And? I don't see your point.
The point is simply to put another dent in the binary, superficial, black & white vision some Iranians tend to have in their imagined representation of living conditions in Iran and the west. It shows us that the working class and lower income groups in Germany are far from being exempt of pressures.
That the German regime was finally compelled to introduce a minimum wage after so many years, is due to the fact that the plight of the lowest income categories in one of the wealthiest economies of the world, was becoming intolerable and disgraceful. The fact that German elites resisted anything resembling a minimum income for so long, goes to show how low popular welfare ranks among their preoccupations and priorities.
There are millions of people that work more than 44 hours per week in Iran and are paid less than the minimum wage. Open job finding websites in Iran and you will see that a lot of positions are offering 10,000,000 IRR to 25,000,000 IRR for a full-time job, which is below the minimum wage.
There are jobs in Iran where the worker works for 6 days per week, for 9 hours a day. There are millions of them actually. (which is against the law in Iran, but they still exist)
8 million people work on illegal jobs in Germany. That's almost 20% of the active population, and the biggest illegal job market in Europe. The damage it causes to the regular economy is estimated at more than 300 billion Euros.
See:
https://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtsch...uropas-deutschland-arbeitet-schwarz-1.1695472
If you reside in a large German city, you should look for the local "Arbeiterstrich": reputed places in the middle of town where workers, mainly Eastern Europeans, illegally offer their services to unscrupulous employers. Many of them are homeless, by the way.
These sorts of things were virtually unheard of some decades ago, and are usually associated with developing nations. But here they are, in Germany right now.
And their own public TV broadcaster ZDF had a report in October about working conditions which are akin to slavery. It tells of people compelled to work more than 40 hours, for salaries on which they cannot subsist, i. e. revenues that are not enough to earn a living, in the words of the ZDF itself.
You can look it up here:
https://www.zdf.de/dokumentation/zd...gerloehne-lohnsklaven-in-deutschland-102.html
In a German state such as Bremen, no less than 40% of the labor force have precarious jobs.
See:
https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.d...im-akkord.1001.de.html?dram:article_id=390475
Yes, that's true. But similar situation exists everywhere, including Iran.
How many people do you think work in internet taxis like Snapp and Tap30 as their second job?
There are workers in Germany whose only occupation consists in one or several mini-jobs... with no full-time work to serve as their main source of income.
And while such situations can be found in Iran too, it is many times more scandalous to witness these things in the world's fourth wealthiest nation. Germany definitely has much fewer excuses for allowing it than a developing country such as Iran.
First of all, you don't have to pay the church tax if you are not a Christian. It is not compulsory. And it is transparent and insignificant, unlike Iran where people continuously claim that Mullahs are stealing their money due to the lack of transparency.
Yes, but I never claimed that the church tax is elevated. I mentioned it along with the others, in order not to omit anything.
As for Iran, many Iranians happen to have erroneous beliefs, fed to them by the enemy's formidable propaganda apparatus. Particularly when it comes to the clergy, which is a systematic scapegoat.
Also I don't see how the two matters can be compared, since the Iranian clergy isn't financed through government-collected taxes but through khoms and zakat contributions made on a voluntary basis by the faithful.
Plus, the clergy is also a major provider of social welfare via the pious foundations it manages (vaqf and religious bonyad).
And speaking of transparency and robbing the public of its resources, tax evasion in Germany - which is mostly done by major corporations and other businesses, is estimated at 100 billion Euros a year (50 billion of downright evasion and another 50 billion owing to aggressive tax dodging, i. e. using methods and constructs on the verge of illegality...). Which puts Germany in second position at the EU level after Italy.
I'm sure that the average German citizen, and particularly the poor, the unemployed and the downtrodden workers with precarious jobs who are made to work with full intensity but can hardly afford a decent living, would love to see the regime in Berlin do more to curtail this phenomenon, which would perhaps make it more difficult for the regime to invoke "toughening global competition" as a justification for welfare cuts.
But then again, economic and political elites in western capitalist societies are interlinked and often overlap to such an extent that this right of the people will keep getting violated.
Some references:
Brigitte Unger, wissenschaftliche Direktorin des WSI in der Hans-Böckler-Stiftung, über Steueroasen und Steuersünder-CDs: „Es ist ein mühsamer Weg, die Elite wieder dazu zu bringen, ihren Beitrag zu einer zivilisierten Gesellschaft zu leisten.“
www.boeckler.de
Die Enthüllungen der "Panama Papers" haben Steuerfahndern viel Arbeit eingebracht. Durch die Aufdeckung der Steueroase würden viele Millionen Euro nun in die Staatskasse fließen, sagte Thomas Eigenthaler von der Deutschen Steuergewerkschaft im Dlf. Aber Steuerhinterziehung gebe es weiterhin - in...
www.deutschlandfunk.de
Actually, I used a calculator and the exact number ranges from 1177.21 Euros to 1271.56 Euros. But you can continue with your 1,100 Euros.
Well, I didn't simply take a guess, but obtained the figure using the following online income calculator:
https://www.nettolohn.de/
The number it gave was almost equal to 1100 Euros.
Still several times more than what Iranians can purchase, particularly when it comes to red meat (I didn't check your numbers, but I trust you).
My point stands that there is nothing out of the ordinary about this, considering that Germany has the fourth highest GDP worldwide, whereas Iran is a mid-income, developing country.
I didn't reduce tax from the Iranian net salary (only 7% for compulsory social security). So, no. It does not.
If you deduced the compulsory social security contribution from the figure you gave for the Iranian minimum wage, then you ought to have done the same for the German minimum wage, especially as social security contributions for minimum wage earners amount to some 10%-11% in Germany, and are thus more elevated than in Iran.
The income tax on the minimum wage in Germany is of 14%.
Now I would have a hard time believing that Iranians who earn the minimum wage, have to pay an 18% income tax on their salary. If the social security contribution in Iran equals 7%, that's about 4% less than in Germany; and since the income tax on the minimum wage in Germany amounts to 14%, then it follows that in order for the total tax burden to be identical, the income tax on the minimum wage in Iran must reach 18%, which I doubt is the case.
Furthermore it is hardly a secret that in Iran, tax evasion isn't a monopoly of corporations and upper income classes who have the means to hire fiscal lawyers and open offshore accounts in tax havens, but it is a widespread practice including among lower income earners.
Also the Iranian state does not have a perfectly comprehensive tax collection and monitoring system in place, and evasion is not as systematically sanctioned as in Germany (despite the fact that criticisms are levelled against German authorities for being too lenient in this regard). Which is actually typical for an oil-exporting, developing country and which is why the topic has been a subject of public and political debates for quite some time, in the framework of discussions about economic transition away from oil dependence.
Therefore it does make a difference since overall, the tax burden on Iranian workers and employees is not as heavy as on their German counterparts.
So you're saying that the inefficiency of Iranians is actually a good thing? Plus, that's not something that can be measured. So, it's irrelevant to our calculations.
I am saying that the rhythm of labor being generally less intensive and therefore less stressful in Iran, this implies a decreased burden on employees and thus represents a bonus in terms of their living conditions.
It may not be quantifiable, but that's precisely why these calculations have their limits, for there are aspects relevant to quality of life that are outside their scope, and others which do not fit into a single type of equation.
Millions of people from cities near Tehran, like Karaj, Pardis, even as far as some places close to Qazvin, spend 3 hours or even more in traffic to go back and forth between their home and their workplace.
These towns fall into the Greater Tehran metropolitan and/or economic area. That's what I was referring to when citing Tehran. And it remains true that this problem is specific to the Tehran area, i. e. to some 19% of Iran's population. Meaning that 81% are unaffected by it.
Actually the figure for Iran is 64.4% which is obviously lower in urban areas like Tehran, Isfahan, etc. The same figure in Tehran is 48%. While Germany is a federal system, all cities and provinces in Iran follow the same laws. Meaning that people in Tehran or other big cities are basically screwed.
I don't see how laws come into play, since real estate prices are determined by the market. It is a fact that rents are lower in provincial cities of Iran compared to Tehran.
By the way, here's an interesting piece from 2019, showing how hard it has become for many to find affordable housing in Germany, and particularly in its most expensive city of Munich:
Finding a place to live in Germany is “extremely difficult”, often
www.thelocal.de
True, but we are not talking about reasons, we are talking about facts now. The issue of the management incompetency of the IR is a whole other discussion.
Not of the IR, but of the liberal factions within its establishment. The revolutionary core has done a great job at developing the economy and the society since 1979.
Follow the link below to access the UNDP's 2014 Human Development Report. On page 164, it features a table of HDI trends from 1980 to 2013.
We can see that from 1980 to 2013, Iran has had an average annual HDI growth of almost 1.32. This is a very high figure, up there with the most succesful countries. It is superior to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, nevermind western countries. It is even slightly superior to Turkey.
Also note that figures mentioned in this discussion tend to be skewed by the Rohani administration's unprecedented mismanagement, and the subsequent inflation it caused. This is something that is potentially subject to rapid conjunctural upward swings, provided corrective measures are taken. We might as well take figures from four years ago and results would considerably differ and would put the purchasing power of Iranians at significantly higher levels.
In other terms the issue here is more of a temporary than of a structural nature. Of course, when a liberal and western-apologetic administration is in charge, which does not believe in domestic production unless internationally competitive, which sells the idea to voters that their economic well-being strictly depends on the volume of international transactions (preferably with the west), and which uses economic pressure on its own constituency as a political tool to help it get reelected by arguing that sanctions relief is the key to growth and that it is the only party capable of obtaining such sanctions relief through negotiations, this is what you get.
But let's not blame those within the system whose policies and beliefs are at the opposite of this failed liberal approach. They have proven their worth and their impressive achievements are palpable all over the country.
Once more, in comparison to other developing nations as well as to the situation prior to the Islamic Revolution, when the western-leaning shah regime was putting in charge managers with a western outlook, oftentimes graduates from western universities who imagined, by virtue of the fact that they had a western type of education, that they would be able to transform Iran into a second Japan in a matter years, the current system has a better record in terms of improving the living conditions of Iranians.
As confirmed by studies such as these:
Why the claim that the average standard of living has fallen since the revolution is false.
djavadsalehi.com
We were talking about the middle class in Iran. People in low income neighborhoods in Iran do not live "in houses that look like palaces compared to Germany".
But, middle class isn't the same as lower income class. Those being paid the minimum wage are working class rather than middle class.
They live in neighborhoods that many of them remind you of the Slumdog Millionaire movie.
I hardly ever watch commercial motion pictures produced by multinational corporations. So I must admit I don't really know what exactly is shown in "Slumdog Millionaire".
However, what I can declare with certainty is that any analogy between impoverished areas of metropolitan centers in India and Iran would be generally speaking out of place.
With regards to India, we're talking about neighborhoods which to a large extent still lack basic services such as clean running water, where 30% of households on average have no access to electricity, where there's a lack of in-house lavatories leading people to relieve themselves on the streets, and where the coronavirus lockdown recently led to a resurgence of famine if not starvation...
NEW DELHI (AP) — Dharam Singh Rajput can’t afford to buy hand sanitizer, which could help ward off transmission of the coronavirus in his community.
apnews.com
In a country where malnutrition is entrenched, especially among children, there is the danger of hunger becoming widespread too.
indianexpress.com
Low income districts of Tehran, whether Shush, Molavi, Nazi Abad, Jey, Nezam Abad, Khake Sefid or etc, are far from suffering these sorts of calamities.
Also, we were not talking about luxury super markets in Tehran that the prices can be sometimes even multiple times higher than what I accounted for. And while your objection can apply to vegetables, fruits or eggs, it does not apply to meat or milk as the prices for those goods is nearly identical all over Iran.
Still, 'payn shahr' markets should be significantly cheaper than these online platforms. People earning the minimum wage will be shopping in said markets rather than at Digikala.
Then, while I know it is part of traditional Iranian diet, red meat is actually of questionable health value. Eggs and other sources of protein are preferable on the whole.
This is fading extremely fast in the middle class in Iran, particularly in urban areas. Germans also have family values, you know. Particularly families with Christian values. It's not like it doesn't exist in Germany at all.
I didn't claim otherwise, but the difference is still considerable between Iran and Germany when it comes to traditional forms of solidarity.
This includes the extended family, and also generous private individuals. In Germany, one does not find as many people like this gentleman either:
By the way, speaking of meat consumption, I came accross this highly interesting paper from last year, which debunks BBC Farsi propaganda about red meat consumption of Iranians. Additionally, it informs us that "the drop in consumption of red meat is more than offset by increased consumption of chicken, doubling the total intake of animal protein from these two sources":
The rapid increase in the price of meat in the last few months has turned this food item of dubious health value into the lightning rod for the suffering of Iranian consumers. Viewers of the BBC P…
djavadsalehi.com
Reduce the cost of those cheap meals that they offer in Ashura, Tasua and Arbaeen from the overall cost of living. It's 11 days (at most) in a year.
It is more than that. We may add occasions such as 22 Bahman, Qods Day, other birthdays or martyrdom days of Imams (as), and also private food donations on occasions such as the demise of a relative etc.
And even 11 free meals a year is something no German on minimum wage would be ungrateful about.
But it goes beyond the above. To provide another example, many Iranian upper class households employ domestic workers, who are entitled to free meals (from what they themselves prepare for their employers). Such domestic work is not widespread in Germany at all.
And so on, examples are manifold. There is simply a set of solidarity networks and indirect forms of assistance in Iran that has no equivalent in western and other developed societies, and which directly benefits the lower income groups.
Fair enough. So you agree that it's still several times higher. Don't you?
My whole point revolved around:
1) Introducing a series of facts that tend to reduce the gap nominally suggested by those calculations.
2) Insisting on the fact that differences in purchasing power are the rule between the fourth richest economy on earth and a mid-income country, and that any other expectation would be misplaced.
There is nothing abnormal about Iran's ranking vis a vis Germany. As opposed to the delusions cultivated in the minds of many Iranians by enemy media, which leads them to absurd beliefs such as that in case of a "regime change", Iran's GDP would leap to German or Japanese levels overnight - when in fact, a downfall of the Islamic Republic would on the contrary and doubtlessly be followed by a balkanization of Iran, permanent instability and a stark worsening of people's economic conditions.
3) Underscoring that in comparison to other developing nations, the Islamic Republic has in fact done a very satisfactory job. And even more so when factoring in that this was done while preserving Iran's sovereignty against imperial predators, a privilege most other countries in the world are deprived of, and in spite of sanctions and constant multi-pronged destabilization attempts.
You do realize that Iran, inter alia, sits on the world's third largest oil reserves, second largest natural gas reserves, largest helium reserves and it enjoyed a young population for nearly half a century. Right? It's not like Iran does not have the resources to succeed.
The contrary is actually the case here: as per wide consensus among economists, oil and natural resources are hindrances to development, not opportunities, as paradoxical as it may sound.
I would recommend researching the specialized literature on the topic. Indeed, exporters of crude energy resources face an intrinsic structural issue, namely overevaluation of their national currency. This is turn reduces incentives for investment in other export-oriented industries, due to insufficient competitivity stemming from said currency overevaluation.
Likewise, the amount of technological development and investment required to kickstart a vast industrial base, is deemed prohibitive as compared to the extraction of crude oil or gas. The latter furthermore allows for positive returns on investment in shorter timespans.
The relative lack of investment in domestic non-oil technologies in turn means dependence on foreign corporations for extraction and sale of oil. Which implies joint-venture contracts, and sharing profits with foreign investors.
The net result is a heavily mono-sectorial economy deeply dependent on oil and its price fluctuations, where diversification is made enormously difficult. Along with this economic dependence on oil and its foreign buyers, manifesting itself in wholesale imports of the entire range of high-value added, high-tech goods (and even ordinary consumer goods), usually comes political dependence.
So what may seem as a blessing is really a curse for both economic and human development.
In effect, of the handful of national economies which successfully transitioned from developing to developed (south Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, ...), none was oil-exporting.
Similarly, of the oil-exporting economies of the south, hardly anyone managed to transition away from oil-dependence and diversify its industrial output. In fact, Iran has been one of the most successful countries worldwide when it comes to this monumental task, perhaps along with Malaysia. Because Iran went from a thoroughly oil-dependent economy to one where oil revenues represent no more than 40% of the budget. This places Iran far ahead of countries like Saudi Arabia, which exported much greater quantities and earned way more (especially per capita) from its oil.
But despite the glitzy towers they made foreign companies build with their oil incomes, where is Saudi Arabia now in terms of industrial development, and where is Iran? Even as far as the growth rate of HDI or human development is concerned, Iran beat Saudi Arabia over the past four decades.
Ironically, US-imposed sanctions and the relative dearth of investment in the oil and gas sector that they provoked, proved helpful in pushing Iran to develop its non-oil economy. This was furthermore aided by a strong political will and adequate macro-economic policies conducted by the Islamic Republic.
Yes, keep convincing yourself that Iranians live in palaces compared to Germans while if you exclude some well-developed parts of Tehran, Karaj, Isfahan, Tabriz, Shiraz, etc. millions of Iranians live in houses that look like from World War II movies.
I was referring to Raghfarm007's initial posts in this thread, which is to say posts number 13 and 18:
This is a continuation of a topic started in the automotive section regarding Iranians outside of Iran and their descendants. For some reasons I have a hard time to understand why many Iranians think of any one living outside of iran as being "monarchist" or "mko"... yes there are some of...
defence.pk
Not so much, especially as the offspring in the new country are in fact a hybrid in terms of culture and the east/west concern gets very blurred. I don't see it as a struggle to adapt anew as much as changes/adaptations happening organically over time. Everyone outside of Iran is still...
defence.pk
Where he correctly mentions the discrepancy between actual reality and the distorted, binary, simplistic and out-of-touch notions which many Iranians have come to adopt about life in the west vs life in Iran, due to the systematic, western-sponsored psy-ops and propaganda they are subjected to.
Yesterday was the anniversary of the Bam Earthquake. Go see where people lived and why over 26,000 people died in an earthquake that wasn't even strong to begin with.
The shock of the Bam earthquake was rated IX out of XII, or 'Violent' on the modified Mercalli intensity scale.
It takes time to replace all traditionally built, less earthquake-resistant housing in a country the size of Iran.
What is the German equivalent of Zahedan, I wonder?
There are enough poverty stricken places in Germany. In fact, everything from Frankfurt northwards is full of socially wrecked areas. Take notorious examples such as Darmstadt or Offenbach south of Frankfurt. Kreuzberg, Neukölln, Wedding or Marzahn in Berlin (although the first two are said to have experienced gentrification in the last few decades, much of these districts are still avoided by whomever can afford to). Or Altona and Mitte in Hamburg. Try North-Central Essen or Nordstadt of Dortmund. Chorweiler in Köln. Marxloh in Duisburg. Ückendorf in Gelsekirchen. Gröpelingen in Bremen.
And one should avoid fixating on the outer appearance: the degradation is within, it is anchored deep inside the social fabric of these places. As a matter of fact, the shiny skyscrapers of downtown Frankfurt are virtually just a stone's throw away from a red light district filled with crack junkie prostitutes and endless streams of human misery. At the feet of those towers, after nightfall when the banks are closed, small time delinquents and/or organized criminals from Offenbach push cocaine to wealthy consumers. The nearby main central station, as every major railway station in Germany, has its "Bahnhofsmission", where some of the city's homeless are given minimal aid. In a way it makes the whole thing more wicked, to witness so much degradation beneath a pristine outer skin.
In some of these zones, arguably 50% or more of the inhabitants either are engaging in or have at some point engaged in criminal activities, are jobless or struggling to make ends meet, or are affected by some mental or chronic physical illness.
And this is Germany, which is still relatively well off in comparison to the rest of Europe. Let's leave aside the hardcore ghettos of Brussels, London or Paris... Speaking of which, I just found this here, it's in German and shows some "magnificent luxurious palace" inhabited by "lucky immigrants" who "found paradise" in a suburb of Paris (< I'm not referring to you here, please do not take it personally; I'm in fact thinking of those people from developing countries who completely succumb to western propaganda, like for example Iranians who watch BBC / Manoto all day and believe everything they say) (regarding the video: yes, it is urine in the middle of the floor, and yes, that is trash littering the ground everywhere inside the building):
Mind you, these are the areas which produced thousands of degenerate ISIS volunteers... How gloomy must their existences have been, how much social violence, sickness and perversion must they have been exposed to in the west to turn into such monsters.
) Inam kose shere jadidet hast? 
