Petition o' the day
And this one is typical of the reasoned, well thought out submissions that I have come to expect:
"We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Work with progressive partities (sic) and orgnisations (sic) to introduce a European Union Minimum Wage".
And what is the petitioner's proposed level? €5 per hour.
Bulgaria, I believe, takes the prize for the lowest income per head in the EU, and a bit of sniffing around has thrown up these figures:
"In 2004 the average yearly salary (gross) is 3618 BGL (about 1810 EUR). According Lyuben Tomev, Director of the Institute for Social and Syndicate Surveys, about 66% of the households in Bulgaria live on an income of 165 leva (about EUR 83) per capita".
So, that equates to just under €35 a week. So the apparently fortunate Bulgars would only need to work seven hours at the minimum wage per week in order to reach that level. Not that that would actually happen. What would happen is that the Bulgarian economy would collapse because of the dramatic increase in the cost of labour, and Bulgarians would make haste to a country where the cost and the reward of labour were rather less out of kilter.
As if this was not quite 'progressive' enough, the petitioner reckons "It [would] also [be] an important first step in the introduction of a global minimum wage". Must be marvellous to be 'progressive'.
"We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Work with progressive partities (sic) and orgnisations (sic) to introduce a European Union Minimum Wage".
And what is the petitioner's proposed level? €5 per hour.
Bulgaria, I believe, takes the prize for the lowest income per head in the EU, and a bit of sniffing around has thrown up these figures:
"In 2004 the average yearly salary (gross) is 3618 BGL (about 1810 EUR). According Lyuben Tomev, Director of the Institute for Social and Syndicate Surveys, about 66% of the households in Bulgaria live on an income of 165 leva (about EUR 83) per capita".
So, that equates to just under €35 a week. So the apparently fortunate Bulgars would only need to work seven hours at the minimum wage per week in order to reach that level. Not that that would actually happen. What would happen is that the Bulgarian economy would collapse because of the dramatic increase in the cost of labour, and Bulgarians would make haste to a country where the cost and the reward of labour were rather less out of kilter.
As if this was not quite 'progressive' enough, the petitioner reckons "It [would] also [be] an important first step in the introduction of a global minimum wage". Must be marvellous to be 'progressive'.
Labels: petitions, Sane economics
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on Tuesday, October 16, 2007 at 4:24 pm.
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As soon as they can scrape the fare together, they'll be over here, annoying the Poles and Lithuanians. Two months' wages in a week? No-brainer.
That's nothing: to be truely progressive, they should petition for a maximum hourly wage...
Go on, I dare them.
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