{"id":7635,"date":"2015-04-28T05:23:28","date_gmt":"2015-04-28T10:23:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=7635"},"modified":"2015-04-28T05:23:28","modified_gmt":"2015-04-28T10:23:28","slug":"what-makes-brussels-more-equal-than-others","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=7635","title":{"rendered":"What Makes Brussels More Equal Than Others"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"posttitle\"><a class=\"entry-title\" title=\"What Makes Brussels More Equal Than Others\" href=\"http:\/\/www.theautomaticearth.com\/2015\/04\/what-makes-brussels-more-equal-than-others\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">What Makes Brussels More Equal Than Others<\/a><\/h3>\n<p>Dutch daily Algemeen Dagblad ran a little article recently that we\u2019re surprised no other news organization picked up. It concerned a proposal in the European Parliament in which the parliamentarians got to vote on raising their own paycheck (always a good idea). The best thing about the story is that not everyone voted in favor.<\/p>\n<p>Most did though. It much amused me to see that apparently it was Angela Merkel\u2019s party, the German Christian Democrats, which was behind the proposal. Initially, they had even wanted double what they actually got. Here\u2019s some numbers and details \u2013 and please forgive me for not being a math wizard -.<\/p>\n<p>A Member of the European Parliament (MEP), according to the article, receives the following for their valiant and entirely selfless efforts at public service:<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Salary: \u20ac8000+<br \/>\n\u2022 Expenses: \u20ac4300<br \/>\n\u2022 A per diem allowance of \u20ac300 for every day a meeting is attended.<\/p>\n<p>Per year that adds up to: \u20ac147.600 + \u20ac30,000 if 100 meetings are attended. Let\u2019s say \u20ac180,000.<\/p>\n<p>On top of that, the Parliament pays into MEPs pension funds, but we\u2019ll leave that alone for now.<\/p>\n<p>There are 751 MEPs, so total \u2018salary\u2019 costs are \u20ac135,180,000. But that\u2019s just the start.<\/p>\n<p>And we\u2019re not yet adding translation costs, which apparently can add up to over \u20ac120,000 per day (!), or perhaps some \u20ac30-40 million per year.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What Makes Brussels More Equal Than Others Dutch daily Algemeen Dagblad ran a little article recently that we\u2019re surprised no other news organization picked up. It concerned a proposal in the European Parliament in which the parliamentarians got to vote on raising their own paycheck (always a good idea). The best thing about the story [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[95,283,4985,4984,4987,4986],"class_list":["post-7635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-brussels","tag-european-parliament","tag-member-of-the-european-parliament","tag-mep","tag-pension","tag-salary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7635"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7635\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7636,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7635\/revisions\/7636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}