thinkabit,

My view on properly paid employment is the same as yours.

But where in the world is enough such properly paid employment available?

Therein is the problem/s.

And don't get me wrong.
I am aware there are too many financial burdens for business to generate such employment. Payroll tax for example.

On top of it all the media is constantly attacking and disrupting politicians and government. Now it seems there is a media push to oust Barnaby Joyce and return double crosser Tony Windsor.

Example, Barnaby Joyce steered me into making a submission to the Agricultural Competitiveness White Paper - Green Paper - Supporting Information, involving new water harvesting infrastructure and new productivity and export opportunity for Australia.
But the ABC and major media don't investigate and report that. Not even to denounce it or question feasibility.

It's not just food snobs, it's snobbery about everyone if you are not in the club.
Media could inspire progress in Australia and then more people would have jobs and enough money to buy food instead of having to increasingly rely on handouts.

Well, not that anyone will read this cause this thread is dead, but I feel I should slighty correct something I said.

My suggestion was to let wages be determined by market forces, ie: there is no minimum wage. However, the Government should subsidise the difference between between the low wage and $ 500 (for forty hours work) upto the upper cutoff of a $250 subsidy. (The limit on the subsidy is so that people don't reciprocally employ each other while while not actually doing any work but instead live exclusively on the subsidy- the sudsidy cutoff is based on the amount of the unemployments benefits) Ie: someone earning $10/hr who works 40hr would get a subsidy of $100.

The slight problem with this is that there is no incentive for someone who will work for $500 a weak to offer anything above $250, since the government will make up for it with the subsidy. So the subsidy should only be a fraction of the difference between the wage and comfortable living amount, say 70%. To maintain approximately the same comfortable livable total income for the lowest paid worker (ie: some who offers $250/wk), the subsidy should kick-in at $600. ie: for someone at $400 per week gets a subsidy of 70% of $600-$400=$160 giving a total wage of $540, whereas a person who will work for $250 dollars a week gets a subsidy of 70% of $600-$250=$245 giving a total wage of $495. Now there is an incentive for an employee to offer higher than the $250/wk wage