AL,
There is some point to what you say but it is very little and shows the narrow way you view things. I take it you are or were an executive. Me first me last and me in between.

Yes kenworth probably will move to china and produce an inferior product while paying its employees below poverty wages and the ever greedy australian will buy the product because it is cheap. Cheap being the key word, we have very little loyalty left in this country. Not to our workers nor the product they produce, we prefer to worry about ourselves not the nation, thanks "ME" generation. The sooner the boomers retire and die the sooner the world can get on with fixing the result of their greed and selfishness.

AGIR

It is my turn to be a prophet. You earn more than the Kenworth workers, but there is a really good reason why they should accept lower wages but you shouldn't.

While I still wonder what use these figures are I have no need to wonder about our Boazy.
True story, mid 1970,s cattle bought less than a bantam hen and chickens at our then local auction.
High income Pitt street farmers area.
On buying both the best cattle lots and a few chooks a matron told me I was evidence the wrong people had the money.
Her son was the carrier I used for transport and owned two cows and calf's I had bought.
He begged me not to leave but.
Never bought there again, next sale not much sold.
Now do you know that lady Boazy.
Bosses often, more often than you think, offer higher wages, we are short of skilled workers.
Once trained in such as government rail workshops and machine sheds we have to import skills.
Boss pay a true market price.
I am truly, honestly baffled by a Christian who throws so many stones at workers .
Keep the caps coming Boazy but you fail to impress me.

how lovely if the weekly wage was this much, perhaps we would not have so many families living on the streets, and there would not be so many families wondering how on earth they are going to afford to have christmas this year, I know I would be less stressed if I was taking home this great wage every week, but I, like alot of families are making ends meet on $600 a week, some on much less., Trin

The more you get the more you spend, so stay where you are.
The people on this sort of money are probably worse off, they live to their means. The more money the bigger the house, the more debt.
The pension is the biggest money i have ever been paid.
When these big wages come to a stop, it's a long way down to live on a pension. I don't know how they will survive.

Al, re your shooting home the blame to the Unions, they did not contribute to shipping the first world’s production base to cheaper climes. That is the spin propagated by the "money" to blame the supposed greed of the rank and file.

Post WWII the rank and file was needed to fuel the first worlds manufacturing segment, which fueled the prosperity of the nation and the unions had management over a barrel. Around the mid sixties technology really started to change the work environment of the past 30 years. Factory floors went from 500 workers to 100 and the supporting technology trebled productivity and profit. The diminished Unions then asked for pay rates that would represent their input per capita (there are less of us and we are producing substantially more) but the bosses would not pay up.

Bosses reaped the two fold benefit of record output per shift and being able to defray some of the cost of the technology via tax breaks unlike their payroll on which they have to further pay the government’s tax. By the early 70's the ones that run the machines were in dispute with the bosses ongoing, worldwide.
TBC