Thanks for bringing up France it’s a great example of how minimum wage doesn’t necessarily help employment prospects. For example minimum wage in France is 1430 euros per month ($1959 in US dollar terms). France also has a work week of 35 hours per week so if you assume 4 weeks per month and divide by 35 hours per week you end up with a minimum wage of $14/hr in US dollar terms. In France youth unemployment is about 23.5% compared to the US’s 18.5%.
In Germany youth unemployment is less than 10%. Guess was minimum wage Germany has. That’s right, none. It has a law stating you can’t pay an immoral wage but that’s decided on a case by case basis by the courts. For example a entry level grocery store worker in Germany can be paid the equivalent of $7 US dollars per hour and it’s not immoral.
Also if you’ve every been to France and Germany you’ll know that’s it’s a lot cheaper to live in Germany than in France. Compare Berlin to Paris. Honestly you’d probably be better off in Germany as a cashier in Berlin than a cashier in Paris even though you might get double the monthly salary. It’s all relative.
Can Walmart afford to pay it’s workers $13/hr in San Diego. Sure. With automation, price increases, laying off the weakest performing staff, etc, they’ll make it work. Of course it’s only better for those that happen to work at Walmart and keep they’re job. Also those designing/building those automated systems. Anybody who was already making $15/hr and doesn’t get a corresponding raise loses because they are now forced to pay higher prices for things. In addition those that lose their job to automation are now on the welfare roles somewhere.
People posting here who are making $100K don’t really care. The price increases at the grocery store or restaurant are fairly negligible in their budget. Food/Entertainment is probably less than 10% of their budget so a 10% increase in prices for low skilled labor in restaurants and general goods/foods stores only adds 1% to their overall budget.
While people have linked studies that show minimum wage increases haven’t greatly negatively impacted the economy. Nobody has linked a study that shows major increases in minimum wage greatly improve the overall economy. I thing the realty is at best minimum wage increases changes the winners and loses and prefers experience over youth.[/quote]
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The problem here is that you are comparing apples and bowling balls.
Other things to note about Germany:
-Very little military
-50% of GDP is government outlay.
-Hiring is very rare because termination carries severe civil penalties.
-essentially zero “at-will” employment
In sum, its not really comparable in any way (other than the fact that it is an economy where labor is a component).
They are not at all an example of the free market in labor practices.
