Stop motion video: Food you can buy for $5 in different countries

This stop motion video from BuzzFeed shows how much food you can buy for $5 USD in different countries. For example, five bucks will get you 7 pounds of rice in the United States and 12 pounds in China. The video is straightforward, but the animation of food appearing and disappearing — or rather, added and taken away — lends well to the context that you wouldn’t get from a quick chart.

The gut instinct seems to be “Hey, we should all move to China.” Better follow that up with non-Chinese salaries.

3 Comments

  • mandelbrot_haircream April 24, 2013 at 11:24 am

    Dr. Yau,
    apropos ‘in China with non-Chinese salaries’:
    quite apt!
    and of course it is an instance of the more generic
    “[location = 3rd world + salary = 1st world]” argument, which can be tentatively called Exapt Logic?

  • It’s pretty obvious why you can buy more Chinese beer after you taste it.

  • You couldn’t buy 2 BigMacs in Russia, Only 1.3