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- Apr 7, 2013
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Regarding the minimum wage, here is some data for Western Europe:Maybe... there's (effectively) no minimum wage in China, and they just seem to have no middle class as a result. same with Singapore. Both countries live with extreme wealth disparity, as seems to be forming in the U.S. So make of that what you will. It's obvious that the healthiest economies all have either minimum wages or collectively bargained wages.
There are nine countries with a minimum wage (Belgium, Netherlands, Britain, Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Luxembourg). Their unemployment rates range from 5.9% in Luxembourg to 27.6% in Greece. The median country is France with 11.1% unemployment.
There are nine countries with no minimum wage (Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Austria, Germany, Italy, Switzerland.) Five of the nine have a lower unemployment rate than Luxembourg, the best of the other group. The median country is Iceland, with a 5.5% unemployment rate. The biggest country in Europe is Germany. No minimum wage and 5.2% unemployment.
Still want to raise our minimum wage to $10? Germany used to have really high unemployment. Then they did labor reforms to allow more low wage jobs, combined with subsidies for low wage workers. Now they don’t have high unemployment.
Still want to raise our minimum wage to $10?