6 ms·

Accounting for the difference would be an advantage for Denmark: the poor in Denmark gets much more money than the poor in the US in addition to having free hea

Accounting for the difference would be an advantage for Denmark: the poor in Denmark gets much more money than the poor in the US in addition to having free healthcare. To be poor in Denmark [1]: 36 year old woman on welfare, single, 1 kid at home. She gets $2884 per month AFTER taxes, free healthcare. After paying for rent, utilities, internet, TV licence, dog food and vet bills, kids football expenses, medicine, private debts, and cigarettes, she has (by her own calculation) $917 left over each month for food, clothing and housekeeping. She has been on welfare for the last 20 years. This example made a huge media storm in Denmark because she gets more money than those working minimum-wage jobs. 1: http://cphpost.dk/news/poverty-media-stunt-backfires.153.html http://cphpost.dk/news/poverty-media-stunt-backfires.153.htm...

dalke 13y ago
My first thought is "sounds like it's time to raise the minimum wage." Then I wondered. Should someone who is physically or mentally unable to work always, for the rest of their entire life, get less than minimum wage? I mean, an employee at McDonald's takes home, what, $28,000 a year post-tax [1]? That's $2,300/month, which isn't much below the $2,884 you quoted. Except most McDonald's employees have the ability to get jobs in the future which pay much more. So shouldn't the debate include not only a comparison to low-end jobs but the average lifetime earnings? [1] http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/the_minimum_wage_and_the_danis.php http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/the_minimum_wage_and_the_danis....
- OoTLink 13y ago
  Why should someone that is mentally/physically unable to contribute to society live in poverty?
  - dalke 13y ago
    Mmm, you changed my wording from "unable to work" to the much more ambiguous "unable to contribute to society." But otherwise, yes. Given the massive improvements in efficiency over the last 200 years, why should the relatively small number of people who are unable to work be forced to live in poverty?
  - jerf 13y ago
    "Poverty" is a term that pretty much scotches any chance at reasonable discussion from the start. What's "fair" for someone who really can't contribute? Is it fair for them to live better than those who are paying for their life style? What about the fact that the person who really can't contribute probably also seems some sort of relatively expensive accommodations? "Minimum living + basic accommodations" may still come out to more "money" being spent on them than a normally-abled person making a reasonable low-end wage, even if it initially appears they're living in "poverty". Is that fair? When it comes to fair, you have to remember that the money is coming from somebody else, who has their own claim to "fairness" themselves. There's no infinite money fountain that allows us to simply forget that; it's always a balance. How much work should the normally-abled be forced to do by the men-with-guns (government) for those who can't contribute? It's a really, really hard question. I don't have answers for my rhetorical questions in the previous paragraph.
    - dalke 13y ago
      There's an easier reformulation, at least for Denmark. Denmark doesn't have a minimum wage. Instead, many wages are set via collective bargaining. (The unions argue that this is more effective than a national minimum wage.) So for Denmark let's not talk about "poverty" but "below the minimum wage for all private and public sector collective bargaining agreements", which Wikipedia tells us is 109 kroner ($19) per hour. "There's no infinite money fountain" ... how come with all of the advances in efficiency over the century, we're still working roughly the 8 hour days from factories 100 years ago? While not infinite, surely we should be better at using that fountain by now. I read "forced to do by the men-with-guns" often, though of course not always, from libertarians. I've always had a problem with that. There's coercion by force, certainly, but there are other ways to coerce. The government can also deny you access to things. For example, to a working water supply and sewage system, to the banking system, to telephones, to health care, to parental leave, to the judicial system, to weather reports, and so on. Some of that can be worked around, like by going off the grid, but not all. It's very hard to travel internationally if the US refuses to issue a passport. If you don't have access to the court system, then what do you do when your neighbor decides to move the fence 3 meters closer to your house? Indeed, I can easily consider a government based completely on the threat of the withdrawal of services rather than force. Some very rich people, and certain groups like the Amish, may be able to go it alone. Otherwise, the switching cost of leaving government services will be too high. So no, I don't think that it's reasonable to think of government as synonymous, even poetically speaking, with coercion by force. You need only look at, say, the Viking sagas of Iceland to see how governments can exist to help reduce the overall need for coercion by force.
- bluedino 13y ago
  McDonald's employees making $28,000 a year? Maybe managers.
  - ams6110 13y ago
    Certainly very few employees at a McDonald's restaurant would take home $28,000. Especially now that most of them can't work more than 29 hrs/wk. Edit: reading the link, I guess this is in reference to what workers at a McDonald's in Denmark make.
    - dalke 13y ago
      Yes, this was in context to unemployment levels in Denmark. This branch is about Denmark, after all. When McDonald's entered Denmark, they tried to be non-union. That didn't work out for them, and by 1989 they entered agreements to work with the union. See http://www.remappingdebate.org/article/high-road-high-wages-denmarks-answer-us-model?page=0,2 http://www.remappingdebate.org/article/high-road-high-wages-... for some of that history. The lowest paying union job in Denmark is just under US$20/hour. Figure 1550 hours per year (the Danish average) gives US$31,000. The article I referenced uses "full-time equivalent", which is likely a 2000 hour measure, or US$40,000. My estimate sets the baseline, but the actual wages might be higher. The article I mentioned quotes $45K/year, and links to a McDonald's document .. which is in Danish, and I don't know Danish.
      - bluedino 13y ago
        Isn't a Big Mac $10 over there?
        dalke 13y ago
        I see you did not follow the link I posted, which give the exact answer: > a Big Mac extra value meal costs 58 kroner, or $10.25, while the Dollar Menu is the 10 kroner menu, which means it’s the dollar-seventy-seven menu here. In Denmark, taxes are included in list prices, unlike in the US, so backing out the 25 percent VAT gives us $8.20 for a Big Mac meal and $1.41 for the “dollar” menu. That compares to $6 and $1 in Seattle. (It's not quite right to compare VAT and sales tax, but so be it.)

dalke 13y ago

My first thought is "sounds like it's time to raise the minimum wage." Then I wondered. Should someone who is physically or mentally unable to work always, for the rest of their entire life, get less than minimum wage? I mean, an employee at McDonald's takes home, what, $28,000 a year post-tax [1]? That's $2,300/month, which isn't much below the $2,884 you quoted. Except most McDonald's employees have the ability to get jobs in the future which pay much more. So shouldn't the debate include not only a comparison to low-end jobs but the average lifetime earnings? [1] http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/the_minimum_wage_and_the_danis.php http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/the_minimum_wage_and_the_danis....

OoTLink 13y ago
Why should someone that is mentally/physically unable to contribute to society live in poverty?
- dalke 13y ago
  Mmm, you changed my wording from "unable to work" to the much more ambiguous "unable to contribute to society." But otherwise, yes. Given the massive improvements in efficiency over the last 200 years, why should the relatively small number of people who are unable to work be forced to live in poverty?
- jerf 13y ago
  "Poverty" is a term that pretty much scotches any chance at reasonable discussion from the start. What's "fair" for someone who really can't contribute? Is it fair for them to live better than those who are paying for their life style? What about the fact that the person who really can't contribute probably also seems some sort of relatively expensive accommodations? "Minimum living + basic accommodations" may still come out to more "money" being spent on them than a normally-abled person making a reasonable low-end wage, even if it initially appears they're living in "poverty". Is that fair? When it comes to fair, you have to remember that the money is coming from somebody else, who has their own claim to "fairness" themselves. There's no infinite money fountain that allows us to simply forget that; it's always a balance. How much work should the normally-abled be forced to do by the men-with-guns (government) for those who can't contribute? It's a really, really hard question. I don't have answers for my rhetorical questions in the previous paragraph.
  - dalke 13y ago
    There's an easier reformulation, at least for Denmark. Denmark doesn't have a minimum wage. Instead, many wages are set via collective bargaining. (The unions argue that this is more effective than a national minimum wage.) So for Denmark let's not talk about "poverty" but "below the minimum wage for all private and public sector collective bargaining agreements", which Wikipedia tells us is 109 kroner ($19) per hour. "There's no infinite money fountain" ... how come with all of the advances in efficiency over the century, we're still working roughly the 8 hour days from factories 100 years ago? While not infinite, surely we should be better at using that fountain by now. I read "forced to do by the men-with-guns" often, though of course not always, from libertarians. I've always had a problem with that. There's coercion by force, certainly, but there are other ways to coerce. The government can also deny you access to things. For example, to a working water supply and sewage system, to the banking system, to telephones, to health care, to parental leave, to the judicial system, to weather reports, and so on. Some of that can be worked around, like by going off the grid, but not all. It's very hard to travel internationally if the US refuses to issue a passport. If you don't have access to the court system, then what do you do when your neighbor decides to move the fence 3 meters closer to your house? Indeed, I can easily consider a government based completely on the threat of the withdrawal of services rather than force. Some very rich people, and certain groups like the Amish, may be able to go it alone. Otherwise, the switching cost of leaving government services will be too high. So no, I don't think that it's reasonable to think of government as synonymous, even poetically speaking, with coercion by force. You need only look at, say, the Viking sagas of Iceland to see how governments can exist to help reduce the overall need for coercion by force.
bluedino 13y ago
McDonald's employees making $28,000 a year? Maybe managers.
- ams6110 13y ago
  Certainly very few employees at a McDonald's restaurant would take home $28,000. Especially now that most of them can't work more than 29 hrs/wk. Edit: reading the link, I guess this is in reference to what workers at a McDonald's in Denmark make.
  - dalke 13y ago
    Yes, this was in context to unemployment levels in Denmark. This branch is about Denmark, after all. When McDonald's entered Denmark, they tried to be non-union. That didn't work out for them, and by 1989 they entered agreements to work with the union. See http://www.remappingdebate.org/article/high-road-high-wages-denmarks-answer-us-model?page=0,2 http://www.remappingdebate.org/article/high-road-high-wages-... for some of that history. The lowest paying union job in Denmark is just under US$20/hour. Figure 1550 hours per year (the Danish average) gives US$31,000. The article I referenced uses "full-time equivalent", which is likely a 2000 hour measure, or US$40,000. My estimate sets the baseline, but the actual wages might be higher. The article I mentioned quotes $45K/year, and links to a McDonald's document .. which is in Danish, and I don't know Danish.
    - bluedino 13y ago
      Isn't a Big Mac $10 over there?
      - dalke 13y ago
        I see you did not follow the link I posted, which give the exact answer: > a Big Mac extra value meal costs 58 kroner, or $10.25, while the Dollar Menu is the 10 kroner menu, which means it’s the dollar-seventy-seven menu here. In Denmark, taxes are included in list prices, unlike in the US, so backing out the 25 percent VAT gives us $8.20 for a Big Mac meal and $1.41 for the “dollar” menu. That compares to $6 and $1 in Seattle. (It's not quite right to compare VAT and sales tax, but so be it.)