Di,

The government steals $5700 per year in income tax from a person earning $30,000 per year. Work towards eliminating this abomination.

The Biblical teaching on Industrial Relations:

"You shall not muzzle an ox, as it is treading out the grain"

There are 2 major obcenities in the Australian work context, as mentioned above, the HUGE payouts to CEO's is one, and the blatant power mongering and extortion carried out by militant Unions is the other.

Only when we see the meaning of the proverb/verse above, in its wonderful simplicity, and apply those values to our work places and work relations, will be have true justice.

Why don't you 'muzzle' an ox treading grain ? simple, it EATS some grain while treading. But the HUGE CEO payouts resemble to me the idea of the farmer muzzling the poor ox just to get more 'sharecropper value' out of its work. Unfortunately when u dont allow a working ox to benefit from its work, one tends to wonder about its loyalty and committment to the treading process.

Then, an ox which spent most of the time eating and getting fat, with not much treading, would soon end up as sunday's roast. So, there is a line between "Lazy opportunistic worker gluttony" and "Exploitative greedy management" where justice lies.

What bothers me most about the minimum wage idea, and constantly trying to advance it, is that the advancing momentum seems to come more from a motive of 'staying relevant' by rapidly fading Unions, than true worker benefit.

When a manufacturer costs his product, he factors in Labor as a cost.
When that 'cost' becomes such that he loses his competitiveness, there are 2 choices "go broke" or "Source off shore"

Many local manufacturers are now becoming 'importers/distributors' and the people who worked for them are now redundant. This is because people further down the supply chain towards the final product, are automatically factoring in "Chinese Pricing".

So, the concept of 'minimum wage' should be changed to 'realistic wage in a competitive global environment'

Boaz, industrial relations and economics is just so not your forte. Stick to the good book and kill a calf and avoid the GST by not barbequing him and setting up a stall outside your cottage selling beef kebabs. The public liability insurance would be so outside the temple and the kebabs wouldn't pay the premium. But then again, try the whole enterprise with loaves and fishes, and then you may get Tony Abbot as your 2IC!

I can’t understand why urban people are complaining.
Their wages have gone up, as per govt regulation, equal to the GST.
Sounds good to me, having you income regulated up with the GST.
My income is derived from world commodity pricing, that has had very little change in over 30 years, yet inflation has been about 15 times.
Talk about the spoilt brat syndrome, get a gift, but want more.

Ceo's get a payout, well so do the coal face workers of the market, so what’s good for the gander, happens to work better for the goose.
Maybe the problem is the fact that Ceo’s wages rise at a much faster rate than the coal face workers.

Maybe we should spend some time finding out why this is happening?

A question to the supporters of minium wage's

Who pays for it?

The employer has higher costs
He adds his margin to the higher cost of production, giving him increased profits as a result of the increased sale price.
We have inflation, a round of wage rises occurs, with the top end of town getting a larger increase than the bottom end of town.

No-one has yet had a reduction in the ability to consume, so minium wage has yet to be payed for.

Only people left out of this equation is the rural sector that sell onto the world market to the factory workers of the world, (they have to eat as well, with limited income)

Seems as though the people paying for this policy are those without a minium wage that is based on world markets, and not the domestic market like the labour market in Australia.

To say that “productivity improvements" pay for it is akin to stealing the lower sale prices that would result from all members of the community, particularly those on lower wages.

Ian Watson’s article was excellent. It reinforced materials distributed by the ACTU some time ago from the British Low Pay Commission. Watson’s approach to Card and Kruger was significantly more advanced than Andrew Leigh’s earlier contribution. Faced with Card and Kruger’s hard evidence, Leigh, following American paradigms, discovered that increasing West Australian minimum wages by 1% caused 0.13% job loss. Leigh’s position was selective and appears not to have considered the opposite findings from New Zealand (referred to by Watson).

Clearly, in some circumstances you can find insignificant job losses, in other circumstances, zero impacts, and in others ‘positive employment responses’. Which evidence you choose to proffer is more an ideological position than an objective, economic one.

The real economic test that should be applied is whether increasing wages has a greater negative employment effect than does increasing commercial margins. There seems to be a strong relationship between cutting labour costs and boosting profits. This probably impacts on wages/employment patterns. But commentators seem to be politically disinclined to make such inquiry.

Politically inspired, unnatural fixations on exaggerated threats to employment (0.13%!) by wages hikes is an old canard. As Adam Smith observed;

“Our merchants and master-manufacturers complain much of the bad effect of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods both at home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains”. [Smith, Wealth….., Book 1, Ch IX]

Unfortunately once Australia has been exposed to free-trade, wages and all other conditions must fall. Companies can easily move their capital to low wage countries where workers with the same level of productivity, training, and equipment can easily out perform Australian workers. I know this is suggestive of an Australian economic wasteland, but it is the wasteland we have had bequeathed to us by Paul Keating, Bob Hawke, and the ALP and Democrat parliamentarians who have allowed practically every whim of the globalisers to get through parliament. Free-trade for Australia equals falling wages. The weakest get hit first.