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Comment by rapsey | Hacker News Reader

A factory worker is living on minimum wage. Nowhere near average.

They don't seem to be minimum wage workers in China[1] and India[2]. And are in fact much closer to median than minimum.

Europe's minimum wages are much higher in comparison[3].

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage_in_China

[2]https://www.india-briefing.com/news/guide-minimum-wage-india...

[3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_...

I don't understand your point. Google says Chinese manufacturing jobs pay $11k per year in 2020. This is a salary level of a south/east European factory worker.

That's the salary. Now, you have employers costs, which will be much higher in socialistic countries in EU.

not so much - US employees need very expensive employer-provided health insurance. In the EU that's covered by taxes instead. I couldn't find a direct comparison (hard because it varies by state & country), but it seems to be a wash:

https://topsourceworldwide.com/international-salaries/

note that China is 40% of salary as a payroll tax, which tops the list.

Quite the (wrong) assumptions, in service to a preconceived narrative.

What you term "socialistic" countries handle government services via taxes more than levies on employers.

It looks like the employer cost in China is 40.92%[0], while the highest percentage in Europe is 32.4% in Italy, and Switzerland imposes only 9.5%.

0. https://topsourceworldwide.com/international-salaries/

My point is that in general manufacturing jobs aren't minimum wage. And those levels are below minimum wage in most European countries.

I just checked job postings in Bulgaria(the poorest EU country) and $11k is just a bit above entry level salary for unskilled uneducated manufacturing workers. It's higher with taxes, experience, etc. and there's a lot of better options at that level.

And the truth is even if you can find cheap employees in Albania, Bulgaria, Belarus, Macedonia, infrastructure is not there and investment wouldn't make much sense because there's not a lot of people here that are okay with such low wages.

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