But at least 118 of them share something similar. The world's nations are diverse in ways that defy easy comparisons. He used the world's most famous sandwich to help us answer one of the trickiest questions in all of economics: Ashenfelter has done something truly fascinating with the Big Mac. It's an international barometer of economic activity.Īnd now, in a research paper released last week, Princeton's Orley C. So, the Big Mac isn't just some dumb lump of something resembling meat. The flight from euros is lifting the franc and the real's appreciation has blunted Brazil's export growth. This year identified Switzerland and Brazil as particularly overvalued. Every year the Economist calculates a Big Mac Index for the purpose of (being cheeky and) testing what currencies are overvalued compared to the U.S. In addition to being a technological marvel, the Big Mac moonlights as an economic tool. " put something on the menu until it can be produced at the speed of McDonald's," CEO James Skinner said in 2010, sounding not unlike Henry Ford from a century earlier. Workers assemble specific parts at great speed to deliver dependable and replicable products. Labor is supported by a deep well of technological innovation, such as vacuum packing, exceptional preservatives, deep freezing, vibrant artificial flavors, and high-speed microwaves. McDonald's is a restaurant, but it functions much like a factory. food-prep workers, by some measures the poorest-paid major occupation in America, earn enough to buy more than two Big Macs - that's 1,000+ calories - in just an hour of their work. It is a product of as much automated manufacturing as human labor. The Big Mac takes very little work for any one person. Food output per person was so meager that "British farm laborers by 1863 had just reached the median consumption of forager and subsistence societies." As Gregory Clark explained in his book A Farewell to Alms, up until the 1700s, the English diet consisted, monotonously, of mostly bread and beer, won only after hours that would make a modern i-banker blush.
Deep into the late pre-industrial era, unskilled laborers worked grueling hours in fields to earn an income that could often barely feed their family. Their waking hours were spent growing and harvesting crops, and most of their income from growing and harvesting went right back into eating. He skips the fries but washes down his burgers with Coca-Cola.For thousands of years, families devoted the majority of their lives to food. The sandwiches are all he usually eats on any given day. This is a McDonald's Big Mac-it's the best sandwich in the world! When I like something, I stick with it all the time."Īfter his initial bonanza of nearly ten Big Macs a day, Gorske now eats two-working out at 14 a week. I am closing in on 50 years of eating them next year, after eating a Big Mac every single day. He raved: "I love hamburgers like no other food. Over the years he's built up quite the collection, charting how much McDonald's branding has changed over half a century while fellow enthusiasts have even sent him collectibles. And he even marks down how many he's eaten on a calendar, just to ensure he doesn't miss any.
Gorkse has meticulously filed away every burger receipt since 1972 along with the burger packaging, which he flattens down and stores in boxes by the year. Grandfather Donald Gorske (pictured) has been eating two Big Macs a day since 1972.