Topic: Monthly minimum wage: ~$82 is that too much to ask? (Read 893 times)

What is the output of the country's production? That must be higher, several times higher than whatever you think minimum wage should be.

I don't fully understand how we've went from talking about Min wage on this thread, to literally talking about inflation and how bitcoin is the answer.

Do I think that a cryptocurrency could help a country like this with no real stable currency - yes. But I don't think Bitcoin is going to be able to be that currency unless bitcoin is going to be able to send money fast and cheap.


There are so many other coins that could work out there for overseas transfer: look at something like Stellar.

This is exactly the way it should be. Minimum wages destroys a type of job, that is too small for a formal wage, and yet brings a type of income or extra income to some people.

Besides my "socialist" country now pays about 2 USD per month, and no one wants to work here anymore. Why work full time where you can earn the same 1 hour playing some computer game online farming?. But now all infrastructure is collapsing as well. More beauties of socialism, nobody fixed the phones so why bother with phones (and the "best" internet here uses the land lines, its adsl).

The irony is that under the pretense of socialism, this country has in fact abolished the minimum wage. But, because there are no freedoms to business or the economy, it is useless for investors. We ended with the worst of both worlds, and the benefits of neither. Free healthcare that doesn't provide healthcare, because there are no medics willing to work for 2~4 USD a month and no country willing to manufacture medicine at those prices? (and the local production disappeared for the same and even more aggravating "socialist" reasons, ie. taking the means of productions, but not letting the workers decide things and not letting them procure whats needed for production or even set up prices for survival of the company, resulting in: closure. Everyone is without a job.

The more you let a government meddle, the worst it becomes. Trust me, i saw it happen in front of my own eyes. If you think things are bad in a free market economy, its only because you haven't lived survived a central planned one...

No it should not! There should be no minimum wage at all. Why mess with the natural processes that take place in every ecosystem?
You have a need for a worker, you offer him/her salary, you negotiate. If It's too low he won't work for you, if it's too high you'll be losing money and risk going bankrupt or operating on 0 profit.

What happens when the government decides how much you should be paying your employees? If it's too much for you you as an employer will have to look for cuts. You'll fire one employee and divide the work among the rest. Minimum wage is stupid.

You should better find an online side hustle instead of working all month for pennies.
Finding jobs that pay in bitcoin can assure you that you are going to earn more than this minimum wage within less days of work.

Value of money is different in different places. $100 per month might be plenty for you to live somewhere while you'll starve on some other place.
So the minimum salary should depend on the cost of living.
And you can't compare the bitcoin's price inflation to the inflation of a country. A quick research yielded Nigeria's inflation has average around 11.3. Considering a 12 percentage inflation in last 4 years, the current minimum wage is an improvement from the last one.

Thanks that bitcoin find its purpose in another country. Though I pity to those affected with their new minimum wage rate, I hope its enough to feed and support their family. Bitcoin will open and give more opportunities to Nigerians as the  situation is unfolding now, adaption is real.

The masses has the voice when united, let your voice be heard by your government, stand as one.

Its been 8month since the bill has be passed but still yet to be implemented, rumors has it the labour Congress has promised to shutdown the country with strike if the  government doesn't implementing the new minimum wage on or before 16 October, 2019.

In other news, here's the reason why many Nigerians are relying on bitcoin as their source/store of wealth, this is how we counter the inflation rate of the Naira.

Given the economic standing of the country, It may or may not be too much to ask. Given that the GDP is able to support it, but for me it should at least be 100.

They should be glad that their obviously smarter leaders let them get this much.

There are varied reasons which decide the average monthly wage of a person. These wages probably depend on the political systems weather they are good or corrupted, literacy rate of a country, how good the GDP of a country and how they are being utilized to improve the employment standards of people. Few countries have low literacy rates which leads to the government paying less than what needs to be paid for those jobs.

Political systems too play a major role in deciding the employment opportunities and minimum wages of a country. There are few countries which produce graduates at a much faster rate and around 90% of them being unemployed once they have finished their course from the university. This is due to the fact that the employment is controlled by the government bodies and they are being occupied by illiterate candidates. This might feel strange for many while reading but situations like these are commonly occuring in parts of third world countries (or probably in atleast corrupted countries).

An average illiterate taxi driver who owns a car and works for 5 days in a week for 6 hours a day in a first world country (eg. Australia) earns around 4000 USD whereas a literate guy who has a better knowledge and has 10+ yr experience in his domain earns 700-800 USD per month in a third world country. There has been several instances in third world countries where fresh literate unemployed people worked as street sweepers and received a pay of 200 USD monthly which they felt as far better than their unemployment.

Coming to Nigeria, they do pay higher if they hire good literate people. i have seen people getting paid a maximum of 8000-10000 USD a month if they work in Nigeria and other African countries considering the good mineral wealth prevailing in the continent. Mechanical workers are getting paid a lot for governing the extraction processes but the poor labourers are being fooled by the government with low wages.

That is how freedom (in economy) works, but it results in the opposite of what you think...

The people who get those jobs are not planning to make a career from them (at least most won't). But what socialism wants is to end those jobs (by force), so it results in zero income vs poor income to the group who was benefiting from them.

If you leave those low wage jobs alone, some people will have a starting point where to move from. You do not stop looking for better jobs when you start a low paid work. And as an employer, the higher wages socialism orders you to pay, the less job offers you are going to give, and with more socialist "squeezing"; the business itself simply closes or goes "family" oriented (which is a variant of informal or grayish).

Your socialist move to "improve" workers salaries by force of decree, will produce in the end, a reduction in workers salaries. This is the main problem with trying to apply socialist mentality to the economy. The same results when you impose a "lower price" to goods.

Another example is when you want to "protect" jobs by it making hard to fire people, then less employers will want to employ, because it becomes too expensive. Every tiny little thing you add to the law "in the name of workers" benefit results in less jobs, and also in less employment.

So how to actually solve this? You go in the opposite direction. By promoting a free economy, you get lots of job offers, since its cheap to hire and easy to fire, you get more jobs available in the market. And that leads to... Competition, which leads to.. better job offers (with better conditions).



Another way to stimulate the economy would be to lower taxes, yes, lower taxes. That stimulates people to open more business, and the State ends collecting more taxes. Ironic isn't? Economy tends to work the opposite way socialists think. This is because socialism tries to "fix" the economy by force of what can actually be solved by choice of freedom.



From a worker's perspective, he/she wants to have access to those low paid jobs. It is their choice to do them or not. This is a choice you are removing by raising wages. And yes, it fuels the "black market" (as in illegal, mind you). Its the very same thing that happens if price of things are fixed, when you foolishly try to "stop inflation" by decree as they did in Zimbabwe under Mugabe or Venezuela under Maduro, and ignore the real problem which is you overspending and then trying to fix the budget by "printing" money to pay for it, leading to more inflation, etc.

So there is nothing to celebrate, and lot to mourn. Venezuelans are currently earning $8 a month. See yourselves in the mirror before its too late...

This is why so many people from Nigeria scam on the internet. They have very few options.  Poverty makes crime skyrocket as people get more desperate everyday.  It won't be long until most countries have a universal basic income.

I believe the biggest problem is the governor's wage.

Nigeria is a country that is listed as 111 rank in the index of economic freedom.
https://www.heritage.org/index/ranking

It probably has high taxes, to pay high amount of money for the bureaucratic structure (including governor's wages). Reducing taxes should be their goal.

When you say it's $82, that is misleading because nobody uses dollar there..
 But anyway, as jet Cash said, forcing a minimum wage increases unemployment.

In a country where government try to control and tax everything, all focused should be in attracting new investors and new companies. Forcing a minimum wage without focusing on more economic freedom and less taxes is not solving anything. People will work for less than the minimum wage in shady relationships with employers .this is what happens in Brazil.

In Brazil many people work as employers, but they do a turn around to avoid taxes and labor rights and receive more money: people create a fake company to work for another company, so they are not legally employed . Labor rights usually only reduce wages and employment.

Life isn't always fair, you need sacrifice somethings to achieve greater things. So what you're trying to say is the minimum wage would had stay that way so there'll be more smaller jobs and get paid in such a small amount that can't even last a family for a month?

That's why you have the black market, pun intended.     

Everything is very simple-in some countries (not only in Nigeria),people are paid wages that they have enough minimum for them to work until the next month.I recently read a newspaper and in it a very smart official tells how cool you can live on$ 50 a month.It's just bullying people.

And now all the "small jobs" that would have been paid under that amount disappear. Who could possible lose those ill paid jobs? Oh wait, those who need them the most, the poor of the poor. The higher the minimum wage is, the less "menial" jobs are (legally) available, and those people go back to the streets or go "informal"...

In short: Everytime you rise the minimum wage, you destroy jobs and throw more people to the streets.

I remember that in Brazil there was for a long time a discussion that the minimum wage should never be below 100 dollars. During the 1998 crisis, it was much debated that this should be defined by law. At the end of 2004¹, the minimum wage went above 100 dollars and never went below again, even without a law defining it as a rule. The minimum wage in Brazil today is defined following an equation and is readjusted every year.

The biggest problem in this discussion is not the value of the readjustment. But the delay in readjusting the salary. 50 dollars a month today is below the value that the World Bank defines as poverty line². Even in China³, the value is 3x larger than this.




¹ https://www.fenae.org.br/portal/sp/informacoes/boletim-in-foco/dieese/salario-minimo-em-dolares.htm
² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_threshold
³ https://www.china-briefing.com/news/minimum-wages-china-2018-19/

Leadership problem is the critical challenge in Africa, Nigeria been the giant of  Africa should show good examples to other countries as a template for them  to follow, until politics  become unattractive through the reduction of wages and salaries of political leaders,  the country will continue with the rat race. $82 is not too much for workers.