6 ms·

You mean unions?

• pjmlp 4y ago
  No, laws for minimum wages across specific industries. Naturally unions leverage on top of those laws.
  • rcme 4y ago
    It's really not about minimum wage. Germany didn't even have a minimum wage until 2014. Ultimately, it's about having a social safety net. As a worker, if you have a social safety net, then you can afford to form a union without worrying about the health and security of your family. Also, higher taxes disincentives such reckless profit seeking.
    • pjmlp 4y ago
      Did I say every European country has it? Yeah it is sad that for all the progress on this country, it still lags behind on some safety nets in regards to poorer countries. I never understood the need to tip toilet workers instead of providing them a proper salary.
      • rcme 4y ago
        No, you didn't say every European country has it, but many European countries don't have a minimum wage. Denmark, where McDonalds workers famously earn $22 an hour, does not have a minimum wage either. So clearly a legally defined minimum wage doesn't really matter in terms of average salary.
        • dragonwriter 4y ago
          > So clearly a legally defined minimum wage doesn’t really matter in terms of average salary. That single examples at most shows that other factors also matter and in sufficient combination can dominate, not that minimum wage doesn’t really matter.
          • rcme 4y ago
            If every example of a place that has a high standard of living for workers also does not have a minimum wage, then it's fair to say that a minimum wage does not matter in terms of worker welfare. Germany only recently got a minimum wage. Norway has no minimum wage. Denmark has no minimum wage. Sweden has no minimum wage. Switzerland has no minimum wage. These are considered the most desirable countries in Europe to work in. And it's true: a high minimum wage does not matter when it comes to worker welfare. A minimum wage does not increase a worker's leverage with their employer. A strong social safety net, which enables unionization, does increase a worker's leverage with their employer and thus improves the worker's standard of living.
            • dragonwriter 4y ago
              > If every example of a place that has a high standard of living for workers also does not have a minimum wage, then it’s fair to say that a minimum wage does not matter in terms of worker welfare Not really, because there could be some other common factor that explains the difference and more than offsets the effect of absence of a minimum wage. (The small n problem combined with the fact that there tend to be lots of correlated confounders is why empirical assessment of policy tends to be very difficult, even before all the motivations people have to distort results.)
              • rcme 4y ago
                > Not really, because there could be some other common factor that explains the difference and more than offsets the effect of absence of a minimum wage. Ok, let's assume this is true. What is the argument that we should continue to focus on minimum wage rather than trying to pursue these "other common factors"? Personally, I think the minimum wage approach has a number of problems. In addition to the evidence presented above, which shows that many countries have strong labor without a minimum wage, the minimum wage fails to pass even a basic logical test. For instance, let's say we increase the minimum wage. In the best case, ignoring second order effects to demand, employment either stays the same or decreases due to the increased cost of labor. If unemployment decreases at all, labor overall is weaker, as higher unemployment favors the capital owning class. So the only way a higher minimum wage makes sense is if the second order effects of paying people more induce enough demand to lower unemployment. It just seems unlikely to me that we could magically induce demand in this way. The CBO seems to agree with this overall assessment. They estimate the impact of minimum wage increases on unemployment to be purely detrimental: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/55681 https://www.cbo.gov/publication/55681 Since you seem to support a higher minimum wage, I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on the specific mechanisms is which a higher minimum wage would increase the leverage that labor has with the owners.
        • pjmlp 4y ago
          Moving goalposts are we?
          • rcme 4y ago
            Sorry, what goal posts are being moved? AFAIK, the conversation went like this: "Raising the minimum wage will produce stronger labor, like in Europe" "Germany is an example of a strong-labor country in Europe that achieved strong labor without any minimum wage at all." "I didn't say every European country." "Here are five other countries without a minimum wage that have strong labor. Together, they make up the most desirable countries in Europe to work in" That doesn't seem like moving goal posts to me.
            • pjmlp 4y ago
              Where did I explicitly mentioned Germany as an example in this sentence? > Not in US, in plenty of "communist" European countries it is.