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This country is breaking my balls!
(117 posts, started )
Quote from MAGGOT :By strict you mean you must have prior offences to be allowed into the country, right?

The opposite of that.
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(sam93) DELETED by sam93 : People can't handle the truth and isn't POLITICALLY CORRECT shit!
Quote from sam93 :Yeah, people may think I'm maybe racist for this, but...

(Not being racist, just saying how it is...

Just... don't.
Quote from DeadWolfBones :Just... don't.

Nope, just in the UK, the system is ****ed up! Come over here, live for 20 years say, and then say different thanks!
The grass is always greener on the other side.
Kalev EST, it's not greener anywhere, but back in the days when I were younger, the grass was greener, dirt tasted better, money had better value and little children weren't so rude to their parents and to other people.
Quote from bmwe30m3 :Kalev EST, it's not greener anywhere, but back in the days when I were younger, the grass was greener...

Was the light brighter?

In fact, this pretty much sums up how most of will feel in a couple decades:

"Encumbered forever by desire and ambitionThere's a hunger still unsatisfied
Our weary eyes still stray to the horizon
Though down this road we've been so many times"
Quote from JBiturbo :Scrabby, you think you are bad? I can assure you here in Portugal, things are a bit worst. We are the next on the line to become like Greece im a fraid ....and i cant even believe how are we still standing......

But i will show you some facts about our little corrupted country :

Minimum wage : Greece - 860€
Belgium - 1390€
Portugal - 580€

We have ........
.......... a matter of time

Same sh*t here , but with a little difference :
Minimum wage : Greece - 860€
Belgium - 1390€
Portugal - 580€
Bulgaria - 138€
Quote from Crashgate3 :In the UK though, that depends so massively on which part of the country you live, it's irrelevant. In London you'd be very hard pushed to get a 1 or 2 bedroom flat for £230K, wheras that'll buy a 4 bedroomed semi detached house round here.

True it does vary massively dependant on where in the country you want to buy. But it is the average price for a house here, which makes it relevant.

Just for comparison i found a project in northern Lithuania 18,000euro!. (£15K)
House 70% complete on a nice plot, big garden.
Which makes houses & land 90% cheaper in Lith. In fact if you spent 180K over here you would still struggle to get anything near as good.
Quote from anttt69 :Just for comparison i found a project in northern Lithuania 18,000euro!. (£15K)
House 70% complete on a nice plot, big garden.
Which makes houses & land 90% cheaper in Lith. In fact if you spent 180K over here you would still struggle to get anything near as good.

Good job. Now compare income in Lithuania to income in England.

It's a long commute...
OK so they earn a about one third of an average UK wage. Money isn't evey thing, but you would have to say goodbye to the luxuries in life.
The biggest problem is how certain things would be disproportionately expensive due to them living in the dark ages.

Anybody from Lith care to comment on stuff that is really expensive to afford because of the low wage.
Quote from bmwe30m3 :Kalev EST, it's not greener anywhere, but back in the days when I were younger, the grass was greener, dirt tasted better, money had better value and little children weren't so rude to their parents and to other people.

The good old days, when men were made of steel and boats were made of wood.

The grass is greener on the other side. I'm going to move to Scandinavia or Canada.
Quote from cargame.nl :
Image removed due to size, I am refering to this.

Interesting graph, in 1991/92 you can see house prices drop a little, this was about the period we were coming out of our last recession, I remember a local bar that went out of business which was ironically called 'recession 92' ... seeing it stabilize coming out of 2008ish it's following a drop yet the recession fails to lift and will do for many years to come...

Seems people are using minimum wage to judge the financial state of a country when there is so much more to consider. Our minimum wage is stinking low when you consider land value, cost of fuel and that we're taxed twice by the time we spend it, the grass looks greener until you look at the bigger picture. The whole world is in the middle of a financial crisis and there is no running away from the problem!

Just to elaborate on being taxed twice, if I earn £10, I will (if working full time) be taxed about £3 before I take that home which leaves me £7, if I then spend that £7 I will be taxed for spending it at about £1.40, so in the end my £10 is only really worth £5.60, our minimum wage is something around £6.20p/h, but after ALL taxes are paid, its about £3.20. It may look nice and rosy here, but that's only without looking at the bigger picture.
Quote from hrtburnout :The good old days, when men were made of steel and boats were made of wood.

The grass is greener on the other side. I'm going to move to Scandinavia or Canada.

"Manly Steelflex" is a great name from that era.
Quote from DeadWolfBones :Good job. Now compare income in Lithuania to income in England.
It's a long commute...

Lol @ looking on official income statistics in eastern europe countries.
For example, here about 35% of people have only minimal salary (~286 eur/month) according to government statistics. I know many people who earns those 286eur officialy + 600-1000 eur off the record/unofficialy, because in this country, there is no point to pay full taxes, because we got about nothing back from full paid taxes - roads are shit, free health care is shit, as well as everything else. And due to gay-high amount of taxes, if small/medium business owners tries to paid all of them, they got almost nothing left to themselves - noone wants to do a ''charity work to support fat-ass government'' how we say here.
The tax rate in the UK depends on how much you earn, so I have based this on the average person, earning less than £32,000 a year

Tax in Latvia:

An individual's business and salary income is taxable, as at 2011, at the rate of 25%.
The tax rate for An individual's capital gain is 15%.
The standard rate of VAT in Latvia is 22%

Tax in the UK:

An individual's business and salary income is taxable, as at 2011, at the rate of 20%.
The tax rate for An individual's capital gain is 23%. (between 18 and 28%)
The standard rate of VAT in UK is 20%

Our tax is a little lower, but not so much that you would notice. But the amount people 'make on the side' in the UK is far far less than the two thirds you describe as in Latvia, it probably averages out to £100 next to your 600 - 1000... 'Cash in hand' work simply isn't as available here as easily, so back handed income isn't an option for many.

Just a small observation, if you paid tax on two thirds of your income, the tax rate would not need to be so high? Maybe its your own corruption that's hitting your pocked more than your government?

The figures side by side look fairly even to me.
There are a couple of ways of looking at minimum wage laws. 1) Businesses don't have to pay someone the minimum wage. They can always pay them 0 by not hiring them in the first place. 2) The minimum wage is the least amount of money for which the government says a worker can sell his labor. Imagine that you have an old car with faded paint, worn tires and a few dents. You want to sell it cheap and I want to have something to drive but don't have much money. We are both happy with the deal but the government says that you can't sell the car below a certain price. So you are stuck with a car you don't want and I am walking. It is the same with labor.

We have young people in the US that have dropped out of school, have no training or job skills. But the government says they cannot work for a wage that a business could pay and still stay in business. So the youths have nothing to do with their time and get into mischief. But the politicians get the less well off to vote for them because the politicians are for the "little guy".
Quote :...a wage that a business could pay and still stay in business..

Do you think that's how Wal-Mart (or any other large corporation) work out what they pay their shop staff?
codehound, the way I see it is, that if minimum wage was lowered, then MAYBE the school dropouts will get a job, but that also means that people who are getting minimum wage, and are not doing that good, will get their wage probably lowered, since they are allowed to get less wage now.
Quote from bmwe30m3 :codehound, the way I see it is, that if minimum wage was lowered, then MAYBE the school dropouts will get a job, but that also means that people who are getting minimum wage, and are not doing that good, will get their wage probably lowered, since they are allowed to get less wage now.

This is exactly what happened when the minimum wage came into force in the UK, you could shop around for a better wage and as with any man, may the best one win.

Now there are hundreds of jobs all saying 'meets national minimum wage' which means there is no incentive to be with a better, more profitable company, any job will do.

Minimum wage could be counteracted with a maximum wage so that the minimum could be increased. Thankfully I am not on minimum wage, but having done the maths, I would if on minimum wage be about £12 worse off per week than someone unemployed, so in reality, the minimum wage is too low to give the incentive to work. I am better off without a job than on minimum wage.
I've found one Lithuanian travel agency offering study programmes in Australia and you can also work at the same time. Well, all these agencies are frauds and i hate studying, but it's still possible for ordinary mortal people to live in Australia for a short while. Also wages over there are huge compared to ours, and living isn't that expensive compared to income. If i'll find a way to get a visa without those bloodthirsty agencies, i'll totally do that just for lulz.


Shit's got real.
Quote from bmwe30m3 :codehound, the way I see it is, that if minimum wage was lowered, then MAYBE the school dropouts will get a job, but that also means that people who are getting minimum wage, and are not doing that good, will get their wage probably lowered, since they are allowed to get less wage now.

I think you are correct. A larger supply of workers will tend to depress the wages of the less skilled. It is the customers who ultimately pay the wages of workers. When the workers demand too much for their contribution to the creation of a product or service (by voting in politicians that support minimum wage laws or supporting unions) the consumers will refuse to pay that wage, the business will lose customers, and the workers will be laid off. This is what happened to the American auto makers.

Remember that lower wages mean lower prices for products and greater productivity from the economy. Why do you think economists are demanding that Greece lower their minimum wage? If they are less efficient than their neighbors then the only way to compete is by charging less for their labor or investing capital (which they don't have) to improve efficiency. It is harsh but that is life, economics doesn't change its rules just because we don't like those rules.
Quote from codehound :I think you are correct. A larger supply of workers will tend to depress the wages of the less skilled. It is the customers who ultimately pay the wages of workers. When the workers demand too much for their contribution to the creation of a product or service (by voting in politicians that support minimum wage laws or supporting unions) the consumers will refuse to pay that wage, the business will lose customers, and the workers will be laid off. This is what happened to the American auto makers.

Remember that lower wages mean lower prices for products and greater productivity from the economy. Why do you think economists are demanding that Greece lower their minimum wage? If they are less efficient than their neighbors then the only way to compete is by charging less for their labor or investing capital (which they don't have) to improve efficiency. It is harsh but that is life, economics doesn't change its rules just because we don't like those rules.

It's the workers who pay their own wage. Economy 101 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surplus_value
I'd be happy if i would earn 1390€ :/
Barely getting 1150€ atm
Quote from Scrabby :Barely getting 1150€ atm

AND YOU'RE NOT HAPPY WITH THAT??? I have a pretty good reason to rant at this, but I'd just look like a right idiot if I mentioned it because of the euro's value over here.

You could get a pretty comfortable lifestyle if you save some money and move to somewhere with lower costs than Belgium but that is still a place with good life conditions too. You still have that chance, at least.

This country is breaking my balls!
(117 posts, started )
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