Copies of my book Your Future in Your Hands, proposing a simple tax system which would remove the disincentives to employment of our existing dreadful tax system are available free to anyone who drops by to our office in Brisbane. Am happy to post copies to anyone for a nominal handling charge. Tax is like the weather, everybody complains about it but nobody does anything. Here is something everybody can do. We cannot change the weather but we can create a prosperous community which can cope with the demands of extreme weather events.

John M, your comments woukd be better suited back in the 80's, however nowadays, more and more finacial transactions are cashless, meaning a financial transaction tax would be far better today, than back then.

Having said that, a financial transaction tax is far better an option than a 2% sales tax, as money can be used many times over, but only ever spent once by any one person.

Bring it on I say, because blind Freddie can see that the tax systems we have today are past their use by dates and, if some very serious tax reform is not implemented sooner, rather than latter, it may simply be a case of too little too late.

The secrete is to tax money, not people.

And John I would love to receive a copy of your book and if email suits, simply ask Graham for my address.

Cheers

Cheryl and Arjay

Defining people in work as employed seem to me more appropriate than calling them unemployed, even if some of them don’t work very long hours. Most part-timers are happy with the hours they work, and prefer part-time work for a range of valid reasons. Defining those who want longer hours as “under-employed” also seems to me an appropriate description.

There is no conspiracy here, or attempt to deceive the media, or to hide under-employment for political reasons. The under-employment numbers are there on the ABS website for anyone who takes the trouble to look.

Arjay, I’m not nit picking. I accepted the validity of parts of Malcolm’s argument, but his use of the change seasonally adjusted in data is shonky, and he should know it

Rhian, call it what you like, even defend the system, but the reality is that ANYONE who works ONE HOUR PER WEEK, even if it's UNPAID WORK, being defined as EMPLOYED is nothing but a joke and a way of manipulating the numbers to make ANY GOVERNMENT look better than they are, and they (all governments) are guilty of using these false numbers to their advantage.

It is quite simply time for ALL GOVERNMENTS to man up and come clean about the real state of unemployment in this country.

rehctub

If one hour a week is too low, how about 10, or 20, or 30, or 35?

As 579 has already explained, very few people work less than 5 hours a week; and of those who do, most no not want to work longer hours. Even if we count them as unemployed, which seems an odd thing to do, 579 has also shown the effect on measured unemployment would be pretty small.

If they don’t merit counting as employed, I think the most logical category for them would be “not in the labour force” (ie neither employed not unemployed) – in which case excluding them would have a no effect on the number of unemployed and a negligible effect on the unemployment rate.

Yes Rhian, while I can see your logic here, why then are these very low hour jobs counted as, jobs we created, by governments.

After all, one of the main problems with the current method of calculation is just that, they (government) use the numbers to their advantage, with statements like " we have created ?? Jobs this month.

So perhaps your suggestion of not reporting jobs of less than say 14 hours per week would be the better solution, as those on the dole receive about that in net pay per day (low skilled rates).

So if we remove these from both the jobs created and the unemployed, I think this would work well.