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

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (365028)	1/2/2008 6:18:19 AM
From: Taro	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573927

Thanks for posting. In germany (no minimum wage laws until now) this debate is right now fueled by the Social Democrats, who in spite being part of the current coalition in charge, are falling victims in the polls to the ex DDR commies. Last years events, where the management (!) of the newly de monopolized German Post requested - and was granted - a min wage of Euro 9.50/Hr ($14/Hr !!!) for anybody carrying out mail. Yes, the management of a large corporation lobbied for and eventually successfully saw a law passed for higher costs! Why on Earth did they do that? The purpose was to keep competition at bay, because they know that a couple of potential competitors getting ready to grab part of the de monopolized letter business would never been able to get off the ground paying such money. Add to that, the "ex" monopolist German Post in a very unique deal remaining from their state owned days is exempt to VAT!! Sure enough, PIN (owned by Berthelsmann) gave up and is now being dissolved with 20,000 people losing their jobs. Now a general min wage of Euro 7.50/Hr (11$/Hr) is part of the Social Democrat agenda up to the elections starting this year and as could be expected, it has full support of a majority of the German population. Work as usual well done by populist red parties. Now with next recession thus inevitable, poor Germany. Taro

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (365028)	1/2/2008 10:58:56 AM
From: combjelly	Respond to of 1573927

"Evidence demonstrates a link between minimum wage increases and the recessions of 1990-91 and 1974-75." This linkage seems to be discounting an awful lot. For example, the recession of 1974 had an awful lot going on than just the minimum wage hike. Like filling up on even or odd days. We had pulled out of Bretton Wood and that meant commodity prices had skyrocketed. And, of course, there was the inflation. And who can forget Peru? It was once the largest fishery in the world. Anchovetta were caught in tremendous numbers, and usually made into fish paste or dried and made into fish powder. It was the cheapest protein supplement available. So it was heavily used in animal feed. But, in the wake of the El Nino of 1972, the fishery collapsed as they caught them all. That meant the demand for the number 2 source of protein, soy beans, went through the roof. Now soy beans were used for a lot of other things than protein supplements, And that triggered a cascade of various shortages. People were jittery, it was Johnny Carson(IIRC) who triggered a national shortage of toilet paper by making a joke. So, for that one, focusing on the hike in minimum wage seems to be ignoring an awful lot. Now, it might have been the last straw, but even that seems unlikely. There have been lots of minimum wage hikes that had no recession tied to it, including the other ones during the 1960s and the 1970s. dol.gov The fact that a few of the raises in the minimum wage happen to have coincided with some recessions shouldn't be a huge surprise given the number of them. When you cherry pick data for ideological reasons, those sort of things happen.

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (365028)	1/2/2008 11:57:31 AM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1573927

And the Bush bag of horrors keeps on giving! "We do not expect significant spillovers from the subprime market to the rest of the economy or to the financial system." -- Ben Bernanke, May 17, 2007.