How long do you have to work to earn a Big Mac? (opens in new tab)

Our surprise at this variation is equivalent to the surprise of someone who doesn't know anything about programming at the fact that a piece of code can be made 100x faster.

Yes, you really are. We're programmers and businessmen -- our value scales waaaaaay the heck out of proportion to the amount of time we spend on something. I think that is awesome. (If I was a big proponent of income equality, I'd really hate it. I can do an honest day's work while sleeping by setting a system in motion to do it for me -- no manual laborer will ever be able to do that, which suggests that I will make rather more money than them, by a lot, and the gap is going to get larger over time.)

However a single Big Mac does not cost so much. It's efficiencies of scale basically.

http://raisethehammer.org/article/818

In Beijing, a big mac meal could cost double or triple what you could get at a local restaurant. It's seen as high class (partially because it is so expensive) and parents treat their kids to a happy meal on their birthday.

Definitely. When I lived in Thailand I used to eat at McD's fairly regularly, just for that taste of something western. I was amazed at how good it tasted - fresh salad, high quality meat, just really well made like a burger from a good restaurant. Completely different from the effortless slop I'd get in Australia.

What's your opinion on the tax burden in a city like Toronto? When I was an employee I found it wasn't as bad as I was raised to believe it was, though I was only up into the second-highest tax bracket. As a naive comparison (as of 2008/2009), CDN$100K would result in $19891.48 in federal taxes. South of the border, US$100K would result in $21720 in federal taxes. At a provincial/state level, if we compare Ontario vs California, then that same $100K would result in $8458.61 in provincial taxes and $6693 (for a single person) in state taxes. Obviously this isn't a precise comparison because the U.S. has some deductions (notably regarding mortgages) that Canada does not. But the reverse is true too, and in any event, it's not like some order of magnitude difference that I thought would exist with all the complaining I used to hear on talk radio here :-)