iwillspankyou wrote:@Dolan Dolan wrote:notification
A wage increase must come from economic growth and productivity growth
If that where the case, minimum vages would be far higher. The wealth has trickled up, and the increase in productivity has not benefited the working ppl for decades
I fear that TTIP will only increase this trend, cos lets be honest - this trade deal is meant to favor the big businesses and not the workers
Those are very different dynamics, all thrown together in the same basket. For example, yeah, German productivity may have increased more than their salaries, but their salaries were already quite high. And so were their living standards.
On the other hand, in China their economic growth used to be based on exporting cheap goods, made with cheap labour. So, this sort of economic growth is by its nature not based on domestic consumption. It's the exact opposite of how the USA thinks about growth. They think people must have more money to spend more so that businesses want to produce more and so, everyone wins.
But lately, China has been trying to change things around and focus more on growing the buying power of their citizens. They are focusing more on domestic consumption growth too, much more than they did a few years ago.
But anyway, there are very different economic conditions in different countries, so I'm not sure what a minimum wage policy could do to increase buying power. As I said before, it might lead to higher unemployment or an increase in the grey economy (tax evasion).
An economy is not a machine you can push buttons on and get predictable effects like in mechanics (physics).