You mean you didn’t respond to Jim Anderton’s “clarion call” (those were his exact words) a few elections back? How shamelessly unpatriotic of you. It’s every NZer’s duty to pay the maximum amount of tax. Redistribution packages like Working for Families cost money, y’know.

I reckon you should all join me overseas – earning more money and paying less tax. It’s jolly good! 700+ Kiwis a week agree with me!

Tane, you planning on staying here inflicting us with your nonsense for too much longer?

Especially if one of them is particularly cantankerous

Source please

That’s the problem with taking personal experience as the empirical evidence, and then extrapolating it out to the general population. I recall quite a few classmates at my school with after-school jobs. No doubt they came from a mixture of backgrounds.

Great minds can disagree.

And? Wealthier people (as a trend) surely will being giving their children more money? The more money you get for nothing the less likely you are to work? Yes? So the wealthier your parents are, the less likely you are to be working when you’re 15-17 (Certainly at my school this was the case) no?

It just seems quite plain and uncontroversial.

Thanks for your considered response. It made for interesting reading.

But I still don’t think your evidence establishes that “working 15 year olds” are paying the bills. The best you’ve come up with is: if they spend money on themselves, then they’re reducing the household bill-spend.

The problem I have with in 2006 65.4 percent of wage and salary earners had hourly earnings lower than the overall average for wage and salary earners is that the top-end (the likes of Teresa Gattung and, say, Dick Hubbard if his cereal business is humming along) can inflate the average figure. But that statistic doesn’t, of itself, mean that the hourly earnings are inadequate. Other factors such as housing cost have to be considered.

And the bigger picture (my wife and I bring in an above-average household income) is that I would encourage our kids to get work experience in their teenage years. It gives them valuable life experience. It’s not the fact that they’re working that matters, although you claim otherwise, but hey it’s just our different opinions.

And on your other point, I’m sure we can look forward to DPF producing his working data in due course. He’s already said he’ll be sending it to you this weekend.

How interesting that you haven’t asked the same of david

Nope.

I feel pretty comfortable with the idea that most working people between the ages of 15-17 are in households that have income that’s less than average. After all …

“Data from the NZIS for the June 2006 quarter showed that 65.4 percent of wage and salary earners had hourly earnings lower than the overall average for wage and salary earners.”

Also there’s good evidence to suggest that most 15-17 year olds work in retail.

i.e. 70% of people who work in fast-food are between the ages of 15-17 (union statistics).

Jobs where skill/age don’t matter are disproportionately filled by youth because they are cheaper to employ. Most of these jobs are in the retail sector (approx 20% of total jobs in NZ are in the retail sector).

A statistical study (granted it was done 9 years ago but I can’t think of any ways in which labour market or demographic trends have changed that would effect this) show that the vast majority (over 80%) of people who work in the retail sector live in homes where the total income is below average.

Also worth remembering that in the population as a whole

“in 2006 65.4 percent of wage and salary earners had hourly earnings lower than the overall average for wage and salary earners.”

How likely is it that over half of working 15-17 year olds have parents who are in the top 36% of the income distribution? Certainly my personal experience is that kids from poorer homes have have less pocket money (kids from poorer homes) have more incentive to find work in order to supplement their income (just like with benefits – i.e. generous unemployment benefits increase unemployment no?). Also you will concede that 15-17 year olds from poorer socio-economic backgrounds are more likely to drop out of school early and start working?

So while there’s no concrete statistical proof, it does seems likely that more than half of working 15-17 year olds live in homes with below average income no? Feel free to disagree with me of course.

As to the question of whether most working 15-17 year olds supplement their parents income ….. Well if they’re supporting themselves through buying clothes and food (this is what i did when I was a 15-17 year old – and my family were definitely in the “below average income” bracket), then surely their parents are goign to be spending less money on them. Either that or they’re living away from home and are self-supporting.

Finally whether all this is true or not is actually quite beside the point. If one is doing paid work then their pay rate is clearly important – what they choose to do with their money is their business.

and I used the tax bracket of 20.8%

And you used it what – during the 1990s as well? It would actually be useful to see a fuller account ofyour methodology and working data – on this thread or your “Phillip John’s Progressive Politics” blog is fine.

Chop chop.

Since you’ve finished your analysis and feeling smug, can we round off another unresolved matter from yesterday:

And don’t give me that “they don’t pay the bills” line – because most working 15 year olds live in below average income homes to supplement their parents income – so they are paying the bills.”

There are two claims here: (1) “most working 15 year olds live in below average homes” and (2) “most working 15 year olds supplement their parents income”. Both claims are reproduced in their full context here, so please don’t claim I’ve taken them out of context or obfuscated matters.

I would like to see evidence for these claims – is any forthcoming from you?

Of course I would be glad to answer any questions regarding my sources and methodology.

Now, according to the New Zealand income survey, the median weekly income for employed people in 2006 was $690 – or $35,880 per year …..

As Ross K has pointed out …

“Data from the NZIS for the June 2006 quarter showed that 65.4 percent of wage and salary earners had hourly earnings lower than the overall average for wage and salary earners.”

Now, according to the New Zealand income survey, the median weekly income for employed people was $690 – or $35,880 per year.

http://wdmzpub01.stats.govt.nz/wds/TableViewer/tableView.aspx

So – in fact the “average” New Zealand Worker is going to be taxed at 20.8% – not 34.3% (the figure David has clearly used in his calculations).

So, ill be back later with some figures that reflect this reality – I’ll also be including penal rates. Should be interesting.

Easy to miss amongst 200 comments, but I’ve posted the relevant figures (and links to the raw data) already.