An Afghan minister who became a bicycle courier in Germany
reuters.com
reuters.com
This used to be mostly young people: think students and high schoolers. But lately I've been greeting mostly people looking to be 40-50 at the door. I've been getting used to it but the first few times I was surprised.
I think this is the motivation behind the article: People aren't expecting anyone older than say 25 to do this job, much less the former minister of a country, but I suppose times are changing.
Let's hope this equates to better pay. High schoolers who get rotated out every six month won't exactly be the best at negotiating or even think of unionization efforts.
I am not optimistic. Will the older immigrants (from many different countries) who don't speak German well, don't have connections, don't really know their rights, and don't have any other options be better at negotiating and unionizing?
Artificially raising pay above market rates leads to higher consumer prices, and massive deadweight loss from greater unrealized production/earnings.
Between 1870 and 1900, when there was no minimum wage, or labor regulations to empower unions, US wages doubled in inflation-adjusted terms, while US industry expanded and became financially healthier.
This was very much unlike the post-war period, where US industry was running on borrowed time, making increasingly burdensome concessions to unions that led to huge bankruptcies and retrenchment in the 1970s in many industries.
I would be more convinced if you showed two similar nations who had very different outcomes during the 1870s to 1900s because of wages.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Industrial_Revolution
There have been just as many opportunities to raise productivity in modern times, with the development of computerized production, internet communication, robotics, rocketry and space-based industries, plastics, the standardized shipping container, nanotechnology, biotechnology, machine learning, distributed blockchains, etc
Nations like Hong Kong and Singapore, which maintained comparatively free-market oriented economies, and ranked number 1 and 2 in the Economic Freedom Index for decades, vastly outperformed more social democratic economies.
They not only saw vastly greater economic and wage growth, but closed the huge deficit they had with Western nations in life expectancy in 1960, and eventually surpassed them. HK and Singapore today have a higher life expectancy than even the Scandinavian countries, which in 1960 were #1, 2 and 3.
Beyond these anecdotes, you can look at basic correlations found in large datasets covering dozens of economies over a span of decades, which suggest lower government spending, as a percentage of GDP, tends to be beneficial to economic performance:
https://web.archive.org/web/20170821004405/http://ime.bg/upl...
The second industrial revolution increased demand for labor, raising wages. The first vastly decreased demand for labor, leading to falling wages, increasing inequality and social unrest.
The decline in wage growth since the 1970s does not appear to be due to any special properties of more recent technological innovations, given countries like Hong Kong and Singapore, which were more restrained in their growth of labor regulations and taxation, saw massive wage growth into the 21st century.
It appears simply to be due to a huge transition to social democracy:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/social-spending-oecd-long...
Which has resulted in a larger portion of economic output being directed by coercive non-market forces, which are less efficient than the consumer-directed allocation of resources caused by market forces.
> reduce the amount of labor required to do a task... leading to wages increasing.
I'm not aware of this "reduced demand leads to increased prices" economic theory. Can you tell me where I can read more about it? Great Britian increased it's total output while wages fell dramatically. I'm not sure your point is supported by evidence here.
How appicable are the stories of Hong Kong and Singapore to countries that aren't single cities that occupy unique geopolitical positions? Hong Kong is no longer a country. Surely this is a property of unique relationship with China. Surely many other characterisitics of Hong Kong are related to it's relationship with China.
I don't know what you're referring to, as all the graphs I've seen have shown a general upward trend in UK wages over the last three centuries. Maybe you could provide a source. What I do know is that per capita productivity, which is almost entirely a function of labor saving innovation, is strongly correlated with average and median wages, and is widely established to be the primary determinant of per capita income.
>>I'm not aware of this "reduced demand leads to increased prices" economic theory. Can you tell me where I can read more about it?
It doesn't reduce demand. It increases demand. Demand, in economics, is defined as purchasing power intent on consumption. As productivity increases, so does production, and with it real (inflation-adjusted) spending, as people having more goods/services with which to bid on scarce resources like labor.
Here's an explanation for how automation raises wages:
https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/6717/economics/the-luddit...
In a free market you can see unions as an actor who sells labor. They're not opposed to a free market at all - they merely even the playing field at the negotiating table and generally make the process smoother.
You only have a problem when unions achieve a monopoly position and abuse it - same as with any other kind of actor in a free market.
The negotiating table is completely even in a free market, i.e. a society where contract liberty is intact.
For example, it's irrelevant to my negotiation with Apple that Apple is worth $2.4 trillion. It can't force me to buy Apple products. Once the free-market ruleset is undermined, then Apple can, through taxing authorities and regulatory gatekeepers and the armed government agents that enforce their taxes and restrictions, force me to buy its products.
The free market ruleset protects our most basic rights, and is the most important institution for protecting the weak from the strong. That you believe otherwise is a deliberate outcome by those who want to abolish those safeguards.
Labor unions are one such organization that wants you to believe otherwise. The wage gains they get their members is not a result of them "even[ing] the playing field at the negotiating table". It's a result of the government MANDATING, on their behalf, that the employer collectively bargain with them, i.e. prohibiting the employer from negotiating with any party other than the union.
This blatantly violates the free market principle of all parties having contract liberty, and allows the union to blackmail the employer into paying above market wages via the threat of striking.
You can have unions without the government mandating anything. This is a total straw man.
Here's an example: I know I'm worth considerably more to my employer than they're paying me, but were I to ask for appropriate compensation they'd rather let me go than pay up - because it would set a bad precedent. Any other employer I could turn to would do the same.
So I can't demand that compensation because unlike corporations I need to eat. And you're going to tell me this kind of situation isn't an asymmetrical power dynamic? The corporation can chalk it up as a strategic loss and survive, I can't. The "war chests" here are so disproportionally unbalanced it isn't even funny.
It would be a different picture if most people they could replace me with (if they even find anyone) would negotiate 'properly'. But people don't - it doesn't make sense for any individual.
Hence, unions.
Also you bringing up the situation of unions in the US is nice and all, but this article is about Germany. You might want to research the situation there and reevaluate.
Unions have no power in a free market, which is why unionization rates were so low until the unions successfully hoodwinked society into believing their victim narrative, and had the government pass laws in their favor.
>>Here's an example: I know I'm worth considerably more to my employer than they're paying me, but were I to ask for appropriate compensation they'd rather let me go than pay up - because it would set a bad precedent. Any other employer I could turn to would do the same.
Or they could pay you more and require that you to not disclose your pay raise to co-workers.
If they don't pay market wages, their employees will resign to work for companies that do. There's no trick that companies can use to avoid paying market wages.
Supply and demand are the dominant forces in determining wage levels, as centuries of empirical evidence shows. The free market is quite efficient, and as a consequence, laws that violate it typically reduce efficiency.
EDIT, being rate limited so will respond to the below here:
>>There's also no such thing as laws forcing employers to negotiate with unions
Collective bargaining laws do precisely this. In the US, if the majority of a work unit votes to unionize, the company employing them MUST engage in collective bargaining with the entire work unit, and cannot fire them and replace them with workers who are not unionized.
This basic violation of contract liberty is characterized by mainstream academia and so-called civil liberties organizations like the ACLU, in Orwellian fashion, as a human right, and has become institutionalized around the world.
>>Because I've got a history book full of examples that say otherwise - of unions/guilds mattering even when facing opposition from the government.
The power of guilds came entirely from government! The defining characteristic of a guild was an association of market providers who were granted, by government authorities, a market monopoly, to the exclusion of market providers not party to the guild.
Unions have been outlawed (or taken over by the state) at several points in German history. Nowadays guilds and unions don't enjoy many special protections except for such things as the basic right of people to form associations: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/gg/art_9.html
There's also no such thing as laws forcing employers to negotiate with unions. Employees who aren't part of the union in question are not subject to agreements negotiated between employer and unions: http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/tvg/__3.html
Also about "Unions have no power in a free market"... do you really stand by that statement? Because I've got a history book full of examples that say otherwise - of unions/guilds mattering even when facing opposition from the government.
You mean the adjustment from the post-war period of 1945-1975? Just like the one you referenced from 1870-1900? The post-war boom in wages here, that you can see many times in history, occurs due to demographics. You are essentially arguing to the contrary of your point, that large-scale wage increases for average people translate to better outcomes for all. Higher velocity of money, more innovation. You do realize that society as a whole is a large union, correct? And if suddenly there are far less people for work, then it has the same effect as a group holding out for higher wages? That is functionally what a strike is; it's as if a large portion of the young population is all striking at once (they're in fact dead).
> massive deadweight loss from greater unrealized production/earnings
And what does this deadweight loss thing mean exactly... coming from someone who studied economics? This is completely made up, more casual libertarian groupthink from people who got rich and conveniently stop believing in society. Can we stay grounded on this board please?
I just explained that the 1945-1975 period was not the same as the 1870-1900 period. The latter was associated with massive gains in the market position of US industry. The former was associated with the degradation of the market position of major US industrial firms, making those wage gains unsustainable.
>>The post-war boom in wages here, that you can see many times in history, occurs due to demographics.
Why would demographics cause the post-war boom? I see you reference death ("they're in fact dead"), which I take to mean you are implying that WW2 caused a large enough decline in the working age population so as to explain the large post-war wage gains, but 420,000 military deaths out of a total US population of 139 million in 1945, cannot explain the magnitude of wage growth in the post-war period.
>>And what does this deadweight loss thing mean exactly... coming from someone who studied economics?
This is the Wikipedia page defining the term if you're unfamiliar with it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadweight_loss
It's a basic economics term, and has nothing to do with "casual libertarian groupthink".
Maybe you should assume good faith and debate on the merits of the arguments, instead of caricaturing me as a member of some group of libertarians "who got rich and conveniently stop believing in society". These kinds of comments are NOT grounded.
An MP or elected official doesn't necessarily mean that much in many places. Even in wealthy nations, a lot of elected officials are basically just citizens who one way or another ran for office and found themselves elected.
MP's are often voted in on the basis of their party, not their personal stature. So the 'selection criteria' is really one of the party more than the voting public, and often filters are vague, often with write-in candidates in many ridings where a loss might be expected.
Even more so for a less developed country.
That said, I very much appreciate this man's attitude - a 'job is a job' and we should all be so lucky to have one, and there's nothing remotely demeaning about delivering food.
The real issue is one of appropriate compensation i.e. making sure that people are paid well enough for their contributions.
One thing about this kind of work is that it's definitely material: every delivered meal is a delivered meal. White collar workers, where there's a ton of slack and lack of efficiency cannot always say that their contributions have mattered, although it's a complicated story there as well.
You are assuming a students or high schooler isn't more qualified to do the job of a "minister" of, what appeared to be, an artificial "government" that tried to syphon as much money in it's own pockets as possible.
This fails to mention that US plumbers were getting higher salaries than Russian engineers, or higher on average than most of people in the West.
In my small hometown in Russia, everybody can't get more amused that the best wage for immigrants there is paid by agricultural college diplomas.
The biggest mansions in the town are of: 1. local gang boss, 2. agronomists who went to US for work. (Russian agronomist salary was like 9000 roubles a month 15 years ago)
These are personal choice beyond what me or you think about, need to be respected.
So said, many researcher today are paid very little and they could get a better pay in private sector yet they don't bother to.
Really? Anyone who thinks that America, or anyone else, has any sort of open-door policy towards immigration is kidding themselves. Setting aside whether a Russian engineer would be allowed to leave Russia, the process of immigrating to another country is never easy. It costs money. Lots of it.
> whether a Russian engineer would be allowed to leave Russia
Why not? I live in a country that is not US nor Russia and I know few very good Russian engineers. They worked in US too, some of them returned to Russia eventually. So I don't understand where you get your basis. People are allowed to leave Russia they're not trapped (not to mention the many I've met when traveling was allowed)
Convenient decision when the KGB has the location of all your extended family in it's database!
Now with $3000/month ($36,000/year, before tax) you live pretty well in Bucharest, better than the plumber in US that is making the same or more.
Computer science/coding seemed to have travelled the same trajectory before the stigma faded. A very in demand trade that nobody really wanted to do despite basics being available to many.
Back at home, people, including my parents, were categorically refusing to believe that starting salary of a banker could be as low as below $30k (per year) in US, or Canada.
That is after many spent their entire life savings, and sold their houses to give their children "business" eduction in the West.
When people imagine bankers making a lot of money, they are talking about investment bankers. When people talk about bankers making $30k, they're talking about retail bankers.
These careers have nothing in common with each other. It's like comparing a McDonald's retail employee to a chemical engineer.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-18/junior-ba...
And that's also a niche of the bankers, not everyone of them are ending up on top banks.
I often pitied the lobbyists and office workers. It was a carefree time.
Seems logical to me. The UK is at the start of a lost generation.
Common instances of this included civil engineers in AFG who couldn’t get licensed here, that drove Uber and spent a few months training Americans somewhere in the Louisiana woods to make ends meet. Such a waste.
Welcome to reality of 3rd world immigrants to the West. Near complete untransferabbility of career, skills, and credentials.
For doctors there is a path for getting board certifications, not easy but it is done a lot.
For lawyers there is no career transferability because law is the most heterogenous domain around the globe and expertise in a country is not applicable in other jurisdictions.
Most skilled labor like plumbers, electricians or constructions can transfer most of the knowledge, having to do adjustments for local practices and regulations. Not extremely easy, but doable.
My mother's skills carried her to a doctorate in nursing
My uncle's medical skills carried over well enough for him to be an orthopedic surgeon
My aunt's carried well enough to run her own medical clinic in Norway
Do you think they're learning to count sticks or something to get their degrees in other countries? Why wouldn't thinks as internal as learned skills transfer?
Credentials might not map 1:1 but they're also backed by something... everything you learned to earn them
So she enrolled again to go through the same stuff she learned just to get the valid degree spendable in the county
Even between first world countries they're not transferable 1:1, even within single countries they're not transferable 1:1
But the reality is your friend had an incredible head start going over the same stuff she learned. There's this narrative that high educated people form 3rd world countries all have to end up in menial jobs because somehow a doctor/lawyer/engineer/tradesperson from a 3rd world country is not knowledgeable enough to do anything else by 1st world standards, and it's more of a meme than anything.
I wouldn't consider an head start to do again your degree once you've done it already in your home country
Do you know what a head start is?
And also the program would be in a language that you never learned as first language and you don't even master it so yes, is not an head start at all to me.
The point is that other countries produce people just as capable at equivalent jobs, it literally said credentials don't map 1:1 but their actual backing, the knowledge, is real.
You don't know what a head start is, that's ok, but my point was not that complicated.
One thing the article only hints at is he doesn’t speak German! Of course he couldn’t find a job in Germany.
I think this guy is going to be OK. He knows how to market himself at least.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/13/ben-sasse-ub...
2. The guy was honest and didn't embezzle funds to retire in luxury.
I believe he will not only be ok but thrive.