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Comment by throwaway93135 | Hacker News Reader

Imagine how high must those salaries be in union-prolific Euro nations, compared to the measly ones of those uncivilized Americans!

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Unions are not the primary mechanism between employers and workers for establishing fairer wages in many European countries. Unions are designed to level a power imbalance between an employer (typically a legal vehicle which aggregates the material self interest of various actors) and the employees who would otherwise have to act alone.

Myopically focusing on wages while ignoring the many other concerns about the distribution of power and legal rights is a common misunderstanding.

What a great excuse for stagnant wages.

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Real wages (adjusted for inflation) were relatively flat from 2001 to the mid-2010s, especially for the bottom half of the wage distribution. Since then, there have been periods where real wages grew, but inflation often outpaced wage growth, particularly from April 2021 to early 2026. As of May 2026, real wages were still down 1.4% compared to January 2021, meaning that, after accounting for price increases, American workers are making less than they did five years ago.

Not every American citizen is having incomes like SWE in SV.

https://www.statista.com/chart/32428/inflation-and-wage-grow...

The "excuse" is that there hasn't been automation or other things introduced to make a worker's output more, which would then raise their value.

Hourly wages in Germany are not that different from the US. Depends a bit on how exactly to compare - nominal, PPP, net/gross, etc.: e.g., average nominal is about 10% higher in the US, real median is higher in Germnay, ...

Overlooking that we are comparing the richest EU state to all 50 US states, doesn't that further the point that having unions is are at best uninfluential.

No. (And comparing one country to another seems fine anyway.) Hard to make the case that unions in Germany have had no effects on wages, working time, etc.

Real wages are higher in every EU country with strong unions.

Far from the richest by capita, average income, PPP average income, mean/median household wealth, etc., which feels like what we're actually talking about here. A lot of countries in the EU/Europe that would make the US look far worse, no?

Either way, no, if unions don't reduce how much people make and provide stronger worker's rights, protection from corporate abuse, workplace safety, collective bargaining for things like holidays, you can think it doesn't change your take-home at all and pretty undeniably see the benefits. How many weeks of legally mandated paid time off do you get, and how many additional days do you get on top of that as a median worker in the US? :b

> How many weeks of legally mandated paid time off do you get, and how many additional days do you get on top of that as a median worker in the US? :b

For comparison: unions are at best toothless in Singapore, there's no minimum wage, yet we have some of the highest wages in the world.

>median is higher in Germnay

I cannot think of any standard by which this is true, certainly not by nominal or PPP income for either personal or household income.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income

[2]https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/median-in...

Table on page 10: https://www.boeckler.de/data/downloads/IMK/FMM%20Konferenz%2...

Not looking at households or disposable income here but at hourly wages.

I see. That paper is looking a median income from a PPP perspective but without accounting for taxes and transfers, which is a tiny bit unorthodox in this exact context which tries to get into the weeds slightly more than just standard PPP adjusted GDP per-capita or something like that. It's valid statistically, but typically if you're trying to adjust for cost of living it makes a lot of sense to use the amount of actual income the individuals have left over after paying taxes and receiving transfers from social programs. Otherwise you'll have a number which accounts for differences in prices but not differences in the proportion of "income" which is actually retained by the earner. This is what that wikipedia article I linked is reporting. Comparing two different countries with very different tax/social program policies with PPP adjustments but without tax/transfer adjustments is less than ideal.

It's not wrong, it's just not very useful. It's typically a more intermediary statistic rather than a final one when doing this type of comparison.

Yes, comparisons are difficult between countries. With respect to unions and wages, not sure hourly wages are that bad a starting point - but happy to look at research there on differential impact. Adjusting for taxes and social programs also can create issues in terms of accounting for things accruing from those for the future (pay as you go pensions come to mind).

You'd similarly factor in comparable medical insurance/ avg. out of pocket medical expenses, taxes etc. for a median income earner the other side then, right? At median income, does that really tilt the scales much when all is said and done?

Medical expenses would be a combination of cost of insurance / treatment (PPP relevant) and government transfers in a country with partially or fully public healthcare, which is why it's so important to do both.

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