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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill Jackson who wrote (112242)	5/24/2000 4:19:00 AM
From: Bert Herman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1571204

Bill, What is important for the economy and the companies involved is the total labor cost, and except for minimum wages, I don't think this is so much different in Europe from the US. True, our taxes and social security takes back a large part of the income, but we don't have to save for our childrens education, nor for private health care insurance, nor for retirement plans. I will give you an example. Doctors discovered a cancer by a good friend of my sister at the age of 25. She went through the complete treatment with radiation, surgery and chemical treatment. Now it's stabilized. She paid for the complete treatment about $2000, the rest is paid by social security. Some hard facts about wages. somebody like a lower secretary will earn about $25.000 a year brut. She will get about $15.000 net. The total cost for the company will be around $32.000. Now is this so much higher than in the US? I don't think so. I'm not saying this is the paradise, but it has its merits. It all depends on how conscious our politicians and administration are in controlling those huge amounts of money. In some countries, it is better than others. Usually, the north is better organized than the south. I live in Belgium and we are somewhere in the middle group. A lot of the troubles with German integration were due to the unions insisting on the same wages for a far less productive work force(due to old equipment) that led to many former eastern companies going broke fast. Exactly, but you may not forget this was a political decision, supported by almost everybody in Germany at that time. It turned out to be a very bad one, but at that time, there was no force capable to stop it. On top of East German companies going broke, they set up a development plan for the east, which turned out to be so expensive, that in the mean time they killed the goose with the golden eggs, i.e. the West German economy. But Bill, don't believe the scenarios where Europe and the Euro is going to hell. So far, our central bank is not unhappy with a weaker Euro, giving a strong boost to European export. A lot of countries are doing extremely well at the moment, and if Germany finally catch up, the train will start very strongly. Please don't misunderstand me. It is very cheap to shout this is the best or that is the best. By a better understanding of each system, we can learn from each other. Bert