There are some, like me, who oppose the minimum wage on principle. But there are others who support the idea but who find the proposal to hike the minimum wage to 560$ pretty extreme.
Ghassan Karam is such an economist, and after doing some back-of-the-envelop calculations he concluded:
the Lebanese proposal would make the Lebanese minimum wage [..] the highest such wage rate in the world. Actually had it not been for Argentina, Venezuela and Turkey the Lebanese rate could easily be judged to be twice the global average for countries at its level of GDP per capita
This is insane. The FPM has decided to make this about politics instead of sound economics. It is an act of irresponsible populism that the FPM members themselves know is not good for the economy. This is an in-your-face buying of votes at the expense of growth and employment.
Messrs. Mikati and Safadi should fight this tooth-and-nail and use politics if they had to. They should threaten to resign rather than approve such an abomination.
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Unfortunately, it is not just the minimum wage that’s the problem. The proposal will shift the entire pay structure upwards, making it unaffordable for some companies to reward good performers with higher pay increases and poor performers with no pay increases. This is a disaster for the management of many institutions.
560$ is now an abomination? Seems like some of us are sitting in an ivory tower casting judgement.