5 ms·

Wow, 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

• bowlofpetunias 13y ago
  Actually, 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 ago
    Yep. 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 ago
  You 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 ago
    Are 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.
    • calibraxis 13y ago
      Which academics? (Presumably economists?) National wage slavery already is the norm — that term means you rent yourself to someone and do as you're told. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery
• elnate 13y ago
  That was prevented only because of strong unions effectively setting a minimum wage for their industries. Hence why non union workers where getting shafted.
  • onli 13y ago
    The history of early unions in Germany is btw quite interesting, especially in Weimar and before WW I, if I'm not mistaken. It is not so long ago that workers had to seriously strike to achieve any improvements of unimaginable horrible work conditions. And it is not so long ago that the german army was used to end those strikes using lethal force. Especially the Ruhrgebiet has quite some stories of that regard. It shines an interesting light on the history of the german social democrats and their relationship to the communist party, given both their interest in the approval of the workers, and is a - mildly put - embarrassing comparison to the state of the modern SPD and its political vision (its Gestaltungswille). Might be a bit OT for non-germans, but most countries - apart from the USA, afaik - should have a similar part of their history.
    • yk 13y ago
      Actually the US had a rather strong worker movement, it just played out quite differently than in Europe. So in the US the unions did quite often manage to get a corporate pension plan, while the European ones did get a government pensions. Similar with health care and many work place regulations.
      • mjn 13y ago
        The U.S. labor movement did used to be stronger than it is now, but it was never really that strong. At the peak in the 1950s, about 35% of workers worked in unionized workplaces. That's a very low figure for Europe, where typically 70%+ of workers work in unionized workplaces (here in Denmark it is 80-90%).
  • notahacker 13y ago
    That implies an interesting argument in favour of a standard minimum wage from a right-leaning perspective; not having it greatly strengthens trade union influence and consequentially results in worse distortion of market wages.