IPod index? why not a Philipino maid index?

The Chinese saying "东施效颦", telling how "aping a beauty" could embarass oneself.

But there is nothing to stop Macquarie Bank of Sydney, Australia, from doing so, by aping the BigMac index. Why not an index for "Phillipino maid wages" (or the ratio of Maid wage vs average local GDP/cap)? At least that tells us how on one country/city treats foreign workers.

There is a reason why the BigMac was chosen by the Economist, as it includes all the typical transferable and non-transfer costs in a product, a good basket for CPI index and PPP consideration.

Not for the iPod, it is almost exclusively transferrable products, and the small size means transportation cost is low. Ridiculing such uncritical thinking aside, we can still read off some messages from the data

• The countries that tops the list are those with highest tariff and most protective, Brazil and India!
• It also reflects the nominal exchange and hides someting about recent changes in nominal rates, as often observed in airline fare discrepancy between countries (remember the Bangkok air fare golden age from 1998-2002? when one could buy a Business class round the world ticket for US$20k!)
• It may reflect the margin of retail (as Apple only gets the wholesale revenue and there is certain minimum number for its profit requirement). However, given the extreme high retail margin of Japan (just compare the retail price of parallel import to HK vs those in Japan, you know the Japan retailers are making much more than their counterparts in HK - it is 30% cheaper to buy the exactly same product in HK (i.e., with Warranty in Japan). However, Japan ranks fairly low in this table, what it means is that Japanese products are much cooler in general and iPod couldn't differentiate itself!
• Finally, the price in China is fairly high, despite the fact that there is no transport cost and the highly competitive retail channel in China. -- I will let you guys figure out why this is so. But with the iPod exchange rate, it seems RMB should depreciate:)

Here is the iPod index ranking

• Brazil $327.712
• India $222.273
• Sweden $213.034
• Denmark $208.255
• Belgium $205.816
• France $205.807
• Finland $205.808
• Ireland $205.799
• UK $195.0410
• Austria $192.8611
• Netherlands $192.8612
• Spain $192.8613
• Italy $192.8614
• Germany $192.4615
• China $179.8416
• South Korea $176.1717
• Switzerland $175.5918
• New Zealand $172.5319
• Australia $172.3620
• Taiwan $164.8821
• Singapore $161.2522
• Mexico $154.4623
• USA $149.0024
• Japan $147.6325
• Hong Kong $147.3526
• Canada $144.20