Wednesday, February 08, 2012

Your miserable EU at 5:00 pm this evening

Two snippets which sum things up pretty well:

Ekathimerini: One of the most controversial measures proposed in the draft is a 22 percent reduction to the minimum wage of 751 euros per month, which may be passed on to private sector employees who earn more than this amount.

EUobserver:
BRUSSELS - Almost a quarter of the EU's population is at risk of poverty or social exclusion, according to statistics released Wednesday (8 February), with 13 member states recording a rise in the number of their citizens considered vulnerable.
The figures for 2010 show that 115 million Europeans, or 23.4 percent of the EU population, live in households with less than the poverty-threshold disposable income, in households where there is severe material deprivation (such as a lack of heating) or where the adults worked less than 20 percent of their total work potential.

MEPs and Eurocrats will at this time be heading towards the bars and restaurants of Brussels, another day wasted at huge expense with yet more wealth destruction!

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2 Comments:

Blogger James Higham said...

Always the common man, never those bastards themselves.

7:51 PM  
Blogger Martin said...

Not just in the EU periphary either James.

It might seem counterintuitive to question the benefit of German wage policies, at least for Germany, at a time when national unemployment is at a record low of 5.5 percent (especially as it hits 23 percent in Spain and near 19 percent Greece). But the matter of low-wage jobs and rising income inequality stirs passions in Germany. A recent Süddeutsche Zeitung headline about German employment numbers, "Miracle with a Shady Side," captured how many Germans feel about their country's successes. From 2005 to 2010, the article explains, the number of low wage earners (less than 9.76 euros per hour in the West, and 7.03 euros in the East) grew 13.5 percent. In addition, it says, almost half of all new full-time jobs are low-wage.

Full article:

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/02/how-germany-gamed-the-euro-and-worsened-the-crisis/252754/

7:58 PM  

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