One thing about our system is that we are all presented with an equal opportunity to fail.

We are all provided with affordable or free education, yet through the 70's 80's and 90's it has been possible to go through your entire schooling life without gaining a decent education.

Furthermore, throughout this period, one could leave school and go on to the dole and exist vertually at will without real fear of harrasement from the authorities, as they have been mostly 'toothless tigers'.

More recent times have seen laws introduced that children can leave home, claiming they were being treated unfairly and receive special benefits in doing so.

On the flip side there was also the introduction of many tafe courses aimed at providing a 'second chance' to some of these who failed their first attempt.

So my point is, that with all the talk about how poor the minimum wage is and, given the fact that we were all provided with an equal opportunity to fail, why should the minimum wage be any more than a meer existance.

Why should one be able to waste every opportunity in life, then drink, smoke and gamble at the expense of the achievers and be given free rein to do so.

Now there are always the genuine ones, but seriously, why should we worry that much about these people. After all, we tax payers have already paid for the opportunities that have been wasted.

In its 2009 general Wage-Setting Decision the Commission has decided to:
maintain the standard Federal Minimum Wage (FMW) at $14.31 per hour ($543.78 per week).

If on a benefit, single no children you get approx 225.00 a week.
Single with children you would get about 245.00 for yourself a week plus for your kids you’d get another 85.00 a week per child.
Err more money if you drive you little ones to school. More if you have a few more kids.

So for anyone with children they are better off in Aussie to be on a benefit than on minimum wage?

rehctub,

People should be required to do more for themselves. I agree with what you say in general. I don't have much sympathy for adults who find themselves homeless, jobless etc through their own uselessness and sloth, but I do sympathise with any children these people have. We still have to look after them - one way or the other - because it's not their fault that they are born to no-hopers.

One obvious reason to maintain a reasonable minimum wage is to provide an incentive for people to work for a living, rather than rely on welfare benefits.

Also, I note that an evident lack of education hasn't prevented rehctub from becoming a successful businessman. However, it probably accounts for his very simplistic and often ignorant attitude towards others who are less fortunate than him.

The Minimum wage at $543.78 a week, still attracts a tax bill, and on that the tax is: $61. What that means is that in reality a person on the minimum wage must pay, without option, $61 in tax, and it rises rapidly if he or she works harder. In another thread I am criticizing the High Court rather severely because they were charged with upholding the Constitution, but on application to them by the Federal Government went to a long lunch at the end of 1952, and are still an exclusive dining club for superannuated lawyers.

The rot did not get really bad until 1970, and accelerated in 1972, when not only were there almost no homeless people begging on the streets of Sydney/Calcutta but only 100,000 unemployed in the whole of Australia. What happened then was that wages were doubled in twelve months as Whitlam decided to force Australians to pay a fair wage, producing a consumer led boom, that caused massive inflation, but also raised the tax take as the tax free threshold remained the same.

In taking home $481.00 workers on the minimum wage, are given a real disincentive to work, because for every extra dollar they earn, they pay more and more taxes. I am a Christian, and I can read my mother language, which says in Section 51 Placitum xxxi Constitution that the Commonwealth can acquire your property on just terms but not otherwise. Your wages is your property.

Before 1972 just terms for that acquisition was provided by setting the tax free threshold at a level that allowed average weekly earnings to be almost completely tax free. Relying on an increasingly hoary memory, I recall that the Tax free threshold was set at about $1300 in 1972. I know a dollar an hour was a good casual wage, and people were only too willing to work for that.

It is time for the High Court to come out of retirement and disallow all the plethora of quasi judicial organizations created to replace it, while it was sleeping. The Industrial Relations Commission is one

Rehctub’s repeated statements regarding equal opportunity for failure are a common theme. He presents as a self-made person - and justly proud of it.

But his personal success now seems to be the bench mark against which all other non-privileged Australians are measured.

Perhaps he came from a background of violence, sexual abuse, drug dependency, continuous moves from rental shack to rental shack? Perhaps his mother took drugs while pregnant and he was born drug dependent? Maybe he came from a single parent family where the head of household was not a fit parent? It’s possible both his parents were second generation Dole recipients and possessed neither moral, ethical nor intellectual frameworks with which to inculcate their children. It’s also possible that his parents were engaged in petty crime, and one or the other (or both) of them spent his formative years in and out of jail. While he may have had adequate schooling perhaps he is not the sharpest tool in the shed, or suffers from some kind of mental illness? Perhaps one or both of his parents did?

Then again, we know nothing about his actual personality and characteristics. It could be he was shy and lacked self-confidence throughout his life; or his life experiences as a child and teenager showed him a world of corruption and despair from which a limited imagination could supply no escape? Tragically, perhaps, both his parents resented him and, while not physically maltreating him, made him unmistakably aware that he was unwanted, thus providing him with a sense of his own uselessness and unworthiness? He could have been brought up as the butt of bullies or suffer from some minor deformity or physical anomaly that marked him down as an outcast.

If any or all of the above apply then kudos indeed to Rehctub. Good on yer, yer little Aussie battler.

But then surely judging everyone else as coming from a level playing field would surely be the mark of someone whose narcissism outweighed all consideration of humanity, fairness, or intelligent understanding?