Tan Kin Lian's Blog: Minimum wage in other countries

Wednesday, July 09, 2008

Minimum wage in other countries

Taiwan's minimum wage since October 1997 was US$487 per month. This works out to a daily minimum wage of US$16 or around US$2 per hour.

In 2005, it was proposed that the domestic minimum wage could be raised to 40 percent of the average wage of US$1,357 per month. This would give a revised minimum wage of US$543 and would benefit up to 2 million domestic workers as well as 160,000 foreign workers in the manufacturing sector.

The ratio of minumum wage to average wage was:
France - 66.4 percent
Canada - 39.4 percent
Taiwan - 36.3 percent
United States 32 percent.
South Korea - 27 percent

4 comments:

WHT said...: Hi, Mr. Tan.

I am one of your admirers.

With regard to the new bonus structure, there seems to be a 2nd issue not considered.

If the bonus restructure is to be implemented because the management wanted to invest into more risky investments that would ensure long term viability of the insurance company to pay out their projected bonus, then does that implies that the current asset allocation of the current funds are not viable to deliver those returns in the long run. However, the asset allocation of those funds, if I am not wrong, are kind of imposed by MAS. So, there is very little room for innovation in this regard, unless MAS change its rules. If, in addition, MAS is not changing its rules, the insurance company couldn't invest in riskier (much riskier) assets, how would a bonus structure change improves the viability of the insurance company in the long run and policy holders' returns?

Just some question from another policy holder of Income.

Wing Hung; July 10, 2008 1:17 PM
SingaSoft said...: Singapore is a small and open economy, setting minimum wages is not the best way to help the poor.

There are other better-ways.
Work-fare subsidies, subsidies that promote charitable society, etc. are much better ways.

Tax cut on donations can be replaced by more direct subsidies, like $-to-$ match..The implementation of $-to-$ will pose more challenging than indirect method of tax cutting, but the overall impact to the society will be much greater & better...; July 11, 2008 11:20 AM
Tan Kin Lian said...: Here is my reply to Singasoft. I do not see why a small country should be different from a big country in the need for a minimum wage.

In fact, it can be argued that the big countries do not need any minimum wage, as there are more options for the people.

I am aware about the system used in Singapore to help the poor. They are complicated systems that give small sums of money. This is the Singapore style.

I hope to see things made simpler and more helpful.; July 11, 2008 2:14 PM
SingaSoft said...: Dear Tan Kin Lian,

I remember I said small and open.
But indeed that being small we do need to take different approaches in handling our economy. We got to be open, we got to be flexible. Currently our labour policy is pretty open, there are many low-wage workers from other countries. Their wages are low if we view using average salary of singaporeans, but not so low if they save and bring their savings back to their home country.

How many Singaporeans are really paid below the minimum wages? How low is low? If we set the minimum too low, will it be effective ? If we set it too high, will it reduce the flexibility of our economy?

I think minimum wages is in fact a much more complicated way as compared to other ways we are already using to help the poor, like workfare-subsidies, promoting charities, etc. We should make improvements along these lines and not by imposing minimum wages.; July 12, 2008 12:40 AM