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Eugine_Nier comments on Open thread, July 29-August 4, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (381)
That depends on the issue in question.
Could you give an example where Obama pushes a left policy that's more left than Merkel's position on the same issue?
It depends when in time you compare them. Merkel did come out against a federal minimum wage at one point (during the election). IMO, that is more "right-wing" in the sense people usually mean by it (although I don't particularly like the term). As far as I know, Obama has never publicly criticized the federal minimum wage.
Basically both politicans don't want to change anything about the minimum wage but stay with the status quo.
The German solution was over long time to have binding contracts between employers and unions about what minimum wage had to be payed in certain sectors.
Even employers in that sector that didn't engage in the negotions were supposed to be bound by them.
Some sectors such as temp work then has gotten by law a minimum wage that pays €7.50 = $9.97 because there no binding labor contracts. That a lot higher than the US minimum wage of $7.25 = €5.44.
It fairly recent in Germany that the left started to call for a minimum wage. I think nearly nobody who calls for a minimum wage in Germany would feel that he reached much if the minimum wage would be at US levels.
Obama certainly doesn't try to get the minimum wage raised to the kind of level that the people who call for a minimum wage in Germany want to have.
I haven't been paying that much attention to German economic policy.