30 years ago I earned $60/hour as a communications guru [ actually invented a new telephone then, which telecom took, produced and made a fortune selling - no, I got nothing because I worked for them when I invented it "the one bar two phone".] I also invented several other things which you use today in some form or t'other..yes/no?, I still have ALL the prelim paper work from company, washington DC, PIES, and patent search attorny circa 1994. Today I do CLEANING! at $20/hour 6 hours a week because nobody want's to employ a 'thinker'and combined 'doer' who is over 60YO. But this 'lazy - grubby - old fart' has just this year invented, built and trialed a proto type auto pond filler for landscapers. Next year I shrink it to cigarette packet size and 'attempt' to market it. China looks a good bet because the manufacturing elite in this fair land are brain dead.

Pepper, it sounds as though you got quite a lot if you earned $60 an hour 30 years ago. That was at least 5 times what I was getting then. I have always wanted to remain self sufficient and have never taken anything from the government and now in my mid 70s I am a self funded retiree and recently been earning about $5 an hour delivering pamphlets. In other words doing work that people half my age would not consider. We live in a competitive world and people should not expect handouts from the government. As Margaret Thatcher once said "the trouble with socialism is that eventually we run out of other people's money" People just have unrealistic expectations these days, aided and abetted by television advertising of course and cheap money on credit.

The problem is not that low income workers are demanding a 'living' wage but that wages in the mid-high end are too high by comparison. This pushes prices up and makes it more difficult for low income earners and I am not talking about luxuries but basic needs. Hence then the pressure on minimum wage.

I am a bit tired of the low income earners being blamed for societal greed. Talk about kicking the dog when your chips are down.

I don't know any floor sweepers earning $25 per hour. Lots of resentment here for all the wrong reasons.

A fare pay for a fare day, no matter what you do. What makes you think that a person is unskilled, even if they are toilet cleaners or floor sweepers.
Rechid rectub is a slave trader, because a person sweeps a floor they somehow deserve a lesser wage.
If you want someone to sweep your floor pay the correct rate or do it yourself.

HaHaHa .. Come now *Recty* I reckon the amount of time you spend in here is costing someone's wallet too much for the price of one of your "leg of lambo roasts."

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Seriously, not in all cases, but in a lot i.m.o. retailers are a curse, a pox, a blight, a stone around the neck of this country.

Much as wig parasites and the australian $moneygrubbers$ association are

(though I will "Bow my ....'ing Head to the admirable performance of the president in advocating the rights of children recently.")

I should be able to put an order straight to the abboitoir and cut you guys out of the chain entirely.

The current business model is being forced to change because there are faster, better, cheaper ways to do things and this is good.

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However, I like the idea that everyone should have a sustainable financial security solution, including work (or therapeutic structured activity at the least) medical, housing, legal, educational.

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I would not unnecessarily destroy the livelihoods of people at the goldern cow altar of the right for some to make up their prices pretty much as they please and as they go along. Particularly as it pertains to the necessities of life, which I would regulate by mathematical equation.

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Of course, to travel, one can marvel to some extent at all of the different varieties of economic system expression that are currently at work in the world.

Never been one to go into bat for the butcher, but I think he meant by $25 per hour to sweep floors is what he's paying someone who has nothing else to do BUT sweep the floor because of lack of customers.

I work with freight, butcher. Everyone is struggling. Imagine every theory you want to aim the blame at but the simple way of looking at it is that people are holding onto their money for fear of the market at the moment. The last busy time for us was just after the Qld floods. Since then its been very quiet. Scarily so.