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Swiss to vote on $25 an hour minimum wage
- joelgreen 12y agoSounds like a fast way to get rid of immigrants.
- bayesianhorse 12y agoAnd in the process lower the standard of living of the rest. Or tank the tourism sector, since they might have trouble paying this wage to the low-skilled workers they need. If they don't have that trouble, then even immigrants don't care, most of which already earn well above the proposed minimum wage.
- workhere-io 12y agoBefore you compare it to American wages, keep in mind that Switzerland has one of the highest costs of living in the world. http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/rankings_by_country.jsp http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/rankings_by_country.jsp
- unreal37 12y agoBefore you dismiss it so fast, the question of how can a person live on $7.25 an hour still deserves some thought? $1,200 barely enough for rent, food and a bus pass. Maybe $25 is too high, but $7.25 is low.
- ryguytilidie 12y agoHe didn't dismiss anything. He simply provided a relevant comparison of income levels and cost of living.
- workhere-io 12y agoI didn't dismiss anything, and I'm not saying $7.25 is okay. I'm merely saying that cost of living should be taken into consideration when comparing countries' minimum wages.
- tn13 12y agoWhy do we think that all work should be sufficient for a person's rent food and bus pass ?
- jackvalentine 12y agoThe way I see it all work should be sufficient if worked standard fulltime 38-45 hours a week for a person to survive with some free time to better themselves with. The alternative is people working huge numbers of hours just to survive and having no time to improve their situation, becoming trapped in a cycle of endless low-end jobs and poverty. You can't actually upskill if you spend 12-16 hours a day working dead-end jobs.
- camus2 12y agoyeah, why pay people at all,let's enslave them.It worked well for this country!!!
- tn13 12y agoConversely, why keep minimum wages at ~$20 why not make it ~$2000 ? Lets make everyone rich.
- gpvos 12y agoBecause if 40 hours of work a week can't pay for that, it's called exploitation.
- tn13 12y agoI would call the person unproductive instead of shifting the blame to someone else by calling it exploitation unless slavery is still legal somewhere.
- gpvos 12y agoWow. You have guts. Unproductive is a very mean word to use for people who work their ass off and still get underpaid. Something can be exploitation while it's still legal. And the blame does lie with the employer in that case. If they can't pay their workers a reasonable living wage, they should raise their prices or they have no business, or at least the law should make it so that they don't have one.
- protomyth 12y ago$7.25 is fine for teenagers looking to pick up some experience and extra cash. The notion that the minimum wage is supposed to provide a living is a good way to remove young people from the job pool.
- camus2 12y agoexcept now people work in minimum wage jobs all their life. > The notion that the minimum wage is supposed to provide a living is a good way to remove young people from the job pool. The minimum wage is supposed to provide a living period. How can people be as selfish as you are is beyond me.There is enough wealth in this world to be shared so everybody can make a decent living,and it wont make whatever you think you are worth less valuable.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- icebraining 12y agoNot supporting a particular way of distributing wealth is not necessarily being selfish. There are good arguments for e.g. raisin/expanding the EITC instead. I don't have an opinion on the matter (not being a US citizen, I certainly don't know enough about the situation), but I think your insult is completely inappropriate.
- protomyth 12y ago"except now people work in minimum wage jobs all their life." Source please. "How can people be as selfish as you are is beyond me.There is enough wealth in this world to be shared so everybody can make a decent living,and it wont make whatever you think you are worth less valuable." Nice try on the appeal to emotion and shame, but the tactic is best left to talking heads on TV and not places where people actually care about this problem. I could respond with your utter indifference to the youth problem particularly it seems in minority communities whose starting businesses cannot afford $15/hr makes you a ..... well you get the idea. This is HN, not MSNBC. This whole minimum wage foolishness is a cover for politicians that have failed our poor. We need to understand why adults cannot get jobs that employers when jobs go empty. We also need to look at our safety net and see how full of holes it is. Its time for looking at new way to elevate our at risk population (basic income is often discussed here) and education (vocational education to fill the infrastructure jobs that are long vacant and not outsourceble for example).
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- yummyfajitas 12y agoYet somehow, billions of people worldwide live on far less than that number after adjusting for purchasing power. The average Bulgarian subsists on roughly a US minimum wage salary (after adjusting for purchasing power - before adjusting for PPP it's about half a min wage salary). The average Indian subsists on far less. How do they do this? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_... (Hint: roommates, cooking at home, long commutes or less desirable cities, giving up luxuries which are common in the US like a car.) Note: don't say "cost of living". The numbers I cite adjust for that.
- psykotic 12y agoThere are social, cultural and infrastructural factors which you completely trivialize by neglecting to mention them. In Thailand, for example, working-class people do often live with others in small spaces, but either they are strangers in factory dorms or they are extended family members in small apartments. The crucial role of the extended family may be the hardest for modern Westerners to appreciate. It is not our feel-good notion of family. My brother in law has spent the last 15 years continuously working out of country as a truck driver in Singapore, living in a ramshackle shelter on construction sites while sending most of his earnings back to his wife and kids. This is a somewhat extreme case, but milder instances are commonplace. People often have to work away from their families for years at a time to make ends meet and accrue any sort of savings. Then there is transportation. Every day you will see mothers on scooters carrying several toddlers who are certain to die in even minor accidents. Another common sight and a less egregious example would be pickup trucks with the backs piled full of day laborers, or commuters casually hanging off the back of high-speed songthaew busses. This is highly efficient in monetary terms, but the human cost is huge. It's a complex issue that is not reducible to PPP numbers.
- yummyfajitas 12y agoI'm not sure why you say things aren't "reducible" to PPP numbers - low PPP-adjusted income corresponds quite well to the low consumption levels you are describing. In any case, I'm glad we are agreed that unreal37 is incorrect, and it is possible to "live on" $1200/month. It's not anywhere near as nice as American poverty, but it's hardly clear that $7.25 is too low. I'd propose an alternate direction for the discussion - if we believe the American poor are lacking in some necessary good or service, lets be specific and name it.
- MisterBastahrd 12y agoI had a conversation with someone tonight about just this topic. If it takes two full time jobs just to make ends meet, then you can't have a reasonable expectation of them learning a new skill to get a better job. Not only do they not have the time to learn whatever potentially lucrative skill people want to imagine up, but the fatigue from putting in that much time is probably reducing their ability to fully function at either job. Combine that with the fact that being responsible for two jobs limits promotion chances, and you've got people stuck in a perpetual cycle of poverty.
- gilgoomesh 12y agoAccording to Wolfram Alpha, Switzerland's cost of living is 1.535 times that of the U.S. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=cost+of+living+switzerland+versus+united+states http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=cost+of+living+switzerl... This proposed Swiss minimum wage is therefore (roughly) equivalent to a minimum wage in the U.S. of $16.28 per hour (taxation differences and non living-expenses notwithstanding).
- olalonde 12y agoDidn't the Swiss vote on basic income recently? Seems like it would be a much better alternative. Such a high minimum wage is likely to discriminate against the very poor by favouring automation and reducing demand for unskilled workers.
- wigginus 12y agoNo, they haven't voted yet. There will be a vote, but the date of it is yet unclear.
- Kiro 12y agoAutomation is never bad.
- olalonde 12y agoDifferent schools of thoughts have differing opinions regarding that. As a libertarian, I'd argue that the free market is better than government at deciding what needs to be automated. Minimum wages effectively impose a tax on human labor which in turn artificially incentivizes automation. Basic income might suffer from the same problem to some degree (by disincentivizing people to do lower paid jobs) but at least, it would accomplish the stated goal of minimum wages (that is, helping the more needy).
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- saosebastiao 12y agoI love when people give us opportunities to empirically measure their bad theories.
- octonion 12y agoThose "bad theories" have led to a far higher quality of life than the US.
- saosebastiao 12y agoSwitzerland, which doesn't even have a national minimum wage at all, grew to have a much higher quality of life by the mere presence of theories of the minimum wage. Did I understand that correctly?
- facepalm 12y agoYeah because you can directly compare Switzerland and the US. Where does the high income of Swiss people come from? I don't think the same thing would be replicable for the US (for starters, the US is not a tiny neutral country surrounded by Alps).
- anonymousDan 12y agoSo? Even if that were true, it's irrelevant to the above poster's counterpoint to the previous poster's statement.
- facepalm 12y agoHow so?
- UweSchmidt 12y agoIt's difficult to empirically measure any theory if you come into it burdenen with ideology.
- copx 12y agoThis is the key sentence in the article: >However, 90% of Swiss workers earn well above the proposed minimum and are already among the highest paid in the world.
- BasDirks 12y agoIt's the key sentence from a US-centric point of view.
- id 12y agoThis law aims at the 10% that don't earn well. The US isn't a poor country either. In fact, Americans are also among the highest paid in the world [1]. It's just not evenly distributed. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_wage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_w...
- bayesianhorse 12y agoWhich means about 10% earn less. Which is a big portion of the labor force that has to be paid more or let go. This is potentially a very big shock for the swiss economy.
- andreasklinger 12y agoI think "lower salaries == more people employed" is an overly simplified model economists teach us to justify dropping wages. Imho lower salaries doesn't create more jobs it just creates more desperate people willing to work for lower salaries because of its downward loop. I know this opinion is not popular in the states. But this has nothing to do with socialism. Socialism is about common ownership, common management. Minimum salaries is about raising the middle class.
- mkhattab 12y agoLet's say the Swiss set the minimum wage to $25/hr or even half that, $12/hr, what kind of ripple effect would we expect on other salary groups? Would they increase by the same proportion?
- seanmcdirmid 12y agoThe effective minimum wage (what you have to pay to attract workers) is already probably over $12/hr in Switzerland. Everything is already expensive, so I would expect the ripple effects to be slight.
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- folli 12y agoThe vote is tomorrow and has almost no chance of getting passed. http://www.gfsbern.ch/DesktopModules/EasyDNNNews/DocumentDownload.ashx?portalid=0&moduleid=677&articleid=1077&documentid=443 http://www.gfsbern.ch/DesktopModules/EasyDNNNews/DocumentDow... [german, pdf]
- brunnsbe 12y agoSwitzerland's need to export stuff and to do business with the surrounding EU-countries is bigger than the EU-countries' need to do business with Switzerland. Putting a minimum wage this high will naturally impact the prices on goods leading to a shrinking export market. I wonder how they came up with $25/hr and not, let's say, $17,50/hr?
- seanmcdirmid 12y agoSwitzerland is already very expensive; a meal at McD's will run you at least 12 CHF. This rise in the minimum wage is not going to affect exports at all (which are all very high end...and how many bankers make minimum wage?); it will make some things slightly more expensive (on top of already being pretty expensive).
- brunnsbe 12y agoSwitzerland exports more than just bank services, e.g. grocery products like cheese and chocolate which are products produced with low wages. And yes it'expensive, I'm currently living in Gèneve and paying more than enough for my kebabs (it's cheaper to pay for the tram to Annemasse in France and have the kebab over there).
- seanmcdirmid 12y agoThe farmers are well protected in Switzerland, while the chocolate making is highly automated. What the higher minimum wage will do is push either for automating or exporting lower wage tasks, which will reduce immigration (since those jobs are not really done by swiss citizens anyways), and there are surprisingly a lot of xenophobic people in Switzerland that are OK with this.
- fla 12y agoIt is an honest question, and that's also the most controversial point. The initiants ask for a min wage of (raw) 4000 CHF per month which is approximately 3000 CHF net of taxes. Why this number ? People pretend that's what one need to live well. The reality is more complicated than that, as you may guess, the cost of living really depends on the region and on the industry sector. That's why opposants want to solve this problem with per industry sector conventions (ie: there is already a minim wage in the watch industry) rather than with a global try-fix-it-all law.
- bayesianhorse 12y agoThere seems to be a pattern here: Swiss referendums more often than not follow the opinion of the government. In cases where they don't, they seem to be quite problematical. In the vote for "restrictions on EU immigrations" the swiss want to throw out immigrants. But not those they know personally. Or those on whom their economy depends. So basically the government has the choice between not implementing the proposal as intended, or to harm the economy badly. As far as I know, they haven't solved this Dilemma quite yet. Maybe this "element of direct democracy" has less impact on the actual "democraticness" than some believe it has. At the very least it poses a serious risk for long term investors or entrepreneurs. Any harebrained idea that comes up in this process has a non-zero chance of being implemented just by the power of low participation or ambiguous opinions. At best, governments already take the "pulse" of public and expert opinion when setting policy, making referendums futile or redundant.
- algorias 12y ago> At best, governments already take the "pulse" of public and expert opinion when setting policy, making referendums futile or redundant. So you're saying a referendum is futile because it forces the government to (preemptively) do what the people want? That's exactly it's purpose!
- bayesianhorse 12y agoI have not said that, and you deliberately misunderstood me to make a point against practical democracy. In any country with a practical, working, real-world democracy you can see the government mostly following opinion polls. Finding out "what the people want" is extremely hard, at least if you aren't a populist politician or their adherents. The task doesn't get easier if you pose simple yes and no questions. I think it is dangerous that people in western democracies increasingly equate referendums and votes with democracy, leaving out the conditions of the vote, the environment, the institutions and the state of the human rights.
- mweibel 12y ago> Swiss referendums more often than not follow the opinion of the government. This is an initiative, a referendum is something different. > In cases where they don't, they seem to be quite problematical. Not always, just in the recent years there have been some problematic votes which were accepted due to (IMO) fear generated by certain parties. There have been, however, also problematic initiatives/referendums where the people followed the governments opinion. > At the very least it poses a serious risk for long term investors or entrepreneurs. Any harebrained idea that comes up in this process has a non-zero chance of being implemented just by the power of low participation or ambiguous opinions. IMO you're a bit oversimplifying here. There are various hurdles to take when you want to vote on a certain thing. Whether things are accepted or declined depends on various things and can change because of some little thing in a week. The serious risk blabla is always a thing which various parties bring up in various votes. It never has had a bit impact as of now. In any other country laws are usually made by lobbyists. We have this problem here as well, but at least the public opinion is a bit harder to change in votes..
- thecopy 12y agoGovernment intervention in the free market is never a good thing. If i would have a citizenship i would have voted no.
- bayesianhorse 12y agoI can see various situations where government intervention in free markets is most decidedly a good thing. For example, food and health industry needs to be regulated. The incentives for self-regulation otherwise are so low, that lots of people die and suffer until the market reaches its supposed optimal equilibrium of high safety standards. Antitrust regulation is an intervention in a free market, though one could argue that without antitrust regulation, there is no free market...
- brazzy 12y agoGoogle "market failure", little Randroid.
- bmmayer1 12y agoThe actual dollar amount of the wage isn't the same as real income in terms of what goods and services you can buy relative to the wage, so sentences like this are useless: "would make mostly immigrants here in agriculture, housekeeping, and catering among the world's highest paid unskilled workforce." It's actually likely that the higher minimum wage will lower real incomes by driving up production costs.
- Yrlec 12y agoIn Sweden there's no minimum wage at all. We let the market set it.
- UweSchmidt 12y agoNice. However there is an implicit minimum wage linked to welfare. Any wage must be above what welfare pays or people might not bother working at all.
- andreasklinger 12y agoAgree. Welfare is basic an implicit minimum wage. Also i personally believe that markets can only regulate themselves if all players start with the same conditions. Which they do more likely in sweden as they do in the states (eg. education, healthcare, middle class, etc)
- hershel 12y agoDo youmean that if someone doesn't want to work he can easily get welfare ?
- UweSchmidt 12y agoWell, that reasoning was originally revealed to me by an economics professor, resolving the paradox "Germany supposedly has better welfare than the USA, why does Germany not have a minimum wage?" So basically, that line is 100% standard economic thinking and therefore can be best understood and accepted by making the usual assumptions: humans as rational actors with perfect information and the cognitive ability to weight options, striving to maximize self interest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_economicus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_economicus If we're a a little more relaxed and maybe realistic with that assumption, we might find that it's a complex issue, with people's actions spanning a wide spectrum from "work? No thanks" to various levels of urgency, then desperation trying to find a new job and to make a living. Finally to people who'd be working hard even if unemployment benefits were 3x their wage, out of principle. Point is, there are other factors to look at than the minimum wage alone.
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- hellbreakslose 12y agoFact here: If you convert $ to euros with the current rates, that makes minimum wage 4380 Euros a month. I worked for a year in Switzerland and I am telling you, you can barely live with that kind of money. Everything is so expensive over there at least Zurich. So yes expect a Swiss Tourist coming in the US buying everything and have a lot of funs, but in Switzerland with that wage he won't be saving anything.
- whoismua 12y agoand how much does a loaf of bread, gasoline, rent etc etc cost there? It's all relative
- maccard 12y agocost of living is about 1.5 times higher than the US. Source is somewhere in this comment thread
- crb002 12y agoThe effect is that lower skilled swiss citizens will emigrate now that they can no longer be employed in their home country. It is the wolf of eugenics under the sheep's clothing of leftist charity.
- lauradhamilton 12y ago$25 in Switzerland is gets you about what $12 in the US does. So this really isn't as high as it sounds.