I just don't get all the latest (probably confected) emotion about Holden being finished forever. Holden ceased to exist when manufacturing folded at Elizabeth. No more Holdens were made. It was game over in 2017. We had all the moaning and groaning and abuse of a Coalition government that finally saw the stupidity of subsidising an industry that was unviable.

As a sop to Holden lovers, cars were 'imported'; but putting a Holden badge on an Opel doesn't make a Holden.

There was still a design facility left in Australia apparently. Why? Commodores always looked like Opels, Vauxhalls or Chevrolets.

I had only one Holden: a Torarana, off which bits dropped regularly. I got the message, and have relied on Japan ever since

The Australian taxpayer put $2.17 billion in Federal Government assistance in 12 years, into the hands of General Motors, many million more over the 70 year life span of 'Holden' in Australia . All this following threats of closure, and loss of unsustainable jobs in a non-viable industry. ScumO' got 15 minutes notice of the final execution! We had meat pies, kangaroos and Holden cars, well at least we still have the meat pies and kangaroos. Has government learnt a lesson, me thinks not, the writing is on the wall as the government is preparing to prop up unsustainable coal fired power generation, and then down the track the whole coal industry

Has government learnt a lesson, me thinks not
Paul1405,
Wrong question ! Have the manufacturing Unions learnt a lesson , me thinks not !

individual,

Good point. Greedy unions certainly hastened the demise of Holden.

Media reports today headed "Holden 'went woke then broke' with your money" are interesting.

They detail how $2 billion of taxpayer's money was squandered "to sustain a flawed business model that it never attempted to reform". Lots of the money was spent on social programs such as, the gay Mardi Gras, same sex marriage, spreading the "economic myth" of a gender pay gap, cultural diversity and other woke nonsense that could we'll see other businesses thinking that they should lecture their customers going down the gurgler.

First the unions destroyed the UK car industry. You could easily tell by the accents of many of the spokes persons for car industry unions, those same unionists came out here, & did it to ours.

How does that definition of insanity go, Doing the same thing & expecting a different outcome. That now being proven, we have to say unions are insane, & unionists must be for letting union bosses destroy the golden egg laying goose.

Unions are needed or else we have soles like coles.

Unions are needed
Riely,
Not the ones that cause the demise of jobs though ! We need unions that ensure fair remuneration for fair effort, not the ones that demand unwarranted pay rates that drive up costs ! We need Unions that keep the economy in mind not just the interests of selfish groups !
I'm sure those 400 or 600 restaurant workers that lost their jobs recently, would rather have had a small increase in their wage in favour of being now unemployed ! Restaurant patrons aren't prepared to pay double for a meal on weekends so why should the hospitality workers get more ?
Why are we driving imported cars ? Because union demands made locally produced vehicles unaffordable ! Don't these moron Unionists realise that as soon as they achieve a payrise for some, the prices have to go up for all ?

You don't think the man at the top is taking too much. The joker you are talking about charges 300 $ / plate and has millions. He then forgoes the proper wages for his staff.

Over the years I drove all the Holden models and it was not until the advent of the Commodore (Opel) that a decent one came along.
I well remember when the Australian Army was saddled with Holden utes and Staff cars simply because they were Australian made; they were eminently unsuitable for the job and a dangerous vehicle into the bargain.

The name Holden should be read in the context of Australian industry, not simply one brand.
Because, what happened to Holden is happening to all manufacturing industry here.
And, the people who are causing this dreadful situation are safely tucked away in their comfort zone, funded by their victims !

I suppose the same thing would happen to the renewables scam if billions of dollars of tax payer money and much higher electricity prices came to an end.

Individual hits the nail on he head again. Hundreds of small businesses employing 100-200 people, the biggest employers, have disappeared because of globalisation, free trade and general handing over of wealth to mendicant countries in the the Third World. They received no help while Government was subsidising a product that people did not want to buy and then got upset at the producer for stopping production of a product that people did not want.

Commodore sales plummeted from 2002 because buyers shifted towards SUVs and away from the traditional sedan that Holden built its business on. The government was throwing our money at a car the public did not want.

Rather than being upset at General Motors, the Prime Minister would better serve Australian citizens if he focused his attention on removing other such subsidies across the Australian economy. Perhaps starting with the ABC.

But this would require him to stand for something other than just keeping Labor out of office.

Riely,

The unions didn't do anything for workers in Coles. The ordinary workers weren't being short changed; it was the managers, one or some of whom found out that they weren't getting as much as some of the workers under them. These days, unions are just people practising to be politicians in the future. Not worth a pinch of poop.

Whatever Holden was or wasn't, I spent hundreds of hours behind the wheel of many different models over the years, and they proved reliable enough as GD Police vehicles. I for one will lament their passing, as many former police may do so? Ford Falcon was another good vehicle, particular the 5.8 V8 used as a pursuit vehicle, and extensively used by the Hwy. Patrol back in the day.

Hey ttbn,

Holden 'went woke and then broke' with your money
- Just watched the video.

If I try to see the bigger picture, then I'd have to say that the whole 'woke' agenda is completely and utterly at odds with the type of regular ford v's holden car loving Aussie blokes mentality.

They actually killed it off themselves by creating a whole new brand that was at odds with the type of people who'd bought and loved them.
This is the danger of caving in to this political correct ideology.
Maybe they thought they had to do that to win corporate contracts for vehicle sales (fleet sales to business)

Hmm why do I have 'Video killed the Radiostar' stuck in my head?
Rhymes with 'Globalism killed the Aussie made car'.
http://youtu.be/W8r-tXRLazs

And what the hell was that last model Commodore?
I don't know what it was but it didn't look like an Aussie car I'd be proud of.
Apart from my i30 I've got a VE commodore with engine problems parked up out the back.
It's not an altogether well made car.

Well, well, well, the Peanut Chorus of ttbn, individual, Hasbeen and runner sing their favourite jingle

WAGES are DOWN,DOWN...DOWN,DOWN,DOWN.

I would not be surprised if all four don't have their snouts in the taxpayer trough collecting an Aged Pension. This same mob would begrudge workers a fair rate of pay Shameful

'I would not be surprised if all four don't have their snouts in the taxpayer trough collecting an Aged Pension.'

take a long time to receive the wages the Marxist receive at the abc. They are great at paying this mob except those who do the work.

Hi o sung wu, how are you doing?

I've driven a few Holdens too, back when the government & company been counters bought locally produced company/government cars. Also drove a few bought at auction when those government departments had finished with them. It was a pretty good way of getting good cheap cars.

I also drove one that was a bit special, a 327 "Bathurst" Monaro, at Bathurst for the original Holden Dealers Team in 1968,making the podium. It was truly remarkable that a brand new car, only just released could take all 3 places on the podium in a race as grueling & hard on the equipment as the Bathurst 500. It generally takes a couple of years, & a lot of updates & improvements to get a new car fully reliable.

It speaks volumes for the design & building quality that Holden had in the late 60s that they could do it first off.

G'day HASBEEN, how have you been?

Been a while for sure. They weren't too bad the old Commodores. Made good reliable GD transport for general patrol work, but I never owned one myself. And you're right, the Holden engineers could prepare a superb race car back in the sixties, for Bathurst. I never liked the Monaro very much, an ugly car (only my opinion) but it was well prepared for the track. When I saw this topic come online, I immediately thought of you, and wondered what, with your racing pedigree, your thoughts of another Aussie icon biting the dust, what other symbols can we destroy I wonder? I'm glad I'm in my eighties, I don't wish to live and see this once great country disintegrate into nothing?

Individual,

"...And, the people who are causing this dreadful situation are safely tucked away in their comfort zone, funded by their victims"

I presume that you mean the unions?

Makes me think of the demise of the Lithgow Tile Works in NSW, just before they shut their doors the NSW Government contracted with Korean interests to supply all the tiles for the renovation of the Sydney Underground Railway stations, the unions had nought to do with that.

Paul, not wanting to repeat the obvious mate, BUT, I understand you don't want to hear anything maligning your beloved unions.
Unfortunately, history and the record shows, that the unions have been the single worst thing to have been allowed to live.
It is fact that had the Aussie industries been allowed to pay what they were offering, without any outside nasty forces sticking their evil noses into where they should not have, we would have had a very fruitful production industry, and only a fool or moron or worse would disagree.
The economy would have balanced itself, as it does, if left alone with no external influences.
The salaries would have settled at a level where it was fair and equitable, because the cost of living would have settled naturally, at a rate affordable and relative to people's income.
Unfortunately for the greed and averace of these union mongrels, all they managed to do was increase the price of our goods to the point they were too expensive to export.
You do know that some many years ago we had a reasonable export economy, until your poxy mates decided they were going to screw the dumb worker with a load of snake oil sales talk, and hey presto, we have wage and cost of living rises, and at the other end at exactly the same rate we have exports diminishing, to the point where they are almost non-existent.
How does it feel to be the Judas amongst us?
Then we add your other moronic mental cases, the animal liberationists, and you lot are at it again trying to end the only major export left, besides mining and agriculture.
I will not be surprised if your moronic mates are working on ways to kill them off as well.
And with that done we can all rely on the greens, the politically correct the neuters the queers and all the other more important than the Aussie public, for income.
Can't wait!

I have to inform people that the LAST Holden, did not end the other day.
It ended with the demise of the KINGSWOOD.
The Commodore was in fact our introduction to the "World Car Concept".
The Commodore, as has been correctly stated, was in fact an OPEL.
And it sported a Vauxhall badge in the UK, a Chevrolet badge in the US, and a straight Opel badge, in Europe.
We were producing left hand drive variants for GM USA, for a while, along with, I believe a Pontiac model, obviously with Pontiac livery and a slightly different looking front and rear.
We actually supplied Commodore Statesmans for the US police dept's because of the extra 4" in the back allowed for the fitment of a safety screen without compromising rear passenger comfort. (or perps)
They were badged, Chevy Caprice, which is where the word Caprice came from initially, from the US GM Chevy models.
And that's why they were called Statesman Caprice, it also made it easier to badge in the US because the model name did not change, it simply went back home from whence it came.

Sorry ALTRAV, but that is totally wrong.

The last few Holdens were all Oz. They may have picked up an engine here & there, & some transmission bits, but the design, engineering, & more importantly the road testing & development of the thing was all Ozzy.

In fact the last few Commodores were probably the best cars that GM were building anywhere in the world, & owed nothing to any of the front drive stuff they are building today.

I don't believe there is any car coming out of US or Europe that is the equal of the last Commodores, even at a couple of times the price. Prettier trim perhaps, so a better place to sit in your broken car waiting for recovery.

I wonder who will buy the last new Holden?

Hasbeen, I don't usually get it wrong, and on this one I know I'm right.
The design was ex Opel, the engine in the early Commodores were different variants of the iconic Holden 186 design, which was a direct take off of the chevy 6 cyl US engine, only smaller.
The later deal was that the the US provided the chevy V8's and we in turn sent them transmission components.
The bread and butter V6 engine that ran for years was a reject from some other European car, it was tried in a small US car and was a failure, so they threw it our way, it was never a success.
I don't remember exact details, but the Commodore was a direct early player of the world car concept, in other words it was cheaper to make one car to sell to the world, scale of economy, and all that.
The Commodore was one of the new breed of cars that was to be referred to as "badge engineering".
All the other companies got on the band wagon as well.
The Mazda 323 was re-badged as a laser and a Meteor for Ford to replace the Escort and other models, even later, the Cortina for the Aussie market.
The public were none the wiser, thinking they were totally different cars, when in fact they were exactly the same cars.
I'm sorry but that's why I hate marketing and sales people, because they have to lie and BS to sell something because they know if they told the truth, they would not sell many of whatever it is they were trying to sell.
The Aussie market has always been a tough one, and it never took to foreign cars.
Maybe they were threatened by them or they just were not up to the Aussie outback conditions.
There was a company over East that foreign car makers would send their cars to, to be tested and Aussiefied.
Basically they would rehash the suspension to make them survive the Aussie outback, gravel roads, corrugations, etc.
The Mitsubishi Magna was just one such car.

the unions had nought to do with that.
Is Mise,
Are you certain ? Ask yourself why the Govt saw it necessary to go to Korea in the first place ?
Me thinks more reliability & less cost than an Australian outfit ! Just my guess.
An Australian tile company would have have been plagued by Union interference.

individual,

"Me thinks more reliability & less cost than an Australian outfit"

No, the reason was that the NSW Government accepted the lowest tender regardless of the effect on Australian industry and, of course, the possibility of a few backhanders.

is Mise,
Just about all manufacturing has packed up & departed this Nation because Union wage demands were unsustainable.
The proof is there for all to see !

For those of you obsessed with wage growth, or the company cheating the workers out of money they are entitled to, you need to stop and reboot your thinking.
Firstly, the main and probably the only thing that is affected by a lower wage is more expensive imports.
Something I care not about.
A country finds a balance of supply and demand.
If the wages are $10 an hour, the cost of living will also stabilise so as to accommodate the income levels of the population, because the money is going round internally within the country.
So we don't feel any different in shopping, unless we buy imported goods, which I refuse to do.
Our shopping doctrine is to buy Australian, even better, buy local.
Now at the other end of the spectrum we have people pushing for wage increases continually, all this does is feed the boom/bust machine.
I would demand that the inflation rate not exceed around 1 or 2%, to keep pushing up inflation does US, the people no good, only the greedy elite bastards and the banks.
So when you lot have quite finished pushing for wage rises, stop and think, why are we no better off than 50 or more years ago?
How many pay packets did it take to buy a house back then, and how many does it take to buy one now.
If your stupid theories are correct we should be able to afford a house easier today.
Why can't we?
You friggin idiots are so smart on the left, try and talk your way out of this one.
Or, better still, get one of your scum-bag con-men union mates to explain it.
It's a shame people have to be so flawed as to not only put their own lives at risk but that of others, family and friends, not to mention complete strangers like the rest of Australia.
Like I said in another topic, it's clear by the mental aptitude of most Aussies, that they are descended from monkeys, and not as in the bible, and have not progressed much since.

The imported cars are cheaper and better.

Why spend $bns on subsidies for substandard products.

ALTRAV.

"...How many pay packets did it take to buy a house back then, and how many does it take to buy one now."

Good question, but completely irrelevant as there have been many variables added to house prices since, say, 1948.
Things like curb and guttering, footpaths, sealed roads, flush toilets (no more 48 door sedans), electricity, piped water and garbage collection.
I lived in Lidcombe in 1948 and apart from electricity and piped water we had none of the others.

A much better example is the motor car.
1948 Holden cost L760/-/- equal to 104 weekly wage packets
(2 years).

2019 Holden Commodore (cheapest model) $22,888 or 14 weeks wages.
(dearest model) $43,980 or 26 weeks and the Commodore, anywhere in the price range, is an incomparably better car than the 1948 model.

ALTRAV, you say "Unfortunately, history and the record shows, that the unions have been the single worst thing to have been allowed to live."

There are a number of well researched publications that will tell you otherwise, and give you a rational view as to the positive part unions have played in society. Given your far right philosophical stance on everything, and your admitted lack of knowledge on most subjects, I can see why you would make such an outlandish, uneducated and simplistic statement.

I'm not so blinked to believe trade unions have always been a positive in every instance. There have been times when unions have acted to the detriment of members and the community in general.

If you ever do some reading, not your strong point, you might learn something.

Issy, hate to disagree, but your figures are wrong.
Firstly, I have NEVER heard of a Commodore or Falcon, for that matter, for $22,888.00.
At least not here in the West.
I just checked with a Holden dealer and if we are going to compare apples with apples, the standard Commodore was a six cylinder auto, 4 door sedan, and today it retails at the base price of mid to high $30's. (approx $38,000)
Where-as the old 48'FX retailed for around $1,500 in today's money.
Also checked on the basic wage and today it is around $740.80, so back in 1948, it was around $18.00 per week.
Reference, ANU, paper by J Rob Bray.

https://melbourneinstitute.unimelb.edu.au/assets/documents/hilda-bibliography/other-publications/2013/Bray_Reflections_on_Evolution_of_Minimum_Wage.pdf

It may not be much but we are paying more and taking longer to save for a car today, and so it is for everything else.
You are not comparing the same criteria.
The wage you refer to is not that of a basic wage, anything else is a fabrication so is not on an equal footing to compare the two.
You mention all these factors affecting a new home, well you can't, either you compare the same specs or else don't bother to make any comparison, because they are of two different entities.
There is no doubt that it is impossible to buy a new house for around $300,000 today.
Unless you want to live on the fringes or in the sticks, forget it.
I've just finished a development of four new 3 X 2 X 1 in an inner suburb well within services and major arteries, NOT over an hour or more out of the metropolitan area.
I chose to design and build for the "first home buyer", but even at this price it seems impossible for a young couple to afford because the banks have decided to put huge onerous and impossible demands on home buyers, such as untenable and extreme deposits.
It is a totally different landscape today.
Even if the youth of today are expecting far too much compared to their parents, the cost of living today is unsustainable.

Paul, you can read all the books you want, I have lived through the things I have mentioned.
The family business employed, at peak, over 130 staff, and we had a good relationship with our staff, we paid them well but we also expected their focus and commitment to the job.
In fact, just to show you that we were one of very few, "good guys".
The unions actually used us as the reference to raise the wage of the metal workers union in a submission to arbitration.
We were not very popular with opposition companies.
We paid what WE thought was fair, not the union or some outsider.
Our staff threw the union reps out whenever they tried to get a foot in our door.
So if you want to know the truth about unions and unionism, just ask me, I warn you, it's not a pretty story.

ALTRAV,

All the things that I mentioned impact on the price of a house, they increase the price of the land.

On the Holden:
"How much would you be prepared to pay for a fully-restored 1949 Holden 48-215 (commonly but inaccurately referred to as FX)?

Bearing in mind that the original 1948 model was tagged at $1,466 how would $52,000 sound?

It might seem expensive – and undoubtedly would be for some – but according to our calculations $52,000, in wage-adjusted figures, is a lot less than the new price of the iconic Australian car in its year of introduction.

In 1948 the average Australian wage was about 70 times lower than today. A worker could expect to be paid the equivalent of about $15 per week where today the average is around $1,060 a week.

So, if that worker in 1948 pocketed every penny, it would take just a bit less than two years to raise the money for a new 48-215. An ordinary Holden Commodore today is tagged at about $38,000 which equates to about 36 weeks of wage packets."
http://www.carsales.com.au/editorial/details/from-the-classifieds-1949-holden-48-215-standard-35180/

Better check your figures again.

ALTRAV,

"Where-as the old 48'FX retailed for around $1,500 in today's money."

Which is utter bull L750/-/- in 1948 was two year's wages, $1500 in today's money is less than a week's average wages and less than 4 weeks Aged Pension.

One pound equalled two dollars for a brief period in 1966 but the uneducated still use the outdated formula L1=$2.
See:
http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/80807419
http://guides.slv.vic.gov.au/whatitcost/earnings

Issy I don't need to.
You have used the wrong figures.
For example according to the link I supplied, the basic wage is not over $1,000 a week, it's more like $740 a week.
You can check for yourself.
And what's this about the FX was not an FX?
It's a matter of record/history, we have always called it an FX, and the next model was called FJ.
So if your referring to the model ID defined by GM, yes, but we, the public only ever knew it as, and referred to it as, an FX.
Your reference of 48-215 was internal coding for the year of manufacture and the size of the engine in cubic inches.

Correction: I said $740 a week, that is today's basic wage.
Back then it was more like $18 per week, probably more by 1948.
With loading, I found it was probably more like just over $20 per week when adjusted for matching pay scales of today.
The info is very detailed and one needs to be some kind of wiz to get an accurate figure based on 1948 pay scales.

Have you guys ever heard of disposable income in the context of income remaining after all necessities are provided, the concept of needs and wants and affordability. Simply trying to calculate what something costs in weeks of income is misleading. A car at $1000 for a person with an income of $10 week does not cost 100 weeks its simply beyond reach. A person with an income of $10,000/week could possible purchase a $10,000 car with disposable income of $5,000 after necessities in 2 weeks

disposable income in the context of income
Paul1405,
i'm totally with you on this one !

A Holden car (regardless of the model designation) cost L750/-/- in 1948 and that equalled two years wages.
As the basic wage was around L7/-/- per week that's two years wages or 4,160 h0urs worked.
Today with an hourly rate of around $19/hour that means the Holden of 1948 cost about $79,000, not cheap even at half the price.

Comparison of costs over periods of time needs to be calculated on constants, disposable income is not a constant.

Indy you are missing the point, I said "disposable income in the context of income remaining after all necessities are provided" Issy and ALTIE were arguing the cost of a Holden car in relation to weekly income in 1948 compared to 2020, that is to simplistic to be any kind of guide to affordability and demand. Besides there is a whole range of other factors influencing consumer demand. I"m sure some in depth analysts, taking into account all the variable factors influencing demand, would show affordability of the average car today in Australia is maybe 50 to 100 times greater than it was in 1948.

The unions used to boast about how they had forced employers to pay huge wages. They are silent now that most of these highly paid jobs have disappeared overseas.

Paul, you're right in what you say.
I thought we were using the actual "gross" wage as a comparison of how many weeks/years it would take to buy a Holden, just as a comparison exercise, I agree about the "disposable" argument, but we don't consider that in this comparison.
I must admit I was gobsmacked when I looked at the numbers again, and realised that back then it only took three years of "gross" income to buy a car. ($1,500/$500 = 3 years or 36 months)
WOW!
WHAT WENT WRONG?
Today it's $38,000/$740 per week = 51 weeks or over 4 years.
Who's getting ripped off and who is getting better off?
It's not the Aussie public, that's for sure!

Unemployment is on the rise again, and the best the 'experts' can do is bleat for another interest rate drop when they should be calling for a stop to immigration, and putting people to work in any job available, and withholding the dole from people who think they have the right to pick and choose. No work, no money.

ALTRAV,

Did they do 'rithmetic at your school?

Milk is a good example on the minimum wage in 1950 you could buy approx. 152 litres for a weeks work but today you can get 700 litres.

Now drink up your milk!!

ISSY, OK, I do get a little confused with too many variables.
I admit trying to juggle too many numbers and theories at the same time is NOT one of my strongest features.
I put it down to age.
Apparently that gets me out of a lot of jams these days.
By the way, I'm curious, which numbers did I stuff up, I'd like to know, I might learn something, so as to not let it happen again?

ALTRAV,

"Today it's $38,000/$740 per week = 51 weeks or over 4 years"

For starters, 51 weeks is just short of one (1) year.

ISSY, HA, Yes, oops you're right!
So does that mean we can buy a new Commodore for the equivalent of one years "gross" salary?
Why does that not sound right?
Well the numbers don't lie, so there you have it

Just to complicate this argument as bit more, why not talk take home pay.

In the 50s I payed only 4.7% income tax, meaning most of my earnings were mine

Today our earnings have to pay a couple of bureaucrats, a health care worker, half a dozen hangers on in some NGO, [non government organisation} as well as a couple of academics.

Once the tax to pay for all that is extracted, you have a lot less to use to buy that car. Just as well they got cheaper.

Hassy, you're right but I think we tried to keep it in "gross' pay, because we were not privy to the real amount of disposable income of 70 years ago, well at least I wasn't, obviously others were but that is what we went with.
You do raise a very, very useful and alarming fact though.
When you compare 4.7% to what I believe our base rate of tax is, what around 28%?
If anyone could enlighten me.
The point is, no matter what the true base rate is, it's going to be significantly more than 4.7%.
This must be the missing link as to why it takes so long to save up for something and why the banks have engineered and steered the govt's into upping the interest rates in cahoots with the reserve.
My memory of life in Australia is that things were better back when, and got progressively worse as time went on.
I felt that things were going well until the end of the eighties, then almost as if someone had flicked a switch, things started to go South very quickly.

and even with a higher tax rate, most things are far cheaper than they were in 1948; another constant that is used for a useful comparison is the price of a beer.

Or petrol (in 1950),

"PETROL PRICE RISE LIKELY EXTRA TWO PENCE A GALLON SOUGHT.'
BRISBANE, Dec. 29.-An increase
of 2d a gallon in the price of petrol
is likely In February- This would
mean a. new city retail price of
3/2. Late in January, the present
price of 3/ will be reviewed by the
State Prices Ministers' conference
in Sydney. The Ministers will consider an application from the major oil companies for an increase of
3d a gallon. Retailers also have
asked for a higher price."
http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/42681400

Which means that for the minimum wage in 1950 one could buy 243 litres but on today's min. wage one can buy around 500 litres for the same number of hours worked and today's cheaper cars are much more fuel-efficient and with far better brakes.

Listen you young whipper snappers, back my day a horse cost ten bob, and it was fourpence halfpenny a week to feed! I've got no time for those newfangled horseless carriages of yours, running around at over 20 mph, its outrages! The king and kaiser should put the war aside and do something about it, I'm dammed tooten'! Next thing you know you fellas will want to fly in the sky!

ALTRAV,

"When you compare 4.7% to what I believe our base rate of tax is, what around 28%?
If anyone could enlighten me.
The point is, no matter what the true base rate is, it's going to be significantly more than 4.7%"

Depends how much you earn; if it's $18,200 or less then the rate is ZERO.
If you earn the minimum wage the tax rate is about 4.5%, which is less.

Paul,

A horse at 10/- in 1914 represents a real bargain but fhe normal prices varied between L20/-/- and L100 and the minimum wage was L130/annum

At that price it must have been a stolen horse Paul, & you know what we do to horse thieves, or receivers of same. My first horse bought with my paperboy run cost me 12 pounds, [$24] in 1951.

Any horse bought today that you would allow your grand kids to ride will cost you more than a fairly good used Holden.

As for feeding, a bale of lucerne hay today will cost you $26 each, even out here in the bush. You'll need a couple a week if you want to ride your horse to work. That will buy you enough petrol to drive that used Holden about 350 kilometers. Not worth steeling horses today.

Hasbeen,

That was one and a 1/2 weeks at the minimum wage which in comparison with today's wage equals $1,125.

http://historydaily.org/rare-discoveries-that-show-a-different-side-to-history-than-we-already-know/7

On the link above is a photo of the Holterman Nugget (reef gold)
which weighed 630 pounds and was worth L12,000, which would commonly be transcribed as $24,000, however 630 pounds of gold is worth $US1,036,350 at today's price, or in $A 1,563,716.22 (to be exact at this moment).

An online article from The Australian headed "Unions at the root of Holden death spin" spells out in detail the appalling behaviour of unions, the weakness of management caving into them, and the government's failure to monitor the use of the $2 billion of taxpayers' money that disappeared along with what looks to have been the worst company to ever operate in Australia - and the worst union.

ttbn, a big thank you from me.
I've been trying for ages to explain to Paul and Co. that the unions/labour are the biggest bunch of thieves/losers ever to grace the Earth.
They are con-men and criminals who realised that people are gullible, and will listen to anyone and believe anything, and even to the point of being led to their death, all the while these bastards are sitting back dividing up the spoils of all the money and cons they have stolen off the workers, all in the guise of helping the poor downtrodden worker against the evil and corrupted bosses/owners.
All they had to do was tell these bastards to piss off and guess what, we would still have ALL the manufacturing jobs we had years ago, only more efficient, with more machinery, and any robots or machines would have been installed in place of someone who left or retired.
Not the BS Paul and the unions try to push.
It was an unfortunate reality that, if the unions had not pushed for so many wage rises and in doing so boosted inflation beyond any reasonable linits by ANY account, we would have remained viable, the company would have increased production, the bosses would have had to hire more people and so on.
But NO, because the scumbag pollies of every persuasion reckoned that it was a good thing to increase wages, because of more tax and so forth, they were all in on it.
The end result we can see now, was almost as if it was planned to bring Australia down so it could be sold off to the scumbags mates and so we the people got shafted once more.
Just for fun check out who owns all our assets and infrastructure that used to be govt owned. (owned by the people)
Heck labour is so stupid or was that there plan all along.
Had the idiots left well enough alone, we would still be owning the assets, but NO, you idiots and your misguided and arrogant attitudes and views destroyed EVERYTHING!

ttbn

Hardly expect an opinion piece in the anti worker Murdoch gutter press to paint unions in a favourable light. That would be like a Nazi newspaper painting Jews in a favourable light. Can't have that now can we.

What's the use of you putting up a post when we can't read what's said, just a load of BS in my opinion.

ttbn, well there you have it.
It's official the OLO know-it-all has given his unwarranted, and uninformed opinion.
Because he has rejected your link, automatically means you are right and your choice of link is a good one.
We know this because his closed mind and short sightedness to anything right and proper disallows him to see and reason in the positive and only argues and believes in the opposite to the truth.
He is incapable of accepting truths.
So if he says something is bad or wrong, you can happily go forward in the knowledge that you got it spot on and you were right.

what "link" am I rejecting ALTRAV? There is no bloody link to reject! Just ttbn and whats no more than an opinion. Like your opinions WORTHLESS!

ALTRAV,

Without the Unions, you would not enjoy the lifestyle that you do.
If there had been no unions social progress would have been very slow or non-existent.

The first unionists to come to Australia were the Tolpuddle Martyrs, transported for the crime of forming an agricultural union.
They were from Dorset and that was such a miserable place that the Irish, fleeing the Famine would not go there'
So poor were the labourers that men and women worked naked in the fields, to save their clothing because they could only afford one set.
The aristocracy and the landowners kept them in virtual slavery; do you blame them for organizing a union?

This is a description of my ancestral village,

"Another fruitful source of misery, as well as immorality, is the great in-adequacy of the number and size of the houses to the number of the population. and the consequently crowded state of their habitations, which in Dorsetshire generally, and in Stourpain particularly, afford the most limited accommodation.

"The want of proper ventilation in these houses must be to the last degree detrimental to the health of the inhabitants; the atmosphere, especially of the sleeping apartments. to an unpractised nose is almost insupportable. It is, perhaps, worthy of remark that dishes, plates, and other articles of crockery, seem almost unknown; there is, however, the less need for them, as grist bread forms the principal, and I believe only kind of food which falls to the labourer's lot. In no single instance did I observe meat of any kind during my progress through the parish. The furniture is such as may be expected from the description I have given of the place - rickety table and two or three foundered chairs generally forming the extent of the upholstery. Want, famine, and misery, are the features of the village, and yet I am credibly informed that the peasant of the Vale of Blackmore and the western parts of the country is as hungry, emaciated, and squalid a being as the denizen of Stourpain."

Further to the above.

My first English ancestors in Australia came from Stourpaine in Dorset. Stourpaine in its day was briefly famous having made it to the centre spread of the Illustrated London News of the 5th of September 1846, but for all the wrong reasons;

" Of one of the villages, Stourpain, about midway between Blandford and Sturminster Newton, the Times Correspondent gives this lamentable account:--
"The first feature which attracts the attention of a stranger on entering the village is the total want of cleanliness which pervades it. A stream, composed of the matter which constantly escapes from pigsties and other receptacles of filth, meanders down each street, being here and there collected into standing Pools, which lie festering and rotting in the sun so as to create wonder that the place is not the continual abode of pestilence-indeed the worst malignant fevers have raged here at different times. It may be sufficient to add for the present that the inside of the cottages in every respect corresponds with the external appearance of the place. The wages here in very few instances exceed seven shillings per week".

Did they drive Holdens Is Mise?

Nope, but one of their descendants married Bill Holden.

I always knew you were related to royalty Issy, King Hog and Queen Sow! Don't take offence. Anyway moving on to more important business.

Issy as you know I come from around the Wellington Shire in New South Wales, between Orange and Wellington. Did a bit of panning in the creek from time to time with the grandfather, as a kid, lots of fun. Had to watch out for the black snakes in the creek. Never found anything the size of the 'Holterman Nugget' couldn't fit it in our pan. The grandfather had the "gold bug", always claimed there was still plenty of gold around the district if a fella knew where to look. He had found some gold, particularity a nugget about the size and shape of a peanut. The grandfather had it put on a gold chain and always wore it around his neck.

Talk about living rough, I recall two old blokes living in the last of those "pioneer shacks", out in the bush, the last of the real bushies. A place built out of rough sawn timber, bark, and a bit of old galvanised iron and stone around the fireplace, dirt floor, no electricity, no running water, water from the creek. They lived their for years, Mum said they were brothers. It must have been bloody cold in winter, we got snow now and then. Kept their meat hanging in a bag in a shady tree. Mum once said they offered her a piece of mutton (they had too much, they worked a bit on properties in the district, they might get half a sheep to put in the bag) it was crawling with maggots, but they did not seem to mind, boil it up, maggots and all. I think they lived to old age, maybe into their 80's.

Paul,

Unions are like a cancer where businesses infested with unions slowly become less efficient, less profitable and without state subsidies die an ignominious death.

Shadow, you have always leeched the hard won benefits of unionism, without ever contributing to the struggle. You simply apply the "begging bowl" mentality to workers, but not to yourself of course, you are far superior to mere workers, you consider yourself an elite employee. White shirt and tie, up there in the rarefied atmosphere of the 27th floor, sipping coffee, and playing with your mobile phone from 9 to 5, never venturing near the coal face. Must be a nice working life for you, not contributing anything, just reaping the benefits.

SM, I don't know why lefties don't see it.
Is it pride?
Is it the fear of their world suddenly falling apart?
Is it the fear in coming to realise and having to cope with all the emotional and irrationality of being wrong and having wasted all those years.
Is it having to accept that they were part of a huge con by a very greedy and selfish, lot of crooks, who at best were misguided if there were any who really believed in the unions BS, or at worst had worked out people's weaknesses and played them like children with candy?
I don't get it when the evidence is there for EVERYONE to see, not just the righties.
It is a historic fact that the leftist notion of a communal working environment only works when you have a like minded people with inclusive mindsets and ideologies.
People today are greedy and selfish, with emphasis on "SELF".
So the labour/union ideology has not/cannot not work, end of.
I have NEVER understood, if a person is offered X amount of pay, they have a choice, they can reject it and move on till they find a job that fits ALL their criteria, including the pay rate.
This arrogant concept of accepting a job then pushing for a pay rise?
Really?

ALTRAV,

Without unions, there would not have been the legislative framework that now protects most workers.

It's not unions that run illegal sweatshops.

"“Poor working conditions in the garment sector are not confined to low-wage countries. In Australia, the use of home-based outworkers in the cut make and trim stage of production is common. These are among the most marginalised and precarious workers. Over the past decade, state and federal inquiries have consistently found that outworkers receive payment and conditions significantly below their award and statutory entitlements (see for example, Productivity Commission 2003; Industry Commission 1997). In the Travelling Textiles report , Brotherhood of St Lawrence research in 2007 confirmed that conditions had worsened in the previous five years. Some outworkers reported they were paid as little as $2.50 for a detailed shirt which took one hour to sew, while others advised they were paid between $2 and $3 an hour (Diviney & Lillywhite 2007).”
http://www.ethical.org.au/3.4.2/get-informed/issues/homeworkers-in-australia/

You are not an "outworker" so you can sound righteous and the conditions of these unfortunate workers would be today's norm if it hadn't been for Unions.

Then there is the epidemic of underpayment,

"At the office of Fair Work Ombudsman Sandra Parker, the flood of companies rushing to declare that they have underpaid their workers has become a torrent – a torrent that she admits she might need more money to deal with.

Speaking to Guardian Australia this week after supermarket giant Woolworths admitted to underpaying staff by as much as $300m over almost a decade, Parker says it felt like big companies were coming forward almost weekly to declare their wrongdoing."
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/nov/03/adly-checking-their-payrolls-the-ugly-truth-of-australias-underpayment-epidemic

It doesn't matter what is said for or against unions; hardly any workers belong to them these days.

The unions still in existence have been allowing some companies to get away with underpaying workers for years. Union fat cats are interested only in conning or menacing workers into paying their own inflated salaries for nothing. They just flop about, appearing on TV, and waiting for endorsement in a safe Labor seat.

The union movement is a mafia-like protection racket that doesn't provide any actual protection.

True, Union membership is declining but not across the board,

"The biggest increases in union membership over the last decade and a half were recorded by the Police Federation of Australia (PFA) (up 92 per cent), Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation (ANMF) (up 84 per cent), and Independent Education Union of Australia (IEUA) (up 35 per cent)."
http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp1819/UnionMembership

Some people obviously have their heads screwed on and our dedicated nurses are among them as are police and teachers.
Many who are not in unions may regret the day they decided that they were strong enough to forego membership.

The number of union members in Australia has declined from around 2.5 million in 1976 to 1.5 million in 2016. During the same period the union member share of all employees (or union density) has fallen from 51 per cent to 14 per cent.Oct 15, 2018
https://www.aph.gov.au › pubs › Un...
Trends in union membership in Australia – Parliament of Australia.

51% down to 14%. Nothing for the unions to worry about there, then!

No, but plenty for the workers to worry about!!

One of the reasons that manufacturing has declined in Australia is free trade and much lower costs in some countries, notably Bangladesh.
Many Australian businessmen have taken advantage of the low wages and primitive working conditions that their foreign counterparts countenance and advocate in their own countries and against their fellow citizens.

"
"Made in Poverty: The True Price of Fashion", February 2019

Oxfam, together with the Bangladesh Institute for Labour Studies and the Institute for Workers and Trade Unions in Vietnam, has interviewed more than 470 workers across Bangladesh and Vietnam... All of them were part of Australian clothing supply chains at the time of interview, employed in garment factories that supply at least one iconic Australian clothing brand...

Not only are almost all the workers... being paid well below a living wage; they are also struggling to feed themselves and their families... They fall into spiraling debt, live in poor conditions and cannot afford the healthcare or education they and their families need. Workers in Bangladesh told stories of... pulling their children out of school in order to send them to work in the garment sector to bring in more money...

[The] research also reveals the strategies and practices used by Australian companies that drive wages down. Interviews with factory owners and managers showed that, despite clear commitments on important fundamental rights at work in their Codes of Conduct, Australian companies place pressure on garment factories... undertake fierce price negotiation, often jump between contracts instead of working with factories over the long term, squeeze lead times for orders and operate with a separation between their ethical and standards staff and their buying teams, who negotiate directly with factories..."
http://www.business-humanrights.org/en/oxfam-australian-brands-purchasing-practices-are-driving-down-wages-for-garment-workers-in-bangladesh-vietnam

Given half a chance they'd do the same thing in Australia.

Issy, finally, welcome to the real world.
Your comments and ideologies are pure fantasy.
The numbers and stats you have supplied are contrived to support a pre-conceived agenda.
What you described as bad practices are all part of business.
You malign Woolworths as if they have under payed their floor and shop staff.
The ones who are alleged to have been underpaid are the white collar office jockeys more so than the rest.
The underpaying, as is reported, is due to internal mistakes in salary levels and NOT the stealing of money from the workers, you and the media want to make out.
Furthermore, as I have repeatedly said, if a worker agrees on an amount, then so be it.
None of your or anyone else's business.
If they don't like it they don't take the job, get it?
Even if they take the job and later ask for a pay rise and are refused, the same still applies.
Malicious thinking people like yourself want to paint ALL companies as having slave labour, working for nothing and staying against their will.
Do you sick idiots actually read, or even believe what you write, or are you all just nasty little sh!t stirrers, who have wasted your lives and now looking back you decide the fault was the bosses and not the fact that you had a good time when you were younger, how does that stupid vial saying go?
I work to live, and not live to work.
Well there was your first and fatal mistake.
Had you worked more and wasted time and money in your youth, you absolutely would be living the life of Ryan today, like me, instead of bitching and bellyaching about things you know NOTHING about, nor are you ever going to?
You see people like you with your victim-hood mindset will never get it, because of your subjective, and flawed thinking.
I'll bet if you were paid more money, you would still be broke at the end of the day, because your idea of life is to have "FUN".

When money is borrowed into existence, it forces every country to exploit others.

Working conditions in Bangladesh and any part of Third World have nothing to do with a discussion on unions in Australia. And there are no unions in the Third World to add to the the cost of goods. The low wages in such countries are no concern of ours; but what do you think the workers there would have been existing on before the jobs were transferred from the expensive West? There is no dole or welfare. What we consider to be sweat shop wages are very welcome to them. If they ever get unionised, they will lose the jobs to some other cheap labour country just as Australia has.

There is no point in trying to justify unions in Australia by dragging up what goes on in backward countries. We are a rule of law country, where there is ample protection for workers. There was a good reason for unions once. Now, there is not. And workers themselves have shown this by dumping membership holus bolus, no matter what a bunch of retired old farts living in the past think. Things have changed. Isn't that what you lefty progressives are always saying - when it suits you only, it seems.

ttbn, what happens next is just the sort of thing these lefty morons were trying to avoid, so they say.
And that is; the Australian economy is going to decline over the next few years, the time frame will depend on whether we can get rid of the greens or at least diminish their influence on those who are unaware of what's going on and believe any tripe these mongrels put out.
Either way our economy will slide, but our Asian neighbours will rise to take up the benefits and industries that we will lose.
The net effect is that the region will move towards a closer balance, so we will become closer to second world and third world countries will rise to become second world.
This was always the plan by those hidden way up in the clouds, better known as the elite, in some cases.
Just remember where the unions and labour came from.
It's as if they set out to destroy Australia, just remember WWII and those bastard wharfies delaying loading Aussie supply ships with necessary provisions and equipment, including guns and ammunition to send to the troops abroad,
They delayed the ships purposely to give the enemy, their allies, a chance at gaining ground and ultimately winning the war.
Even the American sailors were ready to attack and kill the wharfies for their treasonous acts, if not for the intervention of some high profile figures, who escape me at this time.
Otherwise we would have been shod of the Unions way back during the war.
I for one wish it had happened, after seeing ALL our industries infected and or killed one by one.
Now the Unions are as good as gone, along come another brand of bloody commo's, the greens.
These guys are even worse because they are simply vandals and don't know anything or believe in anything, so we are back to having to tolerate another bunch of morons.
Well hopefully we have learned our lesson with the Unions and labour and this time we will cut the greens off at the roots.

ALTRAV,

"Either way our economy will slide, but our Asian neighbours will rise to take up the benefits and industries that we will lose."

If Green-owned Labor get in at the next election, their zero emissions policy ALONE will achieve economic collapse for Australia.

ttbn, if someone so basically informed on climate as myself can guarantee that we can nor will EVER reach Zero emissions, why don't those who are supposed to know this stuff come out criticising such an outrageous and incredibly impossible lie .
Do we have to start enlightening people now so they DON'T fall for another con.
I'll say it again; We can NEVER achieve ZERO EMISSIONS!
There, now let the record show, another of my forecasts and predictions debunking the bastards and their lies and impossible policies.

ALTRAV,

Nice rave and what one has come to expect from a conspiracy theorist who is divorced from the real world.

I will comment on,
"Had you worked more and wasted time and money in your youth, you absolutely would be living the life of Ryan today, like me,..."

Perish the thought, I prefer to live like Riely, Ryan was a loser.

In my youth, I had a job where I was on duty/call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week on a flat rate of pay, no overtime etc.

Issy, so what's your point?
All I got from that was that you had a job.
I don't get the relevance of the rest of your comments, such as 24hrs, 7days a week, on a flat rate of pay.
Ohhh, I think I get it, you must be one of those aussies who feel entitled, and for some obscure reason known only to you and your ilk, should be paid extra for doing the same job, but at a different time, or day.
And you wonder why people buy imported or foreign goods, and our companies are closing down, and thousands of people are out of work.
If everyone just got on with their job and lived within their means their pay would be more than adequate.
But NO!
Everyone believes they are entitled to have everything and anything NOW.
And the ignorant lot would stand there abusing anyone who would challenge them with, AND WHY NOT?
This arrogance must stop, or else we will all flounder under a load of credit so big, there is never going to be a way to get back on top of it.
You were on duty/call 24/7, so what?
You were lucky, you had a job, so stop your bellyaching and be grateful.
BTW, Riely was a tosser and ended up being the loser, I met Ryan and he is living the life.
I know I am, but apparently you're not, or you would not talk like you are.
Riely was living 'A' life, not 'THE' life, so I'm not going to lower myself to Riely's level.
I much prefer it up here at Ryan's level.
Just to seal the point and show you and your lazy bunch of entitled w@#ker$ how wrong and irrelevant YOU have made YOURSELVES, would you like to do a comparison between myself and anyone of your entitled ones?
We can then see who's philosophy and lifestyle was the better and more fruitful one, and who is living the life of RYAN!

cont........
Just to show you lot what it means to be responsible worthy people, a little story about my brothers business.
He employs around 130 give or take.
When the boom was on he could not get Aussies, so the employment office suggested some 457's, and he obliged.
He still had to pay them the equivalent of the Aussies, there was no cheating, nor is he prone too.
He's making plenty so paying the appropriate rate was not an issue.
Anyway, it was out of his control as the govt was involved.
A few years later the mining industry slumped, and of course contracts did too.
So he had to put people off due to the downturn.
The 457's were the obvious first ones to go, but to his surprise the leader, (they were Chinese) asked if he could see his way to keeping them on they would accept a pay cut to the equivalent amount it would have been with the others fired.
He was not keen to get rid of them because they were far more valuable, focused and efficient, both in performance and in work ethics.
I'm not sure exactly what he arranged with the govt, but he still had them last time I happened past.
Now you see you entitled pricks would not even consider doing what they suggested, and that was to keep their mates in work so they could send money back home to support God knows how many people and families.
You push the employer into bankruptcy and then you demand he still pay you your blood money.
Well those of you out of a job, enjoy your premature retirement.
Oh that's right, you did nothing towards when you were out of a job, and now you can rely on the dole.
Good for you, I suppose in one way you got what you were entitled to after all.

ALTRAV,

You seem to be dumb,

" The term living the life of Riley is an American phrase, it first appeared in the early 1900s. There is some suggestion that the idea of a gentleman named Mr. Riley enjoying a luxurious, easy life is suggested in several earlier vaudeville songs... The term living the life of Riley spread across American training camps during World War I, soldiers wrote home using the phrase, which popularized it. By the 1940s the term living the life of Riley was well known enough to be used as the title of a popular radio comedy, The Life of Riley, starring William Bendix..."
http://grammarist.com/idiom/living-the-life-of-riley/
The only life of Ryan that I could find was about a pro skater.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1087539/
probably appropriate as you do seem to skate around the truth a bit.

As to working 24/7 at a flat rate of pay (and no union) that applies to the Armed Services, Army Navy and Air Force.
I was in the Army, of course, we also got three meals a day, accommodation, free medical and dental and free burials.

Accommodation, when I was in Korea, was in tents; ever lived in a tent in minus 15 deg. Celcius weather or in a fox hole?

Bet you haven't.

Liked the story about your brother, sounds like a caring guy who thinks of his workers, especially those who are his fellow citizens and have mortgage payments to meet, bet that you're just like him.

Funny how there are no exposures of Australian companies making a simple mistake in their procedures and overpaying their staff.

ttbn,

The factories in Bangladesh already existed, did you think that the poor Bangladeshis imported all their clothes before Australian garment sellers found that they could exploit the local situation?

How dumb can one get?

ALTRAV,

24/7 Man thinks we are dumb. It's probably time to leave him to do what he does best - talking about himself.

You know it's interesting that my memories of Aussies in growing up, and till today, are simply described by few words, such as; fun, beer, good times, dole, surfing, bludging, whinging, fighting, bullying, entitled, selfish, and more of the same.
Not one thought or memory of words like; work, focused, inclusive, fairness, hard working, maturity and leadership.
Instead I have heard stupid mantra's like, "I work to live, not live to work".
They want extra money for working weekends and outside normal hours such as night shift, WHY?
So whilst the country has treated the job as a disease, to be avoided at all cost, we find the same morons bitching about their pension and how it is not enough to live on.
Well the moral of the story is literally, 'you reap what you sow'!
Had fun and enjoyed yourself when you were young and healthy and strong, able to do the hard yards? Well to f@(#ing bad, now suffer, you lazy, entitled, smarmy, arrogant fools.
Does anyone wonder why we're in the sh!t today?
If you don't know the answer then you were part of the problem.
These same arse wipes, whinge and bitch and belly ache about bosses today, but don't want to realise that it was the bosses who they should be praising and cultivating, not denigrating.
In Japan the staff don't leave work, (knock off) until the boss does.
Now that's respect and displaying gratitude for him giving them the job in the first place, and obviously if the staff knock off before him, if he needs answers to something he is doing they need to be there, to do THEIR JOB.
Unlike here, ah tomorrows another day I'll worry about it tomorrow.
In the meantime the contract was lost to someone who followed through that day.
No Aussies do not deserve ANYTHING but a good horsewhipping, and a good dose of National service, and just maybe we will begin to see some mature, responsible men come out of it, making us proud and focused on success and prosperity, and not laziness and dependency.

Some great prices on existing Holden stock, starting 1st March.
http://www.caradvice.com.au/827940/holden-discounts-2/

2019 Holden Trax $13,000 drive away
http://youtu.be/lMo36E9T0hs

2019 Holden Astra $12,000 drive away
http://youtu.be/KCgT74Dw3e4

Includes 7 years warranty and logbook servicing.
Almost too cheap to say no;
You can buy it, drive it for 2 years or 50,000ks and then still sell it for more than you paid.

Here’s Why GM is Shutting Down Car Production Around the World
http://youtu.be/MMF5FVZmGaE

ALTRAV,

"... I have heard stupid mantra's like, "I work to live, not live to work"."

Well, I always worked to live and did not live to work and only an utter fool would live to work.

On the bosses in Japan and workers' loyalty, you forgot to mention that the ethics of the bosses and owners of firms is the opposite of your own, they never put workers off, they reduce profits and keep their staff when there is a downturn.

Revolutionary.

ttbn

What is the difference between Australian garment sellers exploiting young girls and boys who labour in factories in impoverished countries and dirty old men (and younger ones) exploiting young girls and boys for sex?

Issy, good for you.
I imagine you had a lot of fun, spent a lot of money, and enjoyed yourself.
I can't comment on that kind of lifestyle, even as a younger man, I enjoyed work, and what I did, even did it for pleasure when I was not working.
Tried all the things that were considered fun in my day, rejected them all.
Even today, can't explain it.
Still today, hate sports, all forms and the whole concept or idea.
I never understood how a grown man, and these days, definitely not women, would engage in a practice specifically the purview of children.
Then I was vindicated when I found out how many of these idiots were carrying injuries, some were that bad it handicapped them for the rest of their lives, incredibly stupid and completely inexplicable.
Anyway, I never wanted for anything, fast cars, slow planes, I've had it all, simply because, as I tell me kids, work hard, focus when your young and healthy and fit enough to surmount all obstacles, mostly the physical ones, because as you age and become old you won'be able to do much at all, physically, but at least you'll have the money to mitigate any short comings you may have by then.
Issy, I speak from experience, I don't like the idea of living off the govt, or as I see it bludging off the govt.
People say get stuffed I paid my taxes, so I am owed the pension or dole.
What I explain to one and all is, that the taxes go towards current expenses, they were not intended as if to be set aside in a bank for when they got old, like superannuation, which is another waste of time.
I made sure I was self supporting and the govt can get stuffed, I don't leach off them and they don't break my stones.
In fact I'm still paying tax each year, so I'm one of the good guys.
Issy my point is focus on work when you're young, it'll pay off when your older and can relax.

ALTRAV,

"Issy, good for you.
I imagine you had a lot of fun, spent a lot of money, and enjoyed yourself"

Quite right, and I also worked and the only times that I was out of work for long were when I decided to take time off, to travel mostly.
I will admit to aspiring to be a dole bludger but I kept getting jobs. Even when I wasn't looking for work, work would find me, one example I finished with a company on the Friday at 4.00 PM and was called to the phone at 7.00 PM and offered the job of setting up a new production line for a company for which I'd previously worked.
I had a reputation!!

I also enjoyed fast cars, sailing although it was some years before I owned the first of three yachts that I enjoyed mightily I also did a lot of flying though never aspired to a pilot's licence.
Mainly flew in the front cockpit of Tiger Moths and would take over when airborne.
Up in India, my Muslim mate lends me a plane and pilot for the wife and me to go shopping, I enjoy handling the plane (a Piper PA-32R) the professional pilot does the official takeoffs and landings.
The mate also has a Yakovlev Yak-18T in his fleet but he doesn't lend this one,

So, work to live not live to work.

Issy, so what do you do these days?
Do you still have any planes or as I call them "TOYS"?
Are you still working?
What was the company you set up the production line making, as I too have also done the same thing in establishing a limousine production factory or facility in Malaysia as the Malaysian Govt as Joint Venture partners.
Two and a half years later sold out to the PM's son, and returned home to continue my auto design/engineering business back here.
I'm curious what your production was.
Sorry, I'm doing it again.
I do have a problem, in that I like talking about productive things that are ultimately beneficial to mankind and their betterment, and making life easier.
It's OK, you don't have to answer, if it's too personal, it's just my way, I'm an open book and am accommodating wherever I can be.
Never-the-less you sound very interesting.

ALTRAV,

I'm well and truly retired, I'll soon be 86 and the only work that I do these days is a bit of lathe work for myself, miniature steam engines and some general turning for friends now and again.
I also have a fairly complete blacksmith's forge and associated gear, my father was a 'smith and my eldest son has exhibited his blacksmithing skill internationally; he's a damn sight better than I ever was!

I spend a lot of time hunting foxes and cats (when I see one) and I target shoot as well, rifle and pistol once a month as well as occasional visits to the superb shotgun range at Inverell.

The production line that I put in on that occasion was for the manufacture of the lowly tin can.
Tin cans are however truly precision items, tolerances are tight and an ordinary can for, say, baked beans had to be within 0.002 inches of being square on the ends of the body before the tops were fitted (the tops often being of special design were fitted first) and the bottoms went on at the cannery when filling took place.

If the contents of a can are to last then the can has to be perfectly airtight hence the degree of precision the machines that produce the cans must be capable of and the often tedious but necessary setting up thereof.

Whilst on the subject but wildly off-topic, let us remember how the greedy trade unions closed so many Australian timber mills and cost many rural jobs.
Much of our building and general-purpose timbers are now imported thanks to this union action.

Or have I got that wrong?

I seem to remember some Green union or something...

Issy, that sounds about right if memory serves.
I don't retain a lot these days, but irrelevant and criminally insane people like the greens and the unions,..........well, that says it all.
They are both vandals, both ignorant of so much, and both care nothing for the people and their welfare, and both have self interests as their first priority.
So what you say would be correct.
One only has to take a quick look back, and see the trail of destruction these criminals have left in their wake.
What the unions didn't succeed in the way of industry and of course, jobs, the greens and other criminals like animal liberationists and other sick idiots, are trying to finish us off altogether, and make us reliant on the govt, which is being run by the elite, and we know what their agenda is all about.
This is serious and if Aussies want to live in a state of oppression and control, then carry on, but if you don't, like me, then stand up to these pricks, don't cave, give them back twice as hard as they dish out, until they get it through their thick stupid heads that their brand of tyranny and mayhem is not wanted.
Australia and more specifically Aussies have lost too much already, don't let these pricks take away mining and farming as well, it will leave us with nothing, NOTHING!
Let's hear from the greens and the unions and other random criminal sabotage groups, what their plans are to make Australia viable and productive again?

ALTRAV,

Not all unions were/are as black as you paint them.
The union to which I belonged and was a Rep for, The Australiasian Society of Engineers was moderate always and did their best to negotiate with employers to the extent that they were called "Scabs" by the more belligerent unions.

There are currently some 70 active unions in Australia and some 90 that have ceased to exist either through amalgamation, or the trades/jobs that they covered no longer exist.

" .... 90 that have ceased to exist either through amalgamation, or the trades/jobs that they covered no longer exist". And through irrelevance.

ttbn,

How impressively observant of you.

They are irrelevant because the trades/jobs that they covered no longer exist and they ceased to exist because of the advances of technology.

Have you found any reference to big firms inadvertently overpaying their workers?

Is Miss

What's got up your bum? Lack of membership also make unions irrelevant. And WTF should I have references to firms overpaying workers?

And don't complain about being addressed as miss. My spellcheck obviously does not recognise you silly name as a word, and I'm sick of having to override it just because you complained about it once, you cantankerous old coot.

ttbn,

Well, we do have something in common, my spell check doesn't recognise ttbn as a word either.

Is Mise is perfectly understandable if you have a Gaelic spellcheck.

Issy, my Garlic spellchecker isn't working! Please past the spaghetti sauce.

Paul,

Neither is your English one a lot of the time!

ttbn
(blast! there's another black mark om Grammarly's score sheet)

Refresh my memory, when did I complain about my 'nome de guerre' being mucked up?

I just thought that you might have been able to direct us to an overpayment of wages as ALTRAV (damn, there's another one) seems to have given up.

One would think that if businesses/companies made underpayments because of an error in accounting that there would be a few errors in the opposite direction, however, if they were deliberately underpaying that would explain the apparent anomaly.

What do you think?

Issy, no I haven't, nor am I likely to "give up".
Without those of us with voices of reason, common sense, objectivity and maturity, I for one shudder to think what a useless medium OLO would be.
Now on the topic of overpaying.
I'm glad you brought that up, because for as long I can remember we have been overpaying this lot of lazy, entitled, self absorbed ingrates.
You think that the money you get each week is a judge for how much you earn?
Well old chum, you conveniently forget ALL the other benefits which in monetary terms amount to, A LOT!
Super, maternity leave, overtime, and a million other "hidden" benefits that someone has to account for, or pay.
That someone is the boss or the company, and they aren't giving it to charity, they are giving it to YOU, as income.
So don't try to be smart and conveniently forget how much the unions have BLACKMAILED businesses with their filthy and low life antics.
Holding companies at ransom if they don't do as the unions say?
Who the f@ck do the unions think they are, and what's worse is that there are the low-life greedy, selfish, entitled scum of the public who agree with them.
Don't you sometimes wonder why things are so expensive?
The goods are purchased at Chinese prices, but then sold at much increased prices.
The services, 'trades', are charging way too high prices, have based their fee's on those working on the mines, so as not to be outdone or seen to be worse off than their FI-FO mates.
Again totally unjustified and if I had my way, illegal.
So there is your answer as to being overpaid, so when a company, no sorry, not the company, the PERSON or PEOPLE who should have picked up on any pay scale changes or inconsistencies, did not, it was NOT the company who was at fault, but the lazy, ignorant, entitled, overpaid moron who did not do his job that was at fault.
Let's lay the blame where it belongs, not the companies, the PEOPLE!

One problem Issy with Woolworths and Coles and their subs, is Store managers, and Area managers, their performance bonus is based on the stores bottom line. Its common practice for Store managers, rather than to pay overtime to Department kiddie managers, say during store uplifts or stock-take etc, is to "pay" one for one time off in lou of penalty rates, some of those kiddie managers could have up to a hundred hours owing. Then if a kiddie manager was moved to another store, common practice every couple of years, Woolworths and Coles don't like any of their managers to be to long in the one store, they get to familiar with the staff, not good. often owed time is simply lost.

The SDA, is a piss weak union, simple as that, its sell to prospective members, mostly kids, is not wages and conditions, its not protection, its more likely discount movie tickets for signing up.

p/s One of our grandsons when he worked for Macca's was on a 3 year trainee wage without the trainee badge, doing the reg stuff of flipping burgers, but completing some in-house b/s work sheets (in his own time) to earn an in-house certificate. Seems it was "legal", and it saved Macca's money.

ALTRAV,

Have you not heard of accountants?

Big businesses have them to make sure that, among other things, the finances are kept legitimate.
Rarely does the accountant underpay taxes so why were so many companies caught out underpaying wages?

I'm sure that you know the answer but find it akin to vinegar instead of wine.

ALTRAV,

Are you against paying extra for working in confined spaces, danger money, wet money etc.?

Do you think that a person should be paid for the importance of their job?

Issy, firstly, accountants are only people.
I have two sons, both are Chartered Accountants.
Yeah, I know, what are the odds that I had an actual personal attachment to your question.
My point is, they are human, and at some point they will stuff up, hopefully not, BUT!
I, and the family have and still do have accountants on the payroll.
Believe me, or don't believe me, accountants make mistakes, miss deadlines, forget payments, and the list goes on.
As I said, they are only human, and such, you get good and bad in every facet of work or life.
As for the question of pay scale relative to the type of work, dangerous or demanding.
I have always believed that no matter what the job, only a dangerous or physical job should have an extra payment attached to it.
In the good ole' days that sentiment was relative.
But today it's not.
The insurance and health OCC, took care of all that by dumbing down and reducing the physical demands in the workplace, to accommodate the maggots, and feminazi's who insist that they are as good as or equal to any man.
They were so good and equal that we ended up with some of the most pathetic Nancy industrial laws in history.
Cement bags suddenly halved in weight, from 20kg to 10kg, just to accommodate these pathetic maggots, and this went through all trades and industries.
So to answer your question about getting paid extra for certain jobs, NO these days everything has a machine or gadget to make life in the physical world easier.
Now as for the white collar industry, well those leaches definitely don't deserve the pays they get.
The higher up the ladder you go, the slacker and easier your job gets, if only because you have PA's, secretaries and a whole office full of people to do your bidding.
I should know, one example; I set up a company and in the beginning I was on the floor teaching, eventually I pulled back to let the business run itself.
to be cont................

cont.......

After stepping back, coming to work dressed like a Boss, looking and acting the part, I have to say, I didn't like this new phase, it was boring, I did nothing all day, I had my usual #1, #2, #3 underlings and so on who knew what to do and did it, with little or no questions.
I suppose I should have been happier or more humble because I did such a good job establishing the company and teaching the workers, that I basically did myself out of a job.
But trust me if not because I was an owner, I would not justify the huge and unconscionable salaries some managers and CEO's get, or anyone at the top of these big corporations, like banks and so on.
An owner is a totally different kettle of fish.
He puts up money, sometimes ALL his money and ALL his time, so it is HE who is committed, and HIS neck on the line, so I cannot begrudge someone who has taken such a huge risk and gambled his life on the line.
If he succeeds, he deserves every penny he gets.
If the company goes viral, like Microsoft and the like, then all better and luckier for him.
He took the risk then he deserves the spoils, unchecked, and unchallenged!

ALTRAV,

A few posts back you said,

"Don't you sometimes wonder why things are so expensive?"

No, I don't because most things are far cheaper than they were years ago.

On your remarks on cement, the standard bag in Australia is 20kg and in the USA it is some 48 kg, guess which country has the higher rate of hernias?

Issy, don't try me, I "wrote the book".
Let me correct you.
Firstly your assertion is absolutely and totally wrong, because you must compare like for like.
You will find the odd thing that has become cheaper, can't think of any, BUT, in the main, any Aussie made item, product or service, is HUGELY and MANY TIMES more expensive today than years ago.
And I'm not forgetting about another bad disease called inflation.
Remember Aussie for Aussie, not Aussie for Asian.
As for the cement bags, we were MEN back then, today they are neuters, snags and wimps, who couldn't lift their own manhood to have a leak.
Issy your point about hernias is basically irrelevant, as it is too broad and unqualified a comment.
If there are stats on it, I want to know who the authors are, who commissioned the report, what was the criteria and questions, and a million other questions, before I accept any such stat.
I don't care to debate such things as work ethics.
If a guy is such a wimp, then muster the help of someone to help, are people that stupid today?
Anyway I feel that stat highly unlikely, because there are too many physical aids today to mitigate such things happening.
I'll tell you why they are injuring themselves, it's called mis-adventure, and the most common are socially driven activities like sports, NOT WORK!

ALTRAV,

I'll make it simple.

In 1950 a loaf of bread cost 8d and the minimum wage was L8/2/-, therefore a person on that wage could buy 243 loaves of bread.
Today the minimum wage is $740.80 and a person can buy 296 loaves at $2.50 each.

What's more, the bread is sliced and hygienically wrapped and we've already seen, in earlier posts that a Holden car is vastly cheaper and almost unimaginably better than the death trap model of 1950

In 1951 a TV set cost L170/-/- or 19 weeks wages, today for a weeks minimum wage one can buy 5 much better sets, or to put it another way a weeks wage in 1951 would buy 1/19th of a set compared to 5 sets today and today's TVs come in colour and with remote controls.

Issy, ha, ha, you've cherry picked, c'mon, I disagree on the bread comparison.
As for the TV, as I said, apples for apples.
Australia doesn't make TV's so doesn't count.
But I am trying to find things that are cheaper today than before, I know they exist, but if they are Aussie made, they are few and far between.
Do you have figures on the price of petrol, in 1950?
Or the hourly rate.
Maybe the price of a packet of cigarettes, (pack of twenty).
It's just not possible for too many things to be cheaper today, unless they are "made in China".
But I'm willing to learn of such if or what they might be.

Altrav,

"Cement bags suddenly halved in weight, from 20kg to 10kg,"

They didn't, standard weight is 20kg.

I doesn't matter where things are made, like for like is comparing clothing with clothing, food with food, cars with cars.

The proportion of the minimum wage that it takes to buy something is the true criterion of its cost and almost everything is cheaper today.

Bread is a perfect example and its cost is used worldwide for calculating relative costs of living.

Cigarettes were certainly cheaper in the past because the main component of their cost today is the unjust tax to curb their consumption.

You may have written the book but its in the remainder bin and not selling.

Issy, now, now, play nice.
I am speaking from experience and record.
I have been critical, all my adult life about the cost of living in this country, and what has caused the rises.
I do not accept any explanation or attempts at justifying the cost of living over the years.
You see, when most people go shopping, they look at the prices.
If they are from the upper class or better off than most they might look at the origins of the product and not the price.
You cannot/must not compare cheap Asian imports with Aussie made, it's just not the same and that is why we have cheaper imports.
So I reject any comparisons that involve imports.
You say the cost of cigarettes are higher today, because of taxes.
A smoker couldn't give a stuff about trying to justify the price, we all know the real reason for these price hikes.
The thing we should be considering is the fact that the same fags today are dearer, and that's all.
And what about liquor prices?
So in conclusion, any Aussie goods or services ARE definitely MORE EXPENSIVE today.
Don't take my word for it, just look back at all the media reports and stories of people suffering because of the cost of living today.

ALTRAV,

Let's take an iconic Australian brand, R.M.Williams.

Tartan work shirt 1950, three for a weeks minimum wage,
ditto 2020, twelve tartan work shirts for the minimum wage.

Now that's expensive!!

RM's top of the line shirts, $219 each, three for a weeks min. wage
similar were not available in 1950.

issy, you do know that RM Williams has offshore interests, don't you?
In 1950, they were made in Aust.
In 2020, they are not.
And this is how it is with most industries.
If the product can be outsourced, it will be, that's just the way it is and has been for years.
It's the only way retailers have been able to stay in business, and still they are closing down all over the place.
Here in Perth I, and others were completely shocked at the number of, not shops, but streets of shops, all for lease or sale, and all empty/closed.
So these are the kinds of indicators that I use to make an assessment or judgement, not cherry picking to make a point.
My weight on the cement bags may have been out, because I haven't handled any for a while, and even if I did I would not have taken notice of the weight.
They weigh whatever they weigh, if you can't lift it, get help or get lost would be my instruction to someone who hesitated, and not expect a whole industry or country to change things just because of a few pathetic limp wristed pansy's.

issy, just as a quick follow-on.
Walmart were on the brink of receivership in the US.
They were the first major player to outsource from China/Asia, and their fortunes turned immediately and with dramatic results and profits.
The rest of the world soon followed their example.
Australia too, but even so our untenable costs back home in Australia were so bad, that even Asia was unable to keep our businesses afloat.
But it's OK, as I said, if we don't do the painful stuff ourselves and that way we can control or direct the transition, it'll be OK because eventually the markets will do it for us and we will find ourselves in second world status.