Minimum wage across the eurozone and the European Union and the rest of the old continent as well in Eurasia and the countries around the Mediterranean basin. 50 Shades of wages in an unbalanced world.
Sourc: Wikipedia/Eurostat – Graphics by Jo Di Graphics .
A minimum wage is the lowest daily or monthly remuneration that employers may legally pay to workers. Equivalently, it is the price floor below which workers may not sell their labor.
“Among the indicators that might be used to establish an initial minimum wage rate are ones that minimize the loss of jobs while preserving international competitiveness.
Among these are general economic conditions as measured by real and nominal gross domestic product; inflation; labor supply and demand; wage levels, distribution and differentials; employment terms; productivity growth; labor costs; business operating costs; the number and trend of bankruptcies; economic freedom rankings; standards of living and the prevailing average wage rate.”
Standards of living? Competitiveness? Why is the minimum wage of €580 gross per month not enough? Or you think Bulgaria has sunk under the load of investments just because of the minimum wage?
Questions that we will never be able to answer…
Everything has been nicely settled in a world ruled by economists sitting in their office bubbles.
Now tell me: from which of your nearest neighbours do you expect unconditional solidarity with their taxpayer’s money to tackle your “humanitarian crisis”?
Worth considering: all of these countries in the map are IMF members…
Currency to business / corporations / nations is the blood supply that cources through it’s/their veins.
If your body was slowly drained of it’s blood supply, your capacity to function would slowly deminish & you would soon die.
It is the same with business / corporations / nations.
IN A WORLD RULED BY ECONOMISTS –
The world of ecomomists is in reality a facade that hides GRAND THEFT GLOBAL WHICH IS FULED BY GREED BY DISFUNCTIONAL MINDS and nothing more.
No responsible & rational mind would embrace the dangerous concepts of that which we call the world of economics.
Sanity flew out the window a long time ago & a criminal mind can think up copious rationals to explain away their crimes.
Minimum wage alone tells us little without a comparative cost of living chart next to it.
The Greek cost of living is very high since joining the euro; and even before, as a western / NATO geopolitical island surrounded by communist states until 1989, Greece’s economy was always much more advanced than the ex-Yugoslav and other Balkan & Warsaw Pact states. Greece was always (geographically) a regional exception – since it’s neighbors were north Africa, the Middle East and impoverished communist command economies to the north and east, You had to cross the Adriatic by ship or plane to reach the next ‘Western’ EEC/NATO neighbor, Italy.
Thus after 1989 and especially during the euro years of inflowing bank malinvestment 1999-2008/9, Greece became a magnet for economic migrants for the first time, from Poland and other former eastern bloc european states and also Eurasia.
Meanwhile though some prices have dropped in the crisis, (especially the real estate sector), food, services and goods prices have been kept artificially high by cartels. Taxes and utilities have doubled and more.
So at present, thanks to cartels, Greeks pay higher prices for goods & thanks to the Troika, for utilities and taxes without welfare than Germans. It tells you more about the Greek crisis to compare Greek wages, cost of living, taxes and social welfare to the same in Germany. Comparing Greece to Albania, Bulgaria, Latvia, Turkey etc. is meaningless since cost of living, taxes and utilities are commensurately lower, i.e. comparing apples & oranges.
Tsigantes, Your explanation is funny. “Greeks pay higher prices for goods thanks to Troika and cartels…” It seems to me that you were brainwashed that Greeks are “special people” with respect to its neighbors, so Eurozone should assure them higher pensions and salaries… I wish you to wake up and confront with the “real world” before it will not be too late..
‘specially exploited people’ you want to say
So if you say you pay higher prices for goods than Bulgarians, I have a business idea for you: Why don’t you just rent a shop and a (refridgerated) truck and start importing everything from Bulgaria? You can only stop cartels from making lots of money by increasing competition. Thank to EU there are no tariffs or regulation.
Regarding energy prices: I think there should be a European investment program in renewables. Due to higher solar radiation German subsidies would be used much more efficiently in Greece, Spain and Italy instead of in Germany.
Smart as if nobody goes for shopping in Bulgaria. In Greece there is a much more better idea about the cartels, farmers sell their goods without them.
I guess that Lidl, Saturn aso don’t pay taxes has nothing to do with “competition”
Solar parks destroy fields!
Better are in Austria invented wooden-framed wind-mills with Tesla’s batteries, with them one can make the 30% of Greece that is nearly desert green again and may be then use parts of it for Solar but the EU won’t put money into anti-capitalist programs of regional self-subsistence, but imagine the Aegaen Sea without Diesel, only wind-turbines and batteries.
Just one example:
In Germany a farmer gets 0,30€/l milk, LIDL then sells it for 0,55€. Even if (due to the climate) the Greek farmers need 0,45€/l – why does milk cost more than 0,70€/l in Greece? All the wages involved in logistics and sales are lower in Greece. Where does all the money disappear?
I agree that austerity has to fail, if the result is not at least equal to devaluation (which would mean wages and prices of home-grown/produced goods would fall alike) – there are no gains in competitiveness if prices remain stable.
First of all Lidl is not only paying no taxes in Greece. it is also 30% more expensive than in Germoney and cows in Greece have to eat seagrass as there are so many cows in Greece.
Wages for pickers are max 30 euro for 10 hours and that’s too much?
Wow!
Competition is the Kiwi in the supermarket for 29 cents and they all come from Italy from the black labour slaves of the Camorra.
A government should not care about competitiveness but that the population can feed itself, there’s no need for import/export-bullshit dogma and if it’s getting smart organized there will no need for a money system.
You can try it out – nobody forces you to stay in the EU. But don’t blame Germany, if it doesn’t work. I have a feeling that higher wages, less imports and lower prices don’t add up as long as you don’t know why Lidl is able to be 30% more expensive than in Germany.
It’s very simple, Aldi/Hofer must come back to Greece or cows just have to stop eating seaweed but this is no problem as milk is made for baby cows, it’s better to grow soya.
It’s also getting more and more a serious problem to hide all these cows, as nobody wants tourists to meet at the beach cows go diving for seaweed.
Blue flag…
Funny how the most of the countries are in the very same market than Greece, but only in Greece, the dark forces of the Troika dictate the market prices.
Keep it up with lying to yourself and your believers. But this comes at a cost: it ensures that you do not take adequate corrective actions and prolong the stagnation forever.
To figure that out brainwashed and lost in translation true believers in media lies should learn to listen Greek, Italian, Portuguese aso but wait what about the EU blocking the investigations into German corruption in Greece? May be the same dark forces that foolishly “try” to interview the companies involved into Lux-leaks that never feel any urge to show up to the interviews or even answer the invitations.