Col, u clearly just dont get it. Let them eat cake is your mantra. Your crap about the individual is sickening as it is transparent. It is nothing but code for exploiting the weak. Shame on you Col. I hope you never get down on your luck and have to live in the type of society you advocate for.

Col.

So now we all have to have a tertiary education to "sell ourselves for a job with decent pay".

Many many people do not have this choice, some cannot due to intellectual reasons, some like single parents cannot because of other responsibilities, some have chronic illness, some have disabilities and some are just plain stuffed after a heavy physical day.

You seem to be saying the market will fix everything, sorry it will only lead to misery and social dislocation.

divergence are you suggesting that everyone who works in the cleaning industry or in aged care has a low iq? is it possible that some of the workforce simply work jobs that satisfy them or they feel are rewarding? i agree with Col that people are responsible for their own training and placement and it's quite possible that a lot of labour in those industries find the work rewarding and 'what they wanted to do'.

what happens when people undertake training to further their own situation and there's a paucity of labour in any market? supply-demand, wage rises. this encourages people back to the market - the mechanism is driven by market forces here. not price floors.

ok, economics 101 - price floors create market inefficiencies. in the labour market this is unemployment. now i'm not saying that the minimum wage is a bad thing, in fact the unemployment it creates gives the working population an incentive to work hard. however, to advocate an increase in the minimum wage without considering the macro impact is rather short-sighted.

Shonga, you indicated that burdened with external pressures, if a firm collapses because of an increase in costs then it shouldn't be operating anyway. fair enough. so you're opting for unemployment so those employed have a higher wage. it is a trade-off and that's one option.

Brucebruce, to suggest that firms will simply 'absorb' these costs into their 'profit margins' isn't true. it's not macquarie bank paying minimum wage to a labourer on a construction site. it's not rio tinto paying minimum wage to a warehouse employee or woolworths paying minimum wage to a cashier. an increase in minimum wage will have a much greater impact on small business owners. those whose 'profit margins' don't make the front page of the financial review. those who will react to an increase in wages.

unfortunately it is a trade-off. it'd be great to be capable of lifting minimum wages and the standard of living and not experience a recession or a spike in inflation or higher unemployment but it's not the case.

How long is it since you've been paid the minimum wage, Mr Moore ?

peff,

I never said that all cleaners had low IQs, but just take a look at the normal distribution for the proportion of the population with IQs below 85, say. These people can hardly retrain as astrophysicists.

According to a study by Ingrid Lindsley that appeared last year, "Causes of Overeducation in the Australian Labour Market", nearly 30% of Australian workers are overqualified for their jobs, so retraining or getting more education is not a panacea.

In my opinion, tightening up the labour market would be of more use than the minimum wage. If our lower skilled (or even skilled) people are forced to compete with all of the Third World, then of course wages will be depressed.

Hedgehog “Your crap about the individual is sickening”

I am happy to rely on my view that “the individual is everything”, if we were to take your view, of individual subordination to the social collective, we would be in a more prickly mess than hedgehogs.

Stalin thought that individuals, except himself, should be subordinate and millions suffered and died as a consequence, I know of no one being disadvantaged by someone else exercising “freewill”

What most people like you seem to believe is your rights should preserved but other peoples should be curtailed because those others might make better life decisions and achieve more than you.

So keep your low views to yourself, I would rather associate with crap than socialism, from which the stink which pervades off the gross hypocrisy is a lot worse.

Oh and I have been, as you say, “down on my luck” a number of times, used my own resolve to overcome it and recover and (I think) grown from the experiences.

Steve Madden “You seem to be saying the market will fix everything, sorry it will only lead to misery and social dislocation”

We all have shortcomings, we all have to deal with them., It is part of growing into a whole individual. Certainly, such “growth” is the first thing to be lost if you look at developing some universal safety net designed to rectify every deficiency we each might have.

Re “other responsibilities of single parents”. As a divorced father of two, the last thing I would ever consider would be abrogating my responsibilities of being a father onto the state. It will always seem sad that so many people would rather “throw in their hand” and seek government intervention instead being responsible and “playing the hand they are dealt”.

As dear Margaret said

“We want a society where people are free to make choices, to make mistakes, to be generous and compassionate. This is what we mean by a moral society; not a society where the state is responsible for everything, and no one is responsible for the state.”