Cash cows vs cash crisis

I'm taking a jump from markets in Morocco to a global wage comparison survey just released by UBS.

The annual survey finds that Zurich workers are the best paid in the world, Sydney's so-so and Cairo? Hmmmm.

Here's an extract from Forbes.com

"To crystallize the meaning of earnings in different countries, the study introduced a contemporary but ubiquitous item to the basked of goods--an iPod Nano. Taking into account pay, taxes and the price of goods, workers in Cairo would have to toil for 105 hours to get their hands on one of the MP3 players, while those in Zurich and New York can pick one up after working for the least amount of time of all the countries surveyed: 9 hours - roughly a day's work."

The survey also took 14 occupations in 73 cities and compared the wages, taxes and working hours, finding that a female factory worker brings in $18,200 in Chicago, but less than a tenth of that - $1,800 - in Cairo.

And also on a generic basket of food, priced across the globe, the most expensive was in Oslo, at $112, while Sydney came in at $68.50, and the cheapest in Delhi and Mumbai, where the shopping basket costs $37.60 and $30.90, respectively.