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"He said France and Germany have high minimum wages but also high unemployment."
dumb rabble-rouser. The much bigger impediments to reducing unemployment in those two countries are 1) the immobility of labor (VERY expensive to move to new city for a job, esp when you're on the low-end of the scale. buy/sell house/mortages is fatally loaded with lawyers/fees/taxes) and 2) rigid labor laws that make it very difficult to fire people.
The job protection laws and high overheads imposed by national governments on employers result in the last thing an employer wants to do is create a job. (Employer overhead in France is up to 60% of an employee's salary.) Which is exactly the same thing in the USA, but for different reasons (pension, health insurance costs), where corp CEOs are seen as heros for laying off 10s of 1000s of employees, continuing the decades long trend of hollowing out the middle class and middle-class type jobs in favor of no jobs or lower-paying jobs.
Germany is also still dealing with large numbers of East German unemployed/unemployables after unification.
SMIC (minimum wage in France) in 2005 was Eu 8.03 = $10.16/hour. France has a huge problem with youth unemployment due to schools not producing kids who are employable, sufficiently educated. France envies the German system where highschool/junior college kids are in work/study apprenctice programs.
The simlistic dumb Congressman saying that higher minimum wages in the France and Germany causes 10% unemployment is just rabble-rousing lies. The causes of unemployment are much more complex.
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Here's an anoymous, somewhat confused email which I have no idea if the facts are true, but "feels" consistent with what is happening the USA:
"I think the vast differences in compensation between victims of the September 11 casualty and those who die serving our country in Uniform are profound. No one is really talking about it either, because you just don't criticize anything having to do with September 11. Well, I can't let the numbers pass by because it says something really disturbing about the en lement mentality of this country.
If you lost a family member in the September 11 attack, you're going to get an average of $1,185,000. The range is a minimum guarantee of $250,000, all the way up to $4.7 million.
If you are a surviving family member of an American soldier killed in action, the first check you get is a $6,000 direct death benefit, half of which is taxable. Next, you get $1,750 for burial costs. If you are the surviving spouse, you get $833 a month until you remarry. And there's a payment of $211 per month for each child under 18. When the child hits 18, those payments come to a screeching halt.
Keep in mind that some of the people who are getting an average of $1.185 million up to $4.7 million are complaining that it's not enough. Their deaths were tragic, but for most, they were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Soldiers put themselves in harms way FOR ALL OF US, and they and their families know the dangers.
We also learned over the weekend that some of the victims from the Oklahoma City bombing have started an organization asking for the same deal that the September 11 families are getting. In addition to that, some of the families of those bombed in the embassies are now asking for compensation as well.
You see where this is going, don't you? Folks, this is part and parcel of over 50 years of en lement politics in this country. It's just really sad. Every time a pay raise comes up for the military, they usually receive next to nothing of a raise. Now the green machine is in combat in the Middle East while their families have to survive on food stamps and live in low-rent housing. Make sense?
However, our own U.S. Congress voted themselves a raise. Many of you don't know that they only have to be in Congress one time to receive a pension that is more than $15,000 per month. And most are now equal to being millionaires plus. They do not receive Social Security on retirement because they didn't have to pay into the system.
If some of the military people stay in for 20 years and get out as an E-7, they may receive a pension of $1,000 per month, and the very people who placed them in harm's way receives a pension of $15,000 per month."
