FencePost,

Under Speenhamland a worker could not get benefits unless he had a job. This is entirely different from the present situation where if an unemployed person is hired the employer has to (or did until recently) pay him award conditions. No doubt unemployment would be significantly reduced if wages were heavily subsidised, and staying unemployed would not be an option.

"Market wages" are a movable feast. The government can tighten up the labour market by giving older workers generous incentives to retire early or cracking down on child labour (in the countries that still have it). It can also flood the labour market with immigrants or guest workers, either openly or by winking at illegal immigration. George Borjas of the Harvard Economics Dept. has calculated that there was about an 8% pay cut in real terms for US unskilled workers between 1980 and 2000 because of mass migration (www.borjas.com). Whole industries can be exported overseas through outsourcing. The government can engineer high house prices to force mothers of small children into jobs. A truly free market in labour does not exist.

It is hard to see what mechanism could prevent the Speenhamland downward spiral. Once some businesses started exploiting subsidised labour their competitors would have to do the same or go under.

Q: How many economists does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: None. They're all sitting around waiting for the invisible hand of the market do it for them.

The parliamentary base salary is $118,950 per year, effective from 1 July 2006.

PRIME Minister John Howard has defended the latest pay rise for federal politicians, saying "smaller salaries will attract MPs of lower calibre".

Why is this different for low paid workers? If they had a decent wage they would be able to improve their lives not exist from day to day.

Hey Hey Ho Ho Nasty Johnny's got to GO.

Divergence and Fencepost are in dialogue, and I, Fencepost, have to accept that Divergence obviously knows a lot more than I about these matters.
An important issue seems to be that, if Government subsidizes wages through transfer payments, what is to stop employers from driving down wages in the knowledge that the taxpayer will eventually foot the bill. I don't know the answer. But it seems clear that the minimum wages are currently at a level where many are unemployed and the taxpayer foots the bill. Perhaps there does need to be a minimum wage, but determined not on the basis of what a family needs to live on but on the basis of what is required to secure maximum workforce participation. Then let transfer payment make it up to a decent income. If we have to have Government control, let the control level not be one which prices people out of the dignity of work.

Steve Madden “If they had a decent wage they would be able to improve their lives not exist from day to day.”

How patronizing.

If “they” were to consider their own circumstances and think beyond the immediate they could enrol in a course at some institution, (University, TAFE, correspondence school, whatever) to train or retrain, thereby investing in themselves and aspiring to greater incomes by having “marketable skills” to sell, rather than relying on some quasi-mythical minimum pay-rate to protect them from falling into chronic poverty.

It is the challenge to every employee to sell their worth just as it is the challenge of every employer to sell the benefits to employees of working for them (and there are plenty who cannot do that too).

As someone who has faced many “employment challenges” in my lifetime I can assure everyone, the worker who develops “marketable skills” will always have a better pick of jobs compared to the worker who sits back and expects the world to provide him or herself with any job, at minimum wage rates or not.

Col, who is patronising? Col pay attention. Society needs people who work as cleaners. Society needs people to care for the aged and the young. I could go on but i am sure most posters have got the drift. Now Col, heres the rub.
In a decent society these workers deserve a living wage. Got it.
No choices is all about ensuring these workers dont get a living wage.
That is why your mate Des Moore cops a bagging every time he pops his head up.