Yahoo Interactive - a Research Tool? I think not little puppy
Yahoo has an Interactive chart on "Who's earning what: Minimum wages worldwide" which on the surface looks like a slick little tool to teach comparative economic standards around the world. For the various countries listed it shows the minimum wage and "spending power in US dollars."
But as I clicked through the chart I noticed some odd omissions. Like where is India? Oh, I know where India is, it's right where it belongs on the map - but it's not one of the countries for which information is provided. Nor is Germany. Of course why would we care about India and Germany when we have information on our major trading partner, Morocco.
There's also little in the way of back up information. There's a link to "sources" but it lists a few sources for the whole project, not for any particular fact.
And the comparative information (Spending power in US dollars) is unclear, at least to me. What does the fact that a Moroccan worker's $.73 minimum wage is worth $1.82 in US dollars mean in terms of food, shelter, or transportation?
But what really concerns me is whether schools kids are going to "cite" yahoo as a source. And worse still, are teachers going to accept that? One of the great things about the internet is the availability of raw data. I hope kids are being taught to dig for that.
