still not sufficient to be classified as safe from poverty by EU standards
this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2025
101 points (100.0% liked)
World News
47848 readers
2338 users here now
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Lemmy World Partners
News !news@lemmy.world
Politics !politics@lemmy.world
World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
What is the definition of safe from poverty?
What I found was this:
The at-risk-of-poverty rate is the share of people with an equivalised disposable income (after social transfer) below the at-risk-of-poverty threshold, which is set at 60 % of the national median equivalised disposable income after social transfers.
By that definition, it is not possible to have a minimum wage "safe from poverty". Since the minimum will always be below the median.
minimum wage equal or larger to 60% of median income (simplified) is considered to be not at risk of poverty, 14,60€ in germany is less than 60% of median income and thus cant be considered safe from poverty by EU standards.
Great. We used the same definition, that's good.
Now, can you explain to me what minimum wage do you think would make it so minimum wage is safe from poverty according to that definition?
According to the Federal Bureau of Statistics the median income in 2024 in Germany was € 52,159 . 60% of this value is € 31,295.4. A worker with a 40 hour work week and the mandates 28 days of paid vacation days worked 1784 hours in 2024. Therefore by dividing 60% of the median income per year with hours worked per year we get the targeted hourly pay: € 17.55/h.
I am not sure why this seems to be an impossible task for you.
Yeah. It is clearly possible. I don't know why I read it as 60th percentile instead of 60% of median
I don't understand why you claim it would be impossible to reach the definition?
A simple constructed example: if the median income is € 20 by hour. A minimum wage of, say, € 15 would be considered safe. Why is that impossible?
A quick Google search shows me Destatis.de claims the median wage in April 2023 was € 24.59. Then 60% of that would be € 14.75. I would assume the median has increased a bit from 2023, and will increase further towards 2027, but I would from these numbers expect € 16 to for example be high enough to be considered safe from poverty, which isn't that much higher than the proposed number.
The neat thing about using the median instead of the mean is that increasing the minimum wage only affects those earning the least, and thus doesn't directly affect the median.
He probably was thinking of the mean instead of the median. Just a typical brain fart.
Of course it's possible. The minimum wage doesn't directly affect the median wage (unless more than half the population only gets the minimum wage).
If you think it's impossible, please explain why.
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.
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.
Good for Germany.
And there are still voices against least income with arguments like:
- It increases inflation - inflation increased when companies got greedy, not when paying higher wages
- It destroys jobs - that didn't happen at all
- Simple things like hair cuts, farming products will become too extensive - also didn't happen - at least not because of least income
- It's not necessary since incomes went up already due to labor and experts shortage - are they for real?
And there are still discussions to exempt things like seasonal workers or even elderly care workers from it - unbelievable.
I've never encountered someone arguing against minimum wage increase IRL. It's probably because they fear the very high chance they'll get slapped.
A coworker if mine is actually arguing against minimum wage because his wife, who studied engineering is barley above minimum wage and increasing minimum wage would invalidate her extra effort for her diploma... You find a lot of mind acrobatics around arguments against minimum wage...