Wages and unions and whatnot

The debate concerning the wages in the healthcare industry in Finland has been going on for a while. For any non-Finns who might read this, the union is demanding over 20% increases in wages, whereas the employers were offering 13%. The raise was more than what other fields already got and is also narrowing the wage gap between men and women. But come on, 20%+ raises for a massive group of people! Is it so difficult to understand that a radical move like that can't be healthy for the economy. The solution, I guess, would be to print more money. I bet the nurses would jump with joy if every person were given an additional couple of grands every year. But wait, I guess that's not it. I guess it's the traditional Finnish mechanism of envy at play...

A survey some time ago focused on asking people which scenario they would prefer: a) they would earn 50 000 euros per year and their neighbor 60 000 euros per year or b) they would earn 40 000 euros per year and their neighbor 30 000 euros per year. Legend has it that most took option b). I guess there is some logic to that (maybe overall everyone would get less in option b) and thus you would be in a better off position as money is more scarce). Or then maybe it's just that it's so much more annoying when your neighbor earns more. Maybe this is the reason for the reaction that the nurses are having right now. Who knows.

Another interesting argument is the wage gap between genders. A commonly held view is that in the job market, if a male is paid one euro, the equivalent female will get something like 76 or 80 cents. There was recently an interesting blog post on a blog under Kauppalehti (a Finnish newspaper focusing on economic matters). It presented the view that whereas men might earn more, they also pay more taxes. Then men also typically have a shorter life expectancy, meaning that men get less back in pensions. Which leads to the situation that men don't really get the aforementioned one euro, but instead we get 70 cents. And maybe the supposed wage gap is a reflection of the fact that most women are away from work for a few years when they have children. And then another go when the next one comes along. So, why not just not have children and go full steam ahead with the career? The tax records that were published recently for 2006 showed that quite many women were earning seven digit figures in Finland. Not too shabby. And because Finland is a free country, the last time I checked, nobody is forcing anyone to become a nurse. Why not instead study a bit more and hit the higher salaried jobs if money is really the issue.

And that brings us to an interesting aspect again; offshoring is a real bogeyman in the US. Jobs are being shipped to lower cost countries. And I guess American salaries are in fact quite generous and the tax levels quite low. Compared to the US, the salary gap in Finland between the highest and lowest paid employees isn't really that large. People performing blue collar jobs are pretty near to the white collar jobs. And in some situations blue collar jobs pay even better. The low wage levels in Finland are one reason why Finland isn't really part of the losing team in the offshoring battle. In fact, because Finland is so cheap, I would imagine that Finns would be getting some of the jobs being offshored from other countries. And that means more jobs for Finns and more taxes for the government and more overall wealth. Doesn't look too shabby.

And to end up, I just want to suggest that everyone at least once in their life would actually try to take a realistic view of the world. It's not that shitty a place to be in, actually. And if it is, maybe you can do something about it. But if you do decide to do something about it, try not to wreck the entire place (e.g. the economical landscape as in the Tehy case) and maybe also keep in mind the simple thought that maybe you can get a lot more ahead in the game by just making sure that you're moving. I know, that's not fun because in a case like that you're the one doing the grunt work and you can't really freeload that much. And it seems that these days taking responsibility for one's self is becoming a rarer thing in general. Everyone keeps on blaming everyone else for their misery. I for one plan to just keep thinking up of plans and new plans and executing them while trying to work towards my personal longterm goals. And I'm not really assuming that any unions or any other entities will be helping me. I'm actually betting that they really won't, which just means that I'll have to just take that into account and carry more responsibility. But that's what makes this life so interesting.