Dear MEL Topic Readers,
Geneva adopts what's believed to be the highest minimum wage in the world, at $25 an hour
Geneva is located in the French part of Switzerland and is the gateway to France. The population of the city including the suburban municipalities is around 500,000, the second largest in the mountainous country. There are headquarters of many international agencies and institutions in Geneva, such as the UN and the Red Cross. It is indeed a rich city whose gross domestic production, or GDP, per capita is one of the highest in the world. It is then one of the most expensive places in the world to live in. In fact, this high cost-of-living economy pushes Geneva’s the poverty line to nearly 4,000 Swiss Frac, or about 4,300 US dollars a month, a much higher level than any other major cities in the world. In order to fight this extremely high poverty, the city has decided to raise the minimum hourly wage to 25 US dollars, twice as high as the one of neighboring France, or 10 times higher than Shanghai’s. It was supported by nearly 60% of the voters and will affect 6% of the total, or about 30,000, workers in the canton, two-thirds of whom are women.
While a higher pay sounds alluring, a higher cost of living seems riskier to live in when the world suffers from political and economical uncertainty with the pandemic.
Enjoy reading the article and think about what life is like where everyone earns many times higher wages than your hometown.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/10/03/world/geneva-switzerland-minimum-wage-trnd/index.html
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