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Comment by borepop | Hacker News Reader

Singapore has no minimum wage. If its underclass were not destitute, I would think that would be rather surprising.

Without commenting on Singapore, many countries have no minimum wage without negative consequence. It can be substituted with strong unions or social programs. In fact minimum wage is kind of a blunt instrument. People often say that everyone should be paid a living wage, but a living wage for a single mom with four kids is much higher than a living wage for a highschooler who lives with his parents. A minimum wage high enough to guarantee the mom a living wage would almost certainly make illegal many job opportunities the highschooler would love to have. I would prefer the government guarantee everyone a dignified life rather than try to use the minimum wage (which fundamentally only affects working people, not everyone)

Indeed, in some places (eg Nordic countries) the union movement opposes any introduction of a national minimum wage as it could potentially undercut their own role in setting the effective minimum wage - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/12/nordic-countri...

Singapore, of course, is nothing like this.

This is indeed a problem, but there is a very simple and effective solution that Australians call "youth wages".

It's not very effective if you look at youth unemployement compared to a country like Singapore. Young adults who miss out the chance to get work experience when they're younger get completely shafted, because employers demand experience but nobody wants to give them the chance to gain that experience because of how much it costs.

>It can be substituted with strong unions

When the bus drivers tried to strike against explicitly racist pay policies they imprisoned and beat them: https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-SEAB-2274

They don't substitute. Unions are basically illegal.

There are people earning ridiculously low wages.

The unemployed (short or long term) with no assets or family assistance are entitled to ComCare subsidies, which are designed specifically to stop people from falling into destitution:

https://msf.gov.sg/Comcare/Pages/Short-to-Medium-Term-Assist...

https://msf.gov.sg/Comcare/Pages/Public-Assistance.aspx

Here's the BBC on what this looks like in practice:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-26349689

Denmark has no minimum wage.

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