Agree! Wages on average are just 16% of the cost to the bottom line, whereas the middle energy costs as much or more than 30%! The last rising cost of energy has caused most of our inflation.

And not assisted by the paper shuffling, profit demanding middleman! Nor Commission sales people talking up prices to increase their margins!

If all commission sales were outlawed and replaced by salaried staff, this would force the real estate industry to replace margins with volume to stay afloat! Thus putting downward pressure on house prices!

And this would also remove a large portion of parasite realtors from the industry!

As for energy? We can force the price of this way way down with new technology! That technology being MSR thorium and prices as low as 1 cent PKWH! And far far cheaper than renewables!

And if adopted here would indeed create an energy super power 24/7! And not just when the sun shines or the wind blows!

And the latter needs still expensive batteries to be reliable 24/7 adding considerably to (Tripling) retail costs, more so if we retain the middleman, paper shuffling, profit demanding and unecessary wholesaler!

Talk about not being able to see the forest for the trees or shooting oneself in one's own economic foot!

Way too many people know about MSR thorium for Labor to continue to claim renewables are the cheapest!

Q. How can we tell when a pollie is lying?
A. His/her lips move!
Alan B.

Correction. The "middle" energy costs should simply read the energy costs. A virus moves text and words to try and force me to buy Macfee security.

What's the odds that MacFee is the source of that text and word moving virus? And bound to fail given I will never ever buy any MacFee product! So carry on MacFee, I've got nothing but time.
Alan B.

Inflation is too much money chasing too few goods and services. Increasing wages as per Labor ignorance would be like the proverbial dog chasing its tail. Governments need to cut spending; so do individuals.

The violins are out for the working poor!

Here are some quick fix ideas to help the working poor, and the desperate, the non-working poor. Those on fixed incomes subject to the whims of Politicians lost in the space of ivory towers.

Primarily, start at the bottom consideration of the most desperate, many of whom are starving themselves to pay unregulated rents, and unforgiving private retailers of electricity.

Yes, we have people starving in this country.
Governments need to react immediately to this aspect of true inequality, totally outside of the rainbow false flag of gay rights, projected by the ABC standard metric of inequality.

The best and fairest regulator of inequality is not wages, repeat, not wages.
It is actually Government interventionist policies geared towards containg outgoings beyond the control of poor wage earners and those below them!
Minimum wages as an issue is as false a flag as the rainbow model.

Cont.,

Cont.,

The method used to most effect is regulation. Rent controls are most urgently in need of implementation.

Taxing profits currently free of tax in the ten trillion dollar housing market, is the next obvious step. Politicians with the guts to do this will only come from those willing to vote with a bullet, because the likelyhood of any meaningful changes for the increasing numbers of the poor in our communities currently ignored, ( let’s not divide them for convenience into sub groups), will NOT eventuate from a politically elite group, entirely fixated on their own self interest.

Further; since an estimated thirty percent of our economy is hidden under the counter from tax obligations, it’s best to face the fact officially.
Accepting that a large portion of the poor supplement incomes by trading in illicit drugs, prohibitions on the import of illicit drugs should be lifted, to allow this illegal trade to be fully observed and dealt with openly and realistically; a move alloying the devastation of drug use, to be grasped and dealt with.

Authors like the one posting his divorced from reality opinions on minimum wage inequality, are actually allowing themselves to be used for the benefit of Political elites, to dodge their obligations towards serving the entirety of our communities, not just the convenient few at the top.

Regards,
“Vote with a bullet party”

Dan.

Rather than expecting governments to solve their money problems, the "working poor" should seek advise - free counselling from the Salvation Army is available - on how to budget: another thing that is thought of as too lowly to be taught in schools. Budgeting and prioritising spending can solve their problems, as can not thinking that they can live the way rich people seen on TV do - or seem to do.