Tag Archives: wages and productivity

Workers need a pay rise and are therefore determined never to get one

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Two kinds of contrary stories, but only contrary if you are not part of the cargo cult mentality of the left. Then we can have higher real incomes and at the very same time throw over the cheapest energy sources available to us. First we have this: ‘Australia needs a pay rise’: Change the Rules volunteers reach out to thousands in door knock campaign.

Union members are volunteering to conduct thousands of conversations with Australians about the desperate need for pay rises during a national door knock in September.

Over two weekends, door knocks and market stalls will be held in more than 40 locations, covering Queensland, NSW, the ACT, Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia and Western Australia.

Volunteers will be hearing people’s concerns about the lack of fair pay rises under the Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison Government, and talking about the union movement’s plan to change the rules so people can get fair pay rises that keep pace with the cost of living.

And then there’s this: $15b European trade deal doomed if Australia dodges Paris pledge.

The Coalition’s internal climate war risks damaging the economy after Europe declared it would reject a $15 billion trade deal with Australia unless the Morrison government keeps its pledge to cut pollution under the Paris accord….

Labor’s climate change and energy spokesman Mark Butler said the government had no emissions reduction plan and would fail to meet its Paris goal.

“The Prime Minister might think he can get away with [failing to cut emissions] domestically, but it is clear it will not be accepted by our international trading partners, who rightly have an expectation the Australian government will act to deliver on our international obligations,” he said.

I used to think they said all those things just because there are people stupid enough to take all this on board without seeing the problem. Now I think they are just this stupid themselves. But at least The Coalition are redeeming themselves. Now they have to get the rest of the country to see the point, or at least 51%. Not really such a big ask and there’s still plenty of time to do it.

The wages of waste

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Personally, I care not at all about the headline issue: At $528,000 a year, Turnbull’s pay is highest of any leader in OECD. PDT is not taking any salary at all so the price mechanism doesn’t always reflect relative value in any absolute sense. But this is what interests me:

The figures come as the Reserve Bank warns Australians to expect historically low levels of wage growth for some time yet, setting up a policy showdown with Labor before the next election over efforts to tackle the rising cost of living.

Both are trying to ameliorate the impact of torpid wage growth through offering billions of dollars in income tax cuts.

Workers have been starved of pay rises in real terms, with wage growth stuck at the rising cost of living for the past year. Inflation hit 1.9 per cent in March and private sector wages have barely kept up at the same rate but public sector workers have done better, lifting the rate to 2.1 per cent Australia-wide.

The reality is that both parties are deeply into Keynesian idiocies with some kind of belief that public spending makes an economy grow. I am not all that fussed about the deficit as such, but am very much concerned with the level of public spending which is almost invariably wasted. For every dollar spent, you get less than a dollar’s worth of value, often much less. That is why real wages don’t rise, and until that changes, real wages won’t either.

PDT understands that. Does anyone else?