alt Hacker NewsA policy that requires job hopping to get good wages discriminates against people who are less mobile: workers with families, elderly parents, older workers with more ties to their neighborhood, people who don’t have enough savings to move, people who can't afford transportation...
I’m not sure that raising the median wage is even more desirable than raising the minimum wage. If the median wage enables a good life but, say, the lowest quartile is precarious exploitative jobs close to the poverty line then raising the minimum should increase overall happiness more than just raising the median.
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As a tangent, poverty line definitions vary by country, in Australia, for example, earning less than half the median wage is considered below the Australian poverty line.
Worth keeping in mind when doing any apples V oranges country by country comparisons of population percentages in poverty.
* AU: https://povertyandinequality.acoss.org.au/poverty/
* UK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_Kingdom
* US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_thresholds_(United_Sta...
Why does it have to be a choice? Raise the median, raise the minimum, use wealth created through higher productivity and a healthier labour market to redistribute to some degree, everyone wins?
The frictions we're talking about, like health insurance being tied to an employer, make things worse for families anyway - getting rid of the distortionary regulations that cause that can only be a good thing.
You should live in France, having to pay 15% of the value of your home to be allowed to move, being cash poor (which means having low flexibility) because 50% of what your company pays for you goes to mandatory social things, taxes and insurances and most of the rest goes to fixed expenses.
In France the minimum wage is roughly indexed on inflation (especially if inflation isn't too high) but getting a raise when your salary is higher than this is very difficult, especially without job hopping. Your employer knows that he can risk not giving you a raise and you can't as easily risk being upset about it.
Dane here. We don't have a minimum wage. We rely on structural remedies for improving working conditions and wages, and they work far better than a minimum wage. The UK, on the other hand, favours direct intervention. They've been increasing their minimum wage considerably over the years. The result appears to be aggressive wage compression. Meaning very little benefit to people who get degrees and accrue experience relative to someone doing an unskilled, minimum wage job. It also appears to have created a very unfavourable job market for the young. Why hire a young and inexperienced worker for £12.71 per hour when you can hire an experienced worker for £14? Young people with degrees appear to be particularly impacted, since they "wasted" so many years on degrees which yield very little benefit, and they cannot find a job. The UK also has very tough laws about firing employees, meaning companies are incentivised to not take a chance on a young worker.
To your point: yes, people who have a weaker bargaining position in Denmark earn less. However we also have generous social safety nets, so no one ends up destitute or hungry. Ultimately, I think wages should be between an employer and employee (with or without the assistance of unions - we like our unions). If an employee has fewer skills, less experience, is unwilling or unable to move for a job, etc, they should expect to be paid less. This represents materially different value to the employer.