Charity needs to be motivated by empathy.
There is very short supply of that magic ingredient in a multicultural society.
The primary motivation in such a society. is resentment and tribalism.

Dan

YES !
Particularly if the salary is multiple times greater than that minimum wage. I think that ALL above $100,000 Public Servants should have a salary reduction of 1%, above $150,000 a 1.2% reduction, & so on.
Those insanely overpaid bureaucrats' salaries above $300,000 should reduce by 5% & those above $500,000 should be reduced to $500,000 !
Add to that a Flat tax & Australia will be in great shape in a very short time !

Thanks to China and its virus, there are too many people out of work for pay rises to be discussed. The only people getting pay rises are politicians and public servants, safe in their non-productive jobs. Asking them if they would give up their pay rises would really be stupid. The very idea of suggesting that people in today's society would make sacrifices for others, or that lower paid workers would get more money, just because other people didn't, is also stupid.

Asking them if they would give up their pay rises
ttbn,
ASKING THEM ??
Put it up as an election issue & then we'll see who'll be doing the asking !

Why not? If someone taking home $100,000.00+ a year could manage on $80,000.00+ a year and that $20,000.00 went to a low-income individual?

It may increase their take-home by double. And without question that same money would return immediately to the local economy! And boost it significantly. And or allow huge, low-income, debt reduction!

Better than turning the same money into unneeded Executive bonuses and increased shareholder's dividends. Which does not seem to do much for the domestic economy!

But plenty for price gouging, tax avoiding, profit repatriating, debt-laden foregners?

We currently have folks trying to manage on around 20 grand a year or less, some of who may have been forced into early retirement by massive crippling injury?

Yet are still expected to pay the mortgage, the ever increasing, price-gouged utilities, health care and medication, some of which is not subsidised or covered by medicare; and for a reliable vehicle/house and yard care/maintenance/repairs.

Ask any one of them if they'd like to change places? While the higher paid tried to walk in their deminished shoes for at least six months, while headline seeking HIGHLY PAID pollies, waffle on about, the user must pay!

Question is, who is using who? And who expects those with the least to pay the lion's share while those doing all polly waffle, expect to live like kings! Or that the minds and bent backs of others earn all their income for them?

And I know you know who I mean,i.e., the (pigs on animal farm) guy/gal born in the log cabin, gouged from the wilderness, with his/her own bare hands!
Alan B.

Would you forgo all or part of a wage increase to top up the wages of the lowest paid workers?

No, and the idea is ridiculous.

I demand you stop trying to impose socialism;
And you instead teach people the proper rules of capitalism.

I support a hand-up not a hand-out.

We live under CAPITALISM.
Teach people how to succeed under CAPITALISM.
Teach them how to get ahead and create a foolproof system that ensures everyone does.

First you create a 'Socialist Base-level jobs system' just like we have a socialist base-level health and education systems that ensure everyone gets a basic education and adequate healthcare.

You offer double dole for full-time work doing things to help the government save money.
You also earn training credits that go towards the cost of new skills.

This job system removes the 'I can't get a job excuse', and ends half of society's social problems.

You can choose to do nothing with your life and get the bare minimum;
Or make the effort to do something with your life and get all the benefits.
But you make that choice, and you have to live with that choice.

Then you deal with the housing problem.
You use some of those workers to assemble transportable homes in big factories in every state that can be delivered and moved easily when necessarily.

You fix the energy and transport problems with the help of low cost workers. Build High Speed Rail, bring the country to the city, solar, nuclear, wind water dams - whatever it takes, lower the cost of transport and energy and the nation will be more productive and competitive.

You give people every bit of knowledge they need to start their own businesses and take advantage of all the things rich people take advantage of. Every sneaky loophole they are privvy to, you make everyone privvy to.

You remove the things that make people fail, and boost them with the tools to succeed.

Then you stop all this 'race to the bottom' talk.

Why is the lowest paid worker the lowest paid worker?

remove the things that make people fail,
Armchair Critic,
Exactly, make those on the public purse realise that many of them are literally & morally overpaid in return for exactly what ?
Don't you think such a tactic would bring us closer to any sort of competitiveness internationally ?
Surely, even you must see that many of our Middle income earners are failing us !

This article sounds straight out of "Atlas Shrugged" and the 20th Century Motor Company.

Many of the issues of poverty and homelessness in British culture go back to wrongs done 2000 years ago when the land was taken from the peasants. This was done on the basis of maximizing the utility of the land- there was some basis for this perhaps- for defense of the nation- but it was still perhaps wrongly implemented.

This created poverty and homelessness that still exists today.

The harnessing of the resources by organizations led incrementally to the industrial revolution and the benefits of mass markets. There is some irony here as the church was often the beneficiary of this resource grab and later the crown- however in the modern age they've become symbols of traditionalism and the protectors of culture.

You could argue that the benefits of the industrial revolution were "good". The embodiment of the industrial revolution brought with it the principles of Global Liberalism. Free to do what you want- individualism. Which led to mass population growth and damage to the environment and the Earth.

Once population reaches a threshold the see-saw shifts and "population requires industrialism" rather than "industrialism requires population".

As someone once said- technology enslaves but it's done in the name of freedom.

You could argue that mass population is no longer necessary to maintain the benefits of the industrial revolution and national security.

Population reduction would enable the land to be returned to the peasants and right the wrongs of history- then poverty would no longer exist.

There would still be inequality but it would be better- as there would be a built in safety net in the system.

Teach them how to harness capitalism!? Like in the slums of Calcutta/Manilla or any one of entrenched endemic postcode povety traps right here in arguably, the potentially, wealthiest country in the world?

If we wanted to give those on the bottom a hand up rather than the endless lip service to an idea. We could promote embrace and prosper cooperative capitalism using the same money we're using now simply to support recurrent spending, the stock market and COE's bonuses.

You know, we couldn't find the money to save the car industry/the footwear and textile industry! Had the hand out for foreign investors to buy this and that/the family farm/iconic industries.

But when the pandemic hit, had no prob finding hundreds of billons to pour into a virtuaal bottomless pit! And saw this huge prumped priming liquidity push the stock market through the roof, plus record profits and with them huge executive bonuses!

Anyone who knows how to succeed in business, knows you need proper capitalisation and competent management.

Those missing one or the other wind up in the jaws of the rat. Given what we have here, is not fair go capitalism but rat eat rat individualism.

One realls when we were the third wealthiest nation on the planet and a creditor one at that. A time when CEO's salaries never ever exceeded 30 multiples of the lowest-paid worker and parliamentary salaries were nothing to write home about. And co-ops were all the go!

And where the longest serving PM, left office not owning his own home. And the rest of the parliament passed the hat around and bought Sir Robert Menzies, one.

Some folk who clearly don't have a clue need to button it up or try talking from a little higher up!

If let to them the streets would be lined with coffee shops, door openers, sex workers and folk cooking rice and fish on the sidewalks or just pushing illicit drugs on to gormless kids. Well folks, that's what rat eat rat capitalism looks like, when that's all you have! Harness it, why dontcha!
Alan B.

Why is the lowest paid worker the lowest paid worker?
Armchair Critic,
Because the highest paid are squeezing for every Cent in their favour.
Why are the highest paid getting so much /
Because of their Domino effect structure, that's why !

Some good ideas here. Something has to be done to end the increasingly unequal situation of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. The privileged - those on high incomes - are getting far too much for what they do while others - essential workers doing hard jobs - are getting too little.

Liked the idea of paying double Newstart for people to do public works.

Another major problem is the excessive cost of housing brought about by conservative government policies that have encouraged speculation in real estate for the past 15 or more years

To solve all of these problems will require more not less government interventions. I suggest:
- End negative gearing on established homes and take away preferential treatment of capital gains and tax item as ordinary income.
- Increase state owned low cost housing
- Increase top tax rates and no more tax breaks for the rich
- End the plundering of the economy by corporate and government elites by mandating that no-one including CEO's can earn more than the Prime Minister.
- Make any company tax breaks dependent on the number of people they employ so the money saved by rationalizing the amount the elites are paid would go into more jobs.

The minimum wage should be regarded not as a form of charity, but as the minimum value of work done here. A higher minimum wage encourages automation, boosting productivity. Ensuring sufficient jobs are available should be a higher priority, but there are better ways of ensuring sufficient jobs are available than keeping wages low.

_______________________________________________________________________________

Canem,
>Many of the issues of poverty and homelessness in British culture go back to
>wrongs done 2000 years ago when the land was taken from the peasants.
ITYM 200 years ago. And the claim's rather dubious, as the problem of poverty was taken very seriously in the 20th century, and homelessness is usually the result of unaddressed mental health issues, not mere poverty.

Leonard Nimoy as Spock said this;

"This troubled planet is a place of the most violent contrasts. Those who receive the rewards are totally separated from those who shoulder the burdens.
It's not a wise leadership"

People without jobs - thanks to the panic and incompetence of Australian politicians with their stupid lockdowns - would probably like to have an actual job rather than hear this ninny rabbit on about pay rises.

ttbn,
Most of the Australians I know don't differ all that much from our politicians !

That could be the reason why we have the politicians we do.

Posted by Aidan-

"Canem, Many of the issues of poverty and homelessness in British culture go back to wrongs done 2000 years ago when the land was taken from the peasants.
ITYM 200 years ago. And the claim's rather dubious, as the problem of poverty was taken very seriously in the 20th century, and homelessness is usually the result of unaddressed mental health issues, not mere poverty."

Answer-

There's too many people.

There's "a lot of talk" about poverty in the 20th century and mentally ill homelessness but I view this differently. In the past due to less compact living, less red tape ,the churches role in local culture, closer communities- perhaps greater capacity to help locals even the mentally ill find shelter, etc. Government the panacea of "The Liberal Age" is a blunt instrument with many gaps. That doesn't mean there was necessarily less poverty. There's a balance between stability and flexibility but the unseen vulnerable are more exposed to "modern flexibility".

I did mean 2000 years ago. 200 years ago in the Napoleonic Wars the peasants were long land dispossessed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bookland_(law)

"Folkland" was land held under ancient, unwritten folk-law or custom and by that custom it could not be alienated (i.e., removed) from the kin of the holder, except under special circumstances.

The desirability of possessing unencumbered "bookland" in preference to "folkland" must have been immediately apparent to the laity, as Bede complained in a letter to Archbishop Ecgbert of York in 731, regarding the vast tracts of land acquired by "pretended monks" whose licentious interests were anything but Christian. To begin with, church land under bookright was exempt from taxation and immune from the trimodia necessitas, that is, the upkeep of bridges and fortifications on the land, and the provision of military service, or fyrd. These immunities were removed from church land by the end of the 8th century, perhaps in response to the situation of which Bede complains.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Poor_Laws (1349)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_English_land_law

"The history of English land law... Roman times.. post-Roman chieftains... for most of human history, land was the dominant source of personal wealth."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primogeniture#Arguments

As for getting the politicians we deserve, it is frightening how easily Australians (particularly Victorians) have been convinced that the government has the right to remove most of their freedoms on no more than a whim.

Australians are ripe for totalitarianism, and we don't need China to enforce it on us; we have the likes of Daniel Andrews and his politicised police goons here already. And, most Victorians support such terror against freedom of speech and thought.

ttbn. Andrews, soon to retire? Is pretty much a one-man show at the moment.

His curfews have achieved one thing, enforced (the missing compliance) compliance which has seemed to have been the missing element in his state, given the undeniable community (person to person) transmission rates created that second wave!

It's said, you can always tell a Victorian, but you can't tell them very much.

What I don't yet is the fact that we seem to have a reliable test which gives a conclusie result in seconds, i.e., the Israeli Saliva test. But have yet to acquire it/a licence to manufacture and deploy it ASAP. And I get that that same Saliva could also be used to detect illicit drugs in the system.

[As for those testing positive being allowed to attend a funeral? Allowed if fully dressed in medically approved P.E's, gowns, masks, gloves and face shields. Did not interact intimately with the other attendees! Maintained a two-metre social distance!]

With something like that in the arsenal, we could locate testing stations at the nearest (can't drive around that dumbo) bridge to this or that border crossing, Supermarket, sports or entertainment venues and international exit and entry points, with those testing negative allowed to proceed and those testing positive, sent to our currently unused refugee detention centres for a mandatory two-four weeks or when three conclusive tests prove negative, whichever is the sooner.

Given that was the template, all the lockdowns could cease and borders and economy reopened/restarted.

Albeit, I want to retain social distancing, hand hygiene and the mandated wearing of masks in public. Given the quite massive reduction in the flu and common cold this year!
Alan B.

It'd be a struggle trying to manage on 80 grand a year! And the things I could no longer buy as soon they hit the shelves. Why I'd have to manage with the same car/phone/PC/laptop/tablet etc., for five years! I'd only be able to see the local barber once every two months.

And forgo the pub sessions and take my beverages at home? Or in a flask. Might have to take a packed lunch to work?

May even have to spend some time in the garden planting food/fruit and veges? Lord knows, that'd be too tough surely?

On the flip side, when the economy improves quite quickly, with the huge increase in the discretionary spend, my sacrifice and yours created! And the economy just went from strength to strength. My/your sacrifice would be elimiated via the pay increases that would quickly flow through to all and the increased discretionary spend could become entrenched and permanent.

And we halved the cost of living/just doing business, by outlawing paper shuffling, profit demanding middlemen, who as usual, add nothing productive at all!

In which case a 20% salay sacrifice for all those earning a 100 grand or better a year, would be very worthwhile! As would be, genune tax reform, manifesting as a single unavoidable 15% flat tax we all pay, as the only tax take, above a generous, tax-free threshold!
Alan B.

A salary cut would be of most benefit to the ones taking the biggest cut ! Problem is that they're not smart enough to realise that !