[planetguy]

Actually, I apologize for replying to myself, but I couldn't resist going off and coming up with some numbers. There's a pretty darn strong and unexpected correlation between the price of a Big Mac and the number of cows per head population.

I could only get good cows-per-person numbers for the big beef producers, but here goes:

Country Cows per person Big Mac Price

Australia 1.28 $4.94

Argentina 1.26 $4.64

Brazil 1.07 $5.68

Colombia 0.59 $4.54

USA 0.31 $4.20

Mexico 0.29 $2.70

Pakistan 0.18 $2.89

Russia 0.15 $2.55

India 0.15 $1.62

China 0.06 $2.44

So there ya go, the more plentiful cows are the more it costs to get one cut up and put on a bun. (Or, perhaps, the more you can sell your beef for, the more likely you are to be a cattle rancher.)

[vacri]

Something that will also affect these numbers from my country: minimum wage. Minimum wage in the US is $7.50(ish). Minimum wage in Australia is $15, which wasn't so ridiculous before our dollar soared in the past couple of years. For quite a while, the $AU was $.50-60US, but is currently equal.

This means the burger costs more to make here due to labour costs, but also that people have higher numbers of dollars to spend on their burger.

[crander]

What is really means is that the supply of workers at $15/hour greatly outnumbers the demand for workers at $15/hour.