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.

Great news for the Nigerian
Maybe because they were able to fool the mass before by giving them a low compensation rate and as your people did not have an option, they were forced to accept the job even if the salary isn't that enough. Maybe the mass protest will help and will be effective since you have mentioned that your country's election is coming up in February.
This issue must be considered and must have the attention of the next candidates to solve. I do understand that Nigeria is one of the richest nations when it comes it economics but the people were fooled by the national administration. You people need to stand up and show them what you want and what you deserve!

BREAKING: Nigeria House of Representatives approve N30,000 (approximately $82) new monthly minimum wage

I am very sorry to hear this story. I think the minimum wage depend on living standard, GDP and a lot of reasons. I think some time a place has good economy, it actually don’t need a minimum wage, because no one want to work for a low salary. It just like buy and sell, if everyone want to buy an item, then the price will go up itself anyway, and if everyone want to sell the item, then the price will be very low. Maybe Nigerian politicians tied to lower the minimum wage to attract more investors, but the economy problem can’t be only resolved by lower the wage. Most investors also look into other aspects, like infrastructure, laws, education etc.
.

So we have politicians getting 39K$  per month and while minimum wage is 82$ (and that's, as they say, too much)


Is it only me that sees that the real problem isn't the min wage (at least not right away), lol?

EDIT: We in Croatia have it somewhat bad, but not like this. I truly feel for all of you and hope you get out of it, one way or another. GL!

So you mean that when people has this certain( rate for example: 50repacks of goods) they will be earning a certain amount (eg: $10). Then this person is not eligible for an wage increase if this person can make more than 50repacks a day?.

If thats the case then there is no point of having a seniority level. And also if the products are slowly getting a priced increase it would be fatal for a standard person of the community to survive

Yes, $82 is too much for Africa. It would just push more people to work in the grey economy. Even in developed countries, minimum wages are a problem, so it can only be worse in Nigeria, and most of Africa. Heavy business regulations and minimum wags should be only in highly developed countries, with a high standard of living.

My broda, the NLC even shot itself in the foot by agreeing to accept that meagre N30k. I would've expected that it stood its ground at N40-45k as minimum wage. Again, it's not quite true that for almost a decade now it hasn't been increased. Remember that GEJ increased it from N9k to N18k. It's just that it is long overdue for another increment.

I agree with you. It's impossible to increase minimal wages from $49 to $82 immediately. Imagine yourself being businessmsn in suhch scenario (I'm not talking about large corporations with huge profits) who owns small or medium company. From where you would take 2x money to pay wages. Don't forget that if wages will increase you will have to pay more taxes. Only thing that you can do in such case - increase prices of your production or service to get money for salaries. So, if wages will increase by that much people will not feel that because they will have to spend much more money for food and other stuff that they need. It's normal that governments increasing minimal wages only step by step. I perfectly understand that people aren't happy about it, it's normal, but you should understand that increasing minimal wage by 2x is impossibke in normal conditions.

Don't worry, in "socialist" Venezuela the min wage is $3,33 and will probably become $2 tomorrow. Tomorrow they are probably going announce a new "increase", but you can't race hyperinflation, it is pointless. Eventually even if they increased the min wage everyday, the real wage would keep going down faster, as it has done in the past 6 years.

I don't agree with min wages, it should be left to the market. The only thing min wages do, is remove a means of income to a group of the population. If you are not allowed to employ cheaply for menial works, you simply don't offer those job positions anymore.

There should be no min wage, period. It should be your personal decision to work or not work under those conditions.

Obligatory salary increases ironically induce inflation...

inflation usually balances out salary increases.

If somebody can value your worth to the point that they can place a minimum wage value on your property (your labor), then you are their slave.

The last time minimum wage increase was 2011, it was increased from N7,500 to N18,000. Price per dollar was N158/$ so it increased from ~$48 to ~$114  since then, Nigeria became the biggest income in Africa 2017 that's to show you how productivity have increased over the years.  

there is no point increasing average wage if productivity isnt growing

Its because of the corruption and that really sucks and if you think that you already had a worse situation i just want to tell you that in my place somewhere in the Philippines has only $168 as min wage for a month of work.

Jetcash is somehow right. Because of this sudden reason. Since we are rich in agriculture. Most of the people here investing in this type of living

Dictating market prices for any resource from the top down never works without significant negative effects created, most of which directly counter their so called benefits.

Exactly, but I wonder how the Government find it hard to pay such fee as its minimum wage, It is just about equivalent to what a 50Kg bag of rice is sold for in the country.



It's very sad to see even people other countries tell us this. It is more disheartening to know the cost at which the country is being run with such under-performance and extreme level of mediocrity, I'm talking about a country where a Senator gets 750,000 naira per month plus allowances of 13.5 million naira per month, that's a total of 14.25 million naira ~ $38,928 per month, that's 171 million naira ~ $467,136 per annum which is doubled the value of what the US Vice President ($233,000) gets per annum. A little wonder why politics in the country is always a do or die affair.


I can tell you that the cost of living is way higher than you could imagine, An average resident living in an apartment of 4 flat(in building) lagos would pay about ~ $15 for electricity that would barely be available for 6 hours or less per day, each month.

Wow that's actually sickening to realize how certain countries can expect its citizens to survive off such little pay.
Even with a monthly increase of $49 to $82, if you factor in the family aspect then it's really not much of an increase.

Per wikipedia:
18,000 naira per month (was $115 but following the recent devaluation of the naira has fallen to $58, or $38 using the parallel market rate).
On 25 September 2018, Nigerian workers embarked on a national strike to force government to increase the minimum wage to 56 thousand Naira $154).

This is very wrong for everyone.
You don't go from $50 to $82 overnight. That's impossible for businesses operating in
least developed countries. Instead, the Nigerian government should have done it organically,
meaning that after 1 year, the minimum wage was increased from $50 to $55, after another year
from $55 to $60, after another year from $60 to $65.
I know it's not a big different from $50 to $82 however as a business scales, it becomes impossible
to give 'that much' to so many people.

I read that the low literacy rate and sparse electricity are factors which contribute to the low wages.

Still though, $82 is a surprisingly low figure.

The big problem with minimum wages is that they can discourage employment. This is especially true as we enter a new age of automation. Nigeria has a rich store of minerals, and good agricultural land, so its inhabitants should be prosperous. As an outsider I have the impression that there are two problems - crime gangs and a corrupt political system. I believe that most of the generals are Sandhurst trained, and have thus been exposed to the Eton/Oxford elite that rule the world. I read one report that stated that all the generals are billionaires. If this is true, then I imagine it is the result of military coups, and the diversion of foreign aid.

As with most countries, the solution is not the imposition of further restrictions on industry and commerce, but a change of government policies to encourage economic growth.

I compared Nigeria with South Africa, America was mentioned there because that's the county other Africa countries wish to be like.  In 2017 Nigeria was the biggest economy in Africa and their minimum wage was still lesser than South Africa that came 2nd. Also many Africa countries are paying their works higher than what  Nigeria pays her workers.


Nigeria Labour Congress overseas the running of all four organisation that runs the economy of the county which means if they go on strike every other section will follow to understand how Nigeria Labour Congress works read her wikipedia page

I agree with you that this is a sad situation. However, I think you cannot compare two totally different countries and their wages as the living costs nowhere near similar in this two and therefore cannot be compared. A lot of countries have been struggling with a low minimum wage. If we go further from Africa (as I do not know about it that much myself) and would say focus on some European countries that used to be part of Soviet Union like the Baltic countries and since joining the eurozone they have had many struggles. Cost of living has gone up, but wages not accordingly. And it takes time for things to even out and to be fair and comparing themselves with other Western European countries won't do them any good.

Back to Nigeria though - what do you mean by "shut down the economy"?

The Nigeria Labour Congress are requesting for an increase in the minimum wage of her workers from N18,000 dollar equivalent = ~$49 to N30,000 =~$82. There's a law that states that every 5years a new minimum wage should be implemented but for the past (almost) decade no new minimum wage have been set.
Why am I writing this?,  Today there's said to be a planned  mass protest and if their agreement isn't met, the NLC will embark on a nationwide strike and this will lead to the  shut down of the economy of the nation not forgetting that we have our election coming up February.

Nigeria was one (don't know if we still are) of Africans richest nation with a GDP of over $376.4 billion +/- but can't pay her workers a minimum wage of $82 monthly. An average American if he/she works 3hour daily in one month considering he/she works 25days earns a minimum of $525 i.e $7 per hour, An average South African earns minimum of $277 monthly can someone tell me where we got it all wrong? Why is our governments finding it difficult to pay her workers a minimum wage of ~$82 monthly when the average governors earns a minimum of $50,000 not including his monthly allowances.