A government-appointed commission announced that Germany would raise its minimum wage twice over the next two years. The move would give Germans the second-highest minimum wage in the EU, after Luxembourg.
A government-appointed commission announced that Germany would raise its minimum wage twice over the next two years. The move would give Germans the second-highest minimum wage in the EU, after Luxembourg.
After reading my comment. You are right, it is not impossible.
However, it still is not a good indicator for minimum wage.
IMO, minimum wage should be based on expenses. That is, it should cover what you need to live a decent life.
That definition is based on other’s income. Imagine you live in a country where housing is 1€/month and food is 0.10€/month. The rest of the costs scale accordingly. Yet it is an incredibly rich country and the median income is 10000€/year. Would you say that a yearly wage of 120€/year is risk-of-poverty? It’s 0.001% of the median income, yet it can provide for 10 years of housing in 1 year of work.
What you are referring to is absolute poverty. However, even if you can cover the very basics, such as rent, food and healthcare, if you have a lot less than most people that is known as relative poverty. Both are important to combat. I am assuming the definition is made as it is because it is quite simple to compute. Finding a good measure for cost of living is a lot more complex and easy to get stuck arguing what is an acceptable standard of living.
I’d argue it’s a great indicator, as expenses are necessarily tied to the wages of the population. An example like yours simply doesn’t happen.
This means you have to come up with a representative example of how to calculate expenses, and I haven’t seen a better approach for that than median wage, which seems to correlate highly with expenses.