog will continue here for announcements, messages and links to more substantive pieces. But those will...
  • Hyperinflation in Bitcoinland
    There are Gold Bugs and there are  Bitcoin Bugs. They all oppose fiat money (hate the Fed and other monetary authorities) and follow some s...
  • A reply to Wray - Part I
    By Sergio Cesaratto (Guest Blogger) “The fact that individual countries no longer have their own currencies and central banks will put n...