German workers paid 55 cents per hour!

[Goo For You]

LMFAO!!!!!

You can't make this stuff up............

(Reuters) - Anja has been scrubbing floors and washing dishes for two euros an hour over the past six years. She is bewildered when she sees newspapers hailing Germany's "job miracle."


"My company exploited me," says the 50-year-old, sitting in the kitchen of her small flat in the eastern German town of Stralsund. "If I could find something else, I'd be long gone."

Stralsund is an attractive seaside town but Anja, who preferred not to use her full name for fear of being fired, cannot afford the quaint cafes.


Wage restraint and labor market reforms have pushed the jobless rate down to a 20-year low, and the German model is often cited as an example for European nations seeking to cut unemployment and become more competitive.


But critics say the reforms that helped create jobs also broadened and entrenched the low-paid and temporary work sector, boosting wage inequality.


Labor office data show the low wage sector grew three times as fast as other employment in the five years to 2010, explaining why the "job miracle" has not prompted Germans to spend much more than they have in the past.


Pay in Germany, which has no nationwide minimum wage, can go well below one euro an hour, especially in the former communist east German states.


"I've had some people earning as little as 55 cents per hour," said Peter Huefken, the head of Stralsund's job agency, the first of its kind to sue employers for paying too little. He is encouraging other agencies to follow suit.

The conservatives' "minimum wage is bad" argument, R.I.P.



Related commentary:

http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=19504

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/201...age-economics/

http://www.nextnewdeal.net/rortybomb...ge-complements

http://mungowitzend.blogspot.com/201...imum-wage.html

[Goo For You]

If I could have my Christmas present early this year, I would like nothing more than for a Ron Paul supporter to come and say "This market outcome is an accurate and just approximation of the value of these workers' labor for the society."

[Bosch76]

Come to Texas! You can even kill your workers and we won't punish you!

[MatthewT]

If I could have my Christmas present early this year, I would like nothing more than for a Ron Paul supporter to come and say "This market outcome is an accurate and just approximation of the value of these workers' labor for the society."

how 'bout just some common sense, and a bit of vision?

isn't it obvious to you, yet, that the only reason the minimum wage exists is to rachet up union labor costs?

[RiotGrip]

how 'bout just some common sense, and a bit of vision?

isn't it obvious to you, yet, that the only reason the minimum wage exists is to rachet up union labor costs?

The unions are so much weaker now than they were 30 years ago. The dismanteling of unions has allowed wages to drop consistently against real inflation.

[HeinousMark]

LMFAO!!!!!

You can't make this stuff up............



The conservatives' "minimum wage is bad" argument, R.I.P.



Related commentary:

http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=19504

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/201...age-economics/

http://www.nextnewdeal.net/rortybomb...ge-complements

http://mungowitzend.blogspot.com/201...imum-wage.html

So this shit really is going Global? I was holding out hope for at least parts of Europe.... Fuckin' thing SUCKS!

[BeetTheBoxer]

[MatthewT]

yup, and the confiscation of it by a tyrannical government is both predictable and inevitable

[I invented that]

If I could have my Christmas present early this year, I would like nothing more than for a Ron Paul supporter to come and say "This market outcome is an accurate and just approximation of the value of these workers' labor for the society."

does this mean, you're going to heaven

[Goo For You]

how 'bout just some common sense, and a bit of vision?

I'd say 99 out of 100 historians would say that Germans have had plenty of both. Explain why they're wrong.

Lemme guess, too few bible schools?

isn't it obvious to you, yet, that the only reason the minimum wage exists is to rachet up union labor costs?

In 2013, unions are a non-issue. Read the links in my posts -- you might actually learn something. The minimum wage exists to make EITC benefits accrue to workers instead of being captured by employers like in Germany.

The unions are so much weaker now than they were 30 years ago. The dismanteling of unions has allowed wages to drop consistently against real inflation.

Whenever I see this term I am compelled to make the following point.

The real reason for this:



Is in fact this:



Employers and unions ran that industry to the ground, hand in hand.

So this shit really is going Global? I was holding out hope for at least parts of Europe.... Fuckin' thing SUCKS!

The Scandinavians are pretty well insulated from all this crap. Their minimum wage laws are carved in bedrock.

does this mean, you're going to heaven

LMAO that's actually pretty damn clever!

You're getting better at this.

[I invented that]

Employers and unions ran that industry to the ground, hand in hand.

ever heard of a cycle? i guess we need a new term, the industry cycle. every industry will flow downhill.

[Goo For You]

ever heard of a cycle? i guess we need a new term, the industry cycle. every industry will flow downhill.

Which part of this 70 year long decline looks cyclic to you?


EDIT: What you're referring to is called creative destruction and it misses the following point. The U.S. could have lots more jobs today if the industrialists and union leaders had both calmed down and tried to look for constructive solutions to the workers vs. bosses power struggle in the 1980s. In that alternative reality, GM could have implemented Toyota's superior manufacturing practices, etc...

[I invented that]

Which part of this 70 year long decline looks cyclic to you?


EDIT: What you're referring to is called creative destruction and it misses the following point. The U.S. could have lots more jobs today if the industrialists and union leaders had both calmed down and tried to look for constructive solutions to the workers vs. bosses power struggle in the 1980s. In that alternative reality, GM could have implemented Toyota's superior manufacturing practices, etc...

it's a global world now. there's no going back.

[Goo For You]

it's a global world now. there's no going back.

Exactly, and there are two ways to manage this process of globalization: One is to proactively import good ideas, capital, and labor from foreign countries; another is to try to shut it all out. Guess which way US manufacturing industry chose.

[Goo For You]

If I could have my Christmas present early this year, I would like nothing more than for a Ron Paul supporter to come and say "This market outcome is an accurate and just approximation of the value of these workers' labor for the society."

Wow a Mises quote was actually just the thing I was looking for!

Can you find one about labor value specifically?

[Bro]

"This market outcome is an accurate and just approximation of the value of these workers' labor for the society."

The problem I have with that quote is that as unemployment is at a high and jobs are at a low, it drives down the cost of labor because it becomes much more competitive. So the value of labor becomes not so much about the job they are performing or the education/skills they have but how little an employer can get away with paying.

The trick is to find a skill set that is in demand. The problem is, no one is out there saying which ones those are.

[MatthewT]

why do you insist on focusing on private unions, when it is the public sector unions that are almost completely non-productive, entrenched, and ruinously expensive?

one might think you're trying to obfuscate the real problem, public sector unions, by focusing on past manufacturing based unions.

like, you know, the government, which is chock full of non-productive union members, does. and you buy into it.

[Goo For You]

The problem I have with that quote is that as unemployment is at a high and jobs are at a low, it drives down the cost of labor because it becomes much more competitive. So the value of labor becomes not so much about the job they are performing or the education/skills they have but how little an employer can get away with paying.

It becomes a race to the bottom. Exactly. And the Ron Paul / von Mises type will shrug his shoulders and call that a fair outcome.

The trick is to find a skill set that is in demand. The problem is, no one is out there saying which ones those are.

Another big problem is that those skills tend to be (almost by definition!) out of reach for those who have recently lost their jobs. And as specialization increases, retraining will probably only get harder...

Wonder what kind of results the current retraining programs are producing...

why do you insist on focusing on private unions, when it is the public sector unions that are almost completely non-productive, entrenched, and ruinously expensive?

one might think you're trying to obfuscate the real problem, public sector unions, by focusing on past manufacturing based unions.

like, you know, the government, which is chock full of non-productive union members, does. and you buy into it.

Firstly, I'm glad you see that private sector unions no longer matter. That's a start.

Secondly, my argument was that >35% unionization represented a far bigger problem than today's <15%. What's the biggest union-related problem you can think of? Teachers? K-12 is expensive all around the world; the problem there is not teachers' wages, but the fact that the system has failed to educate millions of children (more educated children means more money to pay the bills). School choice should fix that problem -- to the extent that it's fixable through public policy.Anything else?

Thirdly, let's not play dumb about productivity. What percentage of private sector activity consists of fleecing dumb people, and what percentage produces real social value? Let's hear your estimate.

And lastly, as a self-proclaimed Friedmanite I'm not big on leftist ideology; it's just that as a matter of pragmatism, I think that there is a clear tradeoff between keeping the ball rolling (by giving people jobs) and micromanaging the system (trying to weed out unproductive jobs), and that the former has an obvious moral precedence over the latter. FWIW, I think you'll agree that it is the less intrusive form of "central planning" by a wide margin...

[The Snork]

[MatthewT]

public sector unions don't matter? then how did obama get elected? who was driving those buses? who was stuffing those ballot boxes? who was rounding up the homeless vote? who was buying the cigarettes to purchase the homeless votes? who was stealing from their republican members to pay for obama's tv commercials vilifying republicans?

and who says 11% public sector unions is okay? not me- i'm a big fan of ZERO. ZERO Bud's leaching off of the public teat, by getting tax dollars thrown at their industry. ZERO.

it's just that you either deceptively, or ignorantly, show declining private sector union participation in a non-manufacturing economy as though that's somehow getting rid of a problem, or that even at 11% the unions can't cripple us.

they can. the are. they don't know how to stop. they take and they take and they take until the host is dead.