6 ms·
Germany to introduce minimum wage
- fleitz 13y agoAs much as I'd love to talk about this it seems much more political than tech related, are there any issues of tech workers getting less than 8.50? What's the angle...
- bananacurve 13y agoYou don't seem to have a problem talking politics about the US. How do you explain that?
- fleitz 13y agoIt's mostly tech related tangentially on HN... Personally, I love talking politics, whatever country. The article just didn't seem to have anything related to tech, and perhaps might not be appropriate, unless HN wants to become a place where we can talk politics whether its tech related or not.
- bananacurve 13y agoYour previous comments belie you.
- fleitz 13y agohttp://xkcd.com/386/ http://xkcd.com/386/
- mordae 13y agoProbably not. On the other hand, our team of senior Linux administrators get 7 EUR per hour each in Prague, just 350km from Berlin. It's always interesting to hear about wages in other parts of the world. Puts things into perspective...
- fleitz 13y agoYeah, that's interesting to me as well. I thought you could only get away with paying people that much in China / India. I tend to think somewhere like Prague would be an awesome place to do a startup.
- auctiontheory 13y agoour team of senior Linux administrators get 7 EUR per hour each in Prague Wow. Just wow. Wikipedia says that they're making far less than the per-capita income for the Czech Republic. Presumably they speak English - why do they stay, rather than move elsewhere in the EU? (In Silicon Valley, the same job would pay multiples of the mean income.) More selfishly, assuming you aren't there yourself, how do you go about finding Eastern European technical talent, which everyone speaks so highly about?
- gordaco 13y agoI can't speak for them, but don't underestimate the reasons people may have for staying in their country, and don't overestimate their appreciation for money. I make about the mean income in my country (which is quite a few k€ above the median). I know for a fact that I could go to other parts of Europe and earn possibly twice or more, but I don't think I'm going to do so in the near future. Here I have my family, my friends and my climate. There awaits me a bigger amount of money... that I have no real use for.
- mordae 13y agoIn reality, you can get more in other companies. Up to 2500 EUR monthly, I'd guess. German companies in CR offer even more. But yeah, for 1750 EUR monthly wage you'd get a dedicated, talented young developer who probably already knows at least two programming languages and basics of web development. Or the other way around. (It's also a slightly above-average wage of a normal full-time C developer.) Hmm, to reach someone from the outside... try http://brmlab.cz/lists http://brmlab.cz/lists and ask around.
- PeterisP 13y ago"...how do you go about finding Eastern European technical talent..." Advertise for remote positions? I mean, I occasionally get either some recruiters or see interesting companies, but it always stops at the fact that I'm not willing to move my family to USA or London just to get a larger salary that'll still likely buy a lower quality of life.
- rayiner 13y agoSee: http://www.forbes.com/sites/leonardburman/2012/03/14/raising-the-minimum-wage-in-new-york-would-be-risky http://www.forbes.com/sites/leonardburman/2012/03/14/raising.... I don't think the minimum wage has been a great success anywhere it's been implemented, so I'm a bit surprised Germany would adopt it now instead of trying something more forward-looking. The conservatives in Germany could have preempted this I think by proposing some sort of minimum income like in Switzerland.
- arrrg 13y agoMinimum income is currently not a politically viable option. None of the major parties even considers it as a serious option, nor is there viable public support for it. Minimum wage has widespread support in the population and during the last years the conservative party never styled itself as fundamentally opposed to minimum wage (though always only minimum wage implemented independently from government through collective bargaining where available). As evidenced by the loss of parties who are actively campaigning for a minimum wage in the recent election it’s also obviously not an issue that wins elections (though probably also not one that loses elections). About half of German employees are covered by those minimum wages through collective bargaining (which, of course, only exist because of the political and regulatory framework for collective bargaining in Germany). Garbage collection workers, for example, are at €8.68, lowly construction workers are at €10.25 (East Germany) and €11.05 (West Germany) and so on.
- notahacker 13y agoI can't possibly imagine why a conservative party would consider giving away 25% of GDP as direct handouts in an unprecedented and essentially untested reform of the welfare system over a tweak to employment law which has had positive results in similar countries. The article you linked to hardly leaves the average reader with the impression a minimum wage would be a disaster.
- msandford 13y agoI wish we'd just get to the core of the problem, big big inflation via the Fed destroying the purchasing power of the dollar and various other central banks following suit in their own currencies. If you get new dollars first when they're more valuable, life is TOTALLY RAD. You get to spend the new money before it works its way through the system. So you're spending post-inflation money but getting pre-inflation prices. Yum. If you don't get the new dollars first then what tends to happen is that your costs go up before your income does. This is not a good situation for a business to be in and it's not good for an individual either. Imagine that you are trying to make a startup work and every month your COGS goes up 10% but you can only increase the prices you charge on a 6-18 month lag. You might run out of cash covering your increased costs long before you can raise your prices and make up the difference. This is roughly how household finances have been playing out for quite a few years now. At least ~40 or so years since Nixon closed the gold window, but maybe up to ~100 years since the founding of the Fed. EDIT: If you want to downvote me could you at least tell me why? I'd like to be a good citizen on HN and downvotes without comment don't explain anything.
- jsnk 13y agoWow, that's amazing that Germany never had minimum wage! To be honest, this seems like a good example that not having minimum wage doesn't necessarily lead to pre-industrial age wage slavery that academics are always worried should minimum wage disappear.
- bowlofpetunias 13y agoActually, Germany is a good example that sooner or later wage slavery does set in. The powerful and widespread unionization and the regulatory framework for collective bargaining has until now made mandatory minimum wages unnecessary, but that systems has been broken ever since the reunification, and has collapsed with the economic crisis. If anything, the current situation in Germany makes the argument for having minimum wage stronger than ever.
- _ak 13y agoYep. The fact that there are plenty of people in Germany who work 40 hours per week and still need to apply for benefits in order to be able to pay their rent and buy food is not only a big shame for this country, it also effectively shifts salaries from being paid by the employer to being paid by the taxpayer.
- jusob 13y agoYou mean this would not happen: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/08/us-germany-jobs-idUSTRE8170P120120208 http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/08/us-germany-jobs-id...
- jsnk 13y agoAre you citing this as a problem comparable to nation wide wage slavery academics warn against? I think this problem in Germany is so marginal and rare that you are trivializing the magnitude of the problem. If this is the scale of problem caused by lack of minimum wage, I would say abolish minimum wage without any hesitation. Advantages of not having minimum wage is clearly order of magnitudes larger than this marginal problem.
- bentruyman 13y agoHow does Germany calculate "unemployment" differently from the United States? http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=germany+vs+united+states+unemployment http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=germany+vs+united+state...
- yk 13y agoYou should use the unemployment rate, since the US are several times larger than Germany. Apart from that, I think that German unemployment is compiled by some government office, who use the actual numbers of people who get unemployment benefits, while in the US telephone surveys used. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=germany+vs+united+states+unemployment+rate http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=germany+vs+united+state...
- billyjobob 13y agoI don't know about Germany, but in the UK the minimum wage is so low that it isn't enough to live on and the government have to make welfare benefit payments so that the people on minimum wage can survive. Businesses are only able to pay such low wages because the government effectively subsidizes them. Also there are a lot of loopholes in the law, e.g. workers on the government 'work programme' can be paid less than the minimum wage. Interns are supposed to be paid minimum wage, but most are not paid anything at all and the only consequence is that the government writes a stern letter to their employers.
- byoung2 13y agoI don't know about Germany, but in the UK the minimum wage is so low that it isn't enough to live on and the government have to make welfare benefit payments so that the people on minimum wage can survive. That is also true in many parts of the US. In California, it is currently $8/hr, which means if you are able to work 40 hours a week (likely across two employers), you make $16,640 per year. At that income, you couldn't afford to live alone in Los Angeles, where a studio apartment would cost $1200/month, which is already 86% of your income. You could, however, qualify for subsidized housing, which would pay 80% of your rent, nutrition assistance which would give you a few hundred dollars per month to buy groceries, and recently, subsidized health insurance that would give you a basic HMO plan for free. In effect, the government (federal, state, county, and city) is basically matching the employer dollar for dollar for many minimum wage employees.
- forktheif 13y agoUK minimum wage is £6.31 an hour which converts to $10.24, so slightly higher. Though maybe that conversion is too simplistic.
- byoung2 13y agoThe cost of living is likely higher in the UK. Even in Los Angeles you can get a pint of beer for $4 or a six pack for $8. That is a good benchmark for minimum wages. http://www.courthousenews.com/2013/11/08/62761.htm http://www.courthousenews.com/2013/11/08/62761.htm
- mathattack 13y agoThis concept is very strange to me, as Germany is generally considered to be a high-efficiency high-wage country. I wonder if this comes from social pressure of supporting so many high-social-welfare countries.
- Vitaly 13y agoGermany of all places? Thats the one economy in Europe that actually seems to work quite well. Why try to "fix" it?