A government-appointed commission announced that Germany would raise its minimum wage twice over the next two years. The move would give Germans the second-highest minimum wage in the EU, after Luxembourg.
A government-appointed commission announced that Germany would raise its minimum wage twice over the next two years. The move would give Germans the second-highest minimum wage in the EU, after Luxembourg.
Of course it’s possible. The minimum wage doesn’t directly affect the median wage (unless more than half the population only gets the minimum wage).
If you think it’s impossible, please explain why.
After reading my comment. You are right, it is not impossible.
However, it still is not a good indicator for minimum wage.
IMO, minimum wage should be based on expenses. That is, it should cover what you need to live a decent life.
That definition is based on other’s income. Imagine you live in a country where housing is 1€/month and food is 0.10€/month. The rest of the costs scale accordingly. Yet it is an incredibly rich country and the median income is 10000€/year. Would you say that a yearly wage of 120€/year is risk-of-poverty? It’s 0.001% of the median income, yet it can provide for 10 years of housing in 1 year of work.
What you are referring to is absolute poverty. However, even if you can cover the very basics, such as rent, food and healthcare, if you have a lot less than most people that is known as relative poverty. Both are important to combat. I am assuming the definition is made as it is because it is quite simple to compute. Finding a good measure for cost of living is a lot more complex and easy to get stuck arguing what is an acceptable standard of living.
I’d argue it’s a great indicator, as expenses are necessarily tied to the wages of the population. An example like yours simply doesn’t happen.
This means you have to come up with a representative example of how to calculate expenses, and I haven’t seen a better approach for that than median wage, which seems to correlate highly with expenses.