Congressional Call to Action: vote NO on 900% Minimum Wage increase
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by Ealb
Current Minimum Wage: 1 THB/day
Proposed Minimum Wage: 10 THB/day
Sponser: Jefferson_Anjim
Rationale: none whatsoever
Yet another TNT-proposed bill without any explanation offered as to why it's good for eThailand. One reason for this may be the simple fact that it is not. 10 THB is far more than any company concerned with actually supporting itself by selling its profits can afford to pay new, unskilled workers. Period. End of discussion.
The only companies that can pay such a wage are TNT companies that do not care about selling their products to support themselves, because they receive large quantities of baht siphoned out of taxpayers' pockets to prop themselves up no matter how irresponsibly they operate. This law is a simple attempt to enforce a monopoly by driving non-TNT companies out of business.
Incidentally, this law is part of a program to make an end run on several eRepublik laws:
5. Every citizen has the right to work and to receive a payment in exchange for his work.
8. Freedom of press is absolute (without breaking the 7th rule).
10. The economic system is based on the market economy and all the citizens have to act according to the demand and supply rules.
Number 10 is obvious, because the bill itself artificially raises the minimum wage to a level that is substantially higher than that which a new worker's labor is worth. It more generally violates this because it is an attempt to strangle non-TNT corporations to establish a TNT monopoly. If employers cannot pay an unskilled worker what their labor is worth, they will operate at a loss unless receiving outside subsidization to make up the difference, as TNT companies are. Eventually, this will drive TNT competitors (ironically including the non-subsidized government companies) out of business, leaving TNT companies enjoying a market where they can wholly ignore supply and demand.
Numbers 5 and 8 are more subtle. I shall explain. We have seen a former TNT member (Wisdom) fired from his job with a TNT-controlled subsidized corporation shortly after he publicly denounced TNT leadership. This indicates that TNT leadership do not consider rule 8 sacrosanct and are attempting to break it when it suits their purposes. Now imagine for a moment what happens when the situation I outlined in the above paragraph comes to fruition. No non-TNT companies will be able to operate, so if a citizen wants to work, they will have to work for a TNT company. However, TNT companies have already demonstrated their willingness to fire workers if they become critical of Rockman. Hence, if these trends hold we could end up in a future where workers are only offered employment if their speech and press activities are to the liking of Rockman.
Beyond the implications above that citizens will be employed because they demonstrate obedience to TNT and not because they have a right to work, rule 5 i threatened simply by the fact that TNT does not have enough companies to efficiently employ all citizens of eThailand. They plan to drive non-TNT corporations out of business, but they cannot support all those businesses' employees without operating at extremely inefficient levels, which I expect they will "mournfully" refuse to do. Even the employers of last resort, the government companies, will be driven out of business, so there will be no alternative but for the subsidized TNT companies to employ all eThai citizens... and even if they do not discriminate based on political views, they will like refuse to do so simply to keep their companies to efficient sizes.
ALL CONGRESS REPRESENTATIVES: PLEASE VOTE THIS DOWN. IT IS AN EXTREMELY IRRESPONSIBLE MEASURE AIMED AT ARTIFICIALLY DESTROYING THE COMPANIES OF TNT'S COMPETITORS AND ULTIMATELY ENFORCING SILENT OBEDIENCE TO ROCKMAN. IT IS EXCEEDINGLY ECONOMICALLY UNSOUND TO THE POINT OF BREAKING RULE 10 WERE IT PUT INTO PRACTICE. VOTE NO ON THIS TAWDRY SCRAP OF ECONOMIC RECKLESSNESS.
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It's impossible vote yes. TNT are crazy. Want to increase rates and even steal money just to be rich. And let the people in hell.
Its not impossible to vote yes when the TNT run companies received 10k or more in stolen Thai treasury money from their corrupt president.
Good point those broken laws. I didn't notice that and now it make sense.
Honestly, it's a shame what's TNT and his congressmen are doing with Thai economy.
I hope we can fix it soon.
i´ve suggested 20thb, but they say it is to high. But the workers will have money to buy things and this money will circulate throw eThai market.
And things on the market go up in corresponding price.
Well, they put houses at 230+ THB, whats the problem in the minimun wage beeing 10tbh? A normal worker will have to work more than 30 days to buy a house anyway, do you think it's fair?
Lorenzo, you're a glaring hypocrite cheerfully talking out of both sides of your mouth... and you're not even trying very hard to be convincing.
Point the first: a Q1 House costs 156 THB, not 230+. Get your facts straight.
Point the secon😛 Houses are not expensive. They're very, very cheap. Q1 costs 0.47g, and Q2 costs 0.97g.
Point the thir😛 do the math before declaring a price cheap or expensive. An optimistically average company (10 employees, avg Wellness 75, avg skill 3) could produce a Q1 House for 100 baht in labor costs at the minimum wage you propose. There is no Wood on the market currently, so I will very VERY optimistically assume it will, even after your increase in minimum wage, cost the same amount in real prices as it would in eUSA. Converting that price to baht, we end up with 0.6 baht for a unit of Wood. This means a Q1 House under the proposed law would cost 220 THB to produce. You will INCREASE Q1 Housing prices by at least 50%.
Point the fourth: you are a hypocrite, plain and simple. Had the Housing tax bill you introduced yesterday become law, YOU would have directly increased House prices by 25% (I erroneously stated elsewhere the increase would be 15%; I apologize for portraying your vile bill as being better than it actually was). VAT would have gone from 20% to 50%. That Q1 House would have gone from costing 156 baht to costing 195 baht.
Point the fifth: you are even more of a hypocrite. Had the Housing tax bill you introduced yesterday become law, because of YOU workers in the Housing industry earning your proposed minimum wage would have gone from being able to buy a Q1 House in 20 days (assuming they did not buy food) to being able to buy a Q1 House in 1950 days (again assuming they didn't buy food, which they wouldn't, because they'd not be able to afford to).
Lorenzo, I worked for a month in the eUS, which has a comparatively stable economy, and the only way I was able to afford a house was to invite enough people to get gold to buy one.
But that's beside the point. Beorn has already posted the calculations, but here are mine.
I have 4 employees who make an average salary of 7.5 THB/day right now. That adds up to 30 THB/day for my workers.
They have an average productivity of 10 for my Q2 housing company.
200 productivity for a house/(4 workers*10 productivity/worker)=5 days per house.
5 days * 30 THB/day=150 THB for wages.
Right now, we have a stock of wood. However, we will soon need to buy wood from the marketplace. For a Q2 house, it requires 400 units of wood. If we can buy wood for .2 THB/wood, that's another 80 THB for wood. Unfortunately, there's no wood at all on the market right now, so it will probably cost more than that once it becomes available.
In any case, 150 THB for wages + 80 THB for raw materials is 230 THB. Which is approximately the price we sold our last house for.
If we had to pay workers 10 THB/day, that price would go up:
4 workers*10 THB/day*5 days=200 THB for labor. The price of raw materials would go up correspondingly. The price of houses would INCREASE, rather than going down, because we would have to be charging at least 300 THB for a Q2 house, plus taxes on top of that.
Neither I nor my partner has taken profits from our company, by the way. We have transferred THB profits to other companies owned by the same SO, in order to pay wages to our workers there.
Since there is no wood on the market, I'm thinking of asking all my workers to transfer to the wood company and produce wood instead of houses. Which, of course, will make the housing market even less competitive.
(By the way, the author of that last comment is Katran, who doesn't even own a Q2 house, she owns a Q1 house.)
You hurt my feelings calling me a hypocrite and so on. I wont even worry about talk about this because you are not worth my anger.
I made what was right in my opinion.
And I don't know what happened to wood or whatever that disappeared.
But tell me then how much you gain in each house.
Must be very messing up when you discuss with another person who has no sense about market and its laws, Tyrell/Katran.
if i understood well, katran got 80 thb for the last house, since the company didnt have to buy raw materials.
but if i understood well, katran also isn't going to raise prices much when the stock of wood end.
Right...whatever profits we are making right now (at Dragonstone Homes, which is the Q2 housing company owned by Tyrell Holdings), those profits are being invested in raw materials, or in our other companies.
If you want to try running a housing company, go right ahead. But I suggest either 1) getting a bunch of friends to work for you who don't mind not making huge wages or 2) stealing money illegally from the eThai treasury to subsidize your prices. Then you can drive other companies out of business, then with your new monopoly, increase wages to whatever you want, and make lot$ of profit$.
YES! The opposition prevails once again, the House tax was denied again!
Now lets vote down on the Minimum Wage increase!
@Lorenzo:
>You hurt my feelings calling me a hypocrite and so on.
Then the truth hurts. I called you a hypocrite for the stated reason: you claimed to be concerned that House prices were too high to justify introducing a tax bill that would DIRECTLY increase their price by 25%. This is the plainest example of hypocrisy I've seen in quite some time.
Even I, who have had only the most basic economics education, can see that raising the tax on an item will increase its price, not lower it.
I'm waiting for another Congressional Call to Action...
@Lorenzo:
But since you asked... if I use Kat's more optimistic figure of 0.1 baht/unit for Wood, I come up with the company I'm managing making ~90 baht profit on a Q2 House; my Wood price estimate put it at 50 baht. If your lovely little Minimum Wage law goes into effect, we'll be LOSING ~3 baht per House with Kat's estimate or losing 43 baht per House with mine.
Mind you, this is a Q2 company. The founders pooled their Gold and baht to found it. We pooled again to upgrade it. We never removed one solitary feuang. Before we upgraded to Q2, we never made a profit even excluding investments; we never managed to sell a House before we decided to upgrade, and then we sold off our remaining stock for a loss of at least 100 THB.
After upgrading, we sold one or possibly even two units if I'm not mistaken. I'm not entirely certain; I was not the primary manager at this time. Our average wage was probably half again what it is now (we had non-owner-operators in the ranks), but that was under the beta productivity calculation and there were no raw materials to account for. So at the time we may have made 250-500 baht on those 1-2 sales after labor costs. I don't believe we sold another one since beta; it was shortly after that when I became acting manager.
No profits have left the company. All Gold and baht for upgrading and paying wages prior to selling homes came from individuals working for the company (at sweatshop wages based on an expected share of future profits). The initial investments have not been anywhere near recuperated. We're still deep in the red. We are not making phat profits; if this minimum wage law goes through, we'll never be able to recuperate the investment, let alone share profits with workers who took minimal wages when we could afford no better with the expectations that they'd one day be compensated.
>I'm waiting for another Congressional Call to Action...
/sigh
Coming right up.
Guys I guess Rockman doesn't control the congress anymore 🙂
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Yeah. The last 3 taxes increase proposals from TNT members were rejected. And the pending one will be rejected too, as well.
The weekend is over. More marionettes will be voting. They've won weekday votes to date, and lost weekend ones. I'm not as optimistic as Cavalcanti.
I see, so... in this case the correct would be a drop in the house taxes, it could allow the companies to gain a little more and rise the workers wage a bit.
Can you send me a pm with your idea to make this work?
"The correct" would be voting no on this, and the other inane measures that are being proposed.