[gaius]

Minimum wage laws destroy low-paying jobs by making them illegal, preventing the least competitive members of our society from having the hours and days of their lives "mined" by an employer for negligible compensation.

Except this is simply not true. Germany, where workers enjoy generous terms and privileges even for Western Europe, has no minimum wage, and its labour unions vocally oppose introducing one. Countries such as the US and UK with minimum wages have higher unemployment, and things are more precarious even for those in employment.

[gregholmberg]

Declaring the German labor market to be a success while counting only German unemployment is misleading, something like saying US fiscal and labor policy is a blowout success because of yet another year of record low unemployment in North Dakota.

To measure the effectiveness of the policies that lead to German job creation, we need to count every worker who is receiving a wage in the German national currency against the workers who wanted to, and legally could have received wages in that currency.

When we look at the whole picture, the situation is ugly and getting worse. Headline unemployment averaged across the European single currency area is now 10.4% and rising rapidly. [0]

Germany is a manufacturing powerhouse, and its exports are currently red hot. Any breakup of EMU would brutally reprice those goods. I would expect this to lead to significant German unemployment.

[0] "Eurozone unemployment hits new record" http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16808672 - 31 January 2012

[gaius]

who wanted to, and legally could have received wages in that currency

There's the rub: how many unemployed Greeks have the skills to work in a German factory?