22 Jobs To Be Paid Above Minimum Wage Rates: Thailand

[tlansford]

And your comments regarding the government involvement and mafia unions shows your political leaning.

Blanket statements that government involvement always makes everything more costly and lower quality is dogma, not fact.

It also ignores the government's responsibility vis-a-vis the citizens. Examples include employment law, healthcare, and education, among others.

And I'll make another point about free markets that don't exist. All the rules governing the economy as well as the system to settle disputes comes from the government. IP protection, interstate/international trade regulations, environmental protections, the judicial system, financial regulations, etc.

Take all that away and you get chaos.

I curious about socialist countries that do not have a minimum wage...

Governments only responsibility is to protect the citizens basic inalienable rights and the right to have no intrusion on these rights by others.

You have no right to have a high salary, post-grad education, good healthcare or all the candy you want to eat. Those things are earned.

Your point in that there currently is no free market place is right - and that is the problem. If the market place was truly free in Thailand, and not corporatist, then the rice-farmers wouldn't get the bad end of the stick at every turn as is the case now.

IP protection is typical government over-reach. It ranges from government sanctioned monopoly (patents, over-reaching trademarks) to the government running the errand of the Big Corporations against consumers - instead of being a shield for the consumers against fraudulent Corporations - that is the often used excuse (trademarks as protection against low-quality copies, copyright etc).

Sweden, a socialist nation, doesn't have minimum wage set by law.

To go further would take us beyond the scope of this thread. But I would begin by discussing what your list of inalienable rights are.

For example, I notice that you don't include the right to healthcare, and I would. You don't include the right to education (at least it stops at some level), and I would.

So maybe if we agreed on the list of inalienable rights, then we would agree on more things.

Again, it starts to leave the topic of this thread, but I don't agree with you on IP rights, and I would include copyrights (for example, very applicable to things like software). I think that it has long since been proven that these protections foster innovation and help the commercial sector develop.

And no, Sweden does not have a national minimum wage. Neither does Germany. But both countries set wages by sector through negotiations, so they do have defacto minimum wages. Additionally, in neither of those 2 countries could it be said that they do not have a national minimum wage due to a Libertarian political philosophy.

When someone refers to 'rights', 'inalienable rights' in an economic context, you just know they are talking so much hot air. They are not living in the real world when it comes to practical implementation where there is a real cost and you just know it is a part of the armoury of weak reformist posturing. Which is where these proposals are just about located. Not even across the board in Thailand. So not even a minimum wage policy. Ask yourself this. Does it apply to or make a difference to land labourers in the North East and does it come out of the pockets of the North Eastern landowners?

"When someone refers to 'rights', 'inalienable rights' in an economic context, you just know they are talking so much hot air."

I guess it depends on what comes after the reference to "rights"

workers' safety rights, banning child labor, the right to organize, ... or in this case, if you work all day, you can earn a living...

[anterian]

You are probably correct, the main point of my post was that for some reason the Thais seem to have copied us.

Except in this case they haven't. The Thai tax year is 1 Jan to 31 Dec. Starting the increase in minimum wages on April 1 has nothing to do with the tax year. ... unless you're suggesting that this is a covert move to change the Thai tax year to April - March.

Suggest often implies an ulterior motive, but not in this case, I'm just making observations, they may be valid, they may not. I have not filled in a tax return for the last 15 years so am rather out of touch.

[fire and ice]

How do they define a "Day" of wokr? I mean in their labour law, not in actual practice.

I've mentioned this many times before. The easiest way to do this is set a minimum hourly rate which as far as I know is how it's normally done.

So do you know how many hours its "supposed" to be or are you (like me) wanting to know? Or do they deliberately leave it vague by not defining it?

[theDukes]

Thai food-cooks? What other cooks do we have? Political ones.... too many cooks spoil the soup. Cooks are only found in Gastronomy!

The way I am reading this is Thai people cooking food as opposed to Burmese or hilltribe cooking food. They don't get the extra. I don't believe they meant cooks cooking Thai food. What's the difference with a person cooking Thai food or European food?

[falang07]

Does this mean no-one will be allowed to get a lower wage than the set minimum wage? Or is this only for the government positions?