Tharg, your statistics is bad. Your comparing wages when you should be comparing real total compensation.

Indeed, the factory of the future will need one man and a dog to run efficiently. The man to ensure that no fuse is tripped, the dog to stop the man from touching anything but blown fuses.

Yes, so the amount of work available in a market is variable. I knew that. However in New Zealand, in the real world, right now, and not in some model in a Treasury wank’s wonk’s computer, the amount of available labour exceeds the amount of jobs available, hence: unemployment + underemployment.

Obviously, as I’ve said above, since the market can expand the amount of work available as per the model to which you refer, it just needs good governance to enable it to do so with maximum efficiency.

Talk to any small business owner drowning in regulation and tax demands and I think you might find it is not. Mind you, that’d mean observing reality rather than quoting theory.

the sort of business that is never going to make money. people buying a job rather than a business. there are plenty of them. im thinking the local dairy for a start.

its sad that the left wing ideology gets in the way of young kids getting a start or some experience. its always coupled with their jealousy or dudes who do well. its just not fair wah wah wah

“We’re still talking about an inadequate pool of jobs, so we’re debating who gets what’s available at the expense of another group, not about reducing overall unemployment.”

Google “lump of labour fallacy”, have a read then get back to us.

In future it will also be more important to have a good education too. Factories will be run by a fraction of the staff needed today. But those staff who do remain will be highly qualified.

Our whole society could function quite nicely with a fraction of the human labour currently put to work, with automation and productivity-enhancing technology. Unfortunately, we’re working in a system where people aren’t told “robots do your job now, so relax” – they’re told “robots do your job now, so find a new job”.

The minimum wage will become less of an issue as the uneducated will be lucky to get work at all.

Can you Neolibs imagine that? Battling away in a rest home for less than the minimum wage. Maybe the owner was trying to close the wage gap with Australia.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/8031177/KiwiSaver-ruling-could-raise-wages

For a belief discussion of the relationship between productivity and wages see here. As Paul Krugman has said,

“Economic history offers no example of a country that experienced long-term productivity growth without a roughly equal rise in real wages. In the 1950s, when European productivity was typically less than half of U.S. productivity, so were European wages; today average compensation measured in dollars is about the same. As Japan climbed the productivity ladder over the past 30 years, its wages also rose, from 10% to 110% of the U.S. level. South Korea’s wages have also risen dramatically over time”. (“Does Third World Growth Hurt First World Prosperity?” Harvard Business Review 72 n4, July-August 1994: 113-21.)

Make young people more affordable by making it legal to pay them less (and there’s nothing wrong with letting market forces do this per se) and when the next job becomes available they might get it… at the expense of an older worker.

There’s already a great deal of age dsicrimination in the job market against older employees, to the extent that the Australian government offers a cash bonus to employers who’ll hire someone over a certain age (I forget what… 50 I think, or perhaps 55).

The unseen effect of lower youth wages is older employees offering to illegally work for the same rate so as to have any work at all. Sure you don’t see many grey hairs behind the fast food counter but I’ve spotted a few trolley “boys” lately who look like they should be riding a motorised scooter not pushing a deadweight of trolleys.

I agree it’s pointless, even counter-productive, to lift the minimum wage without productivity gains. But it’s also pretty pointless to lower it and simply shift the high percentage of unemployment from one group to another.

At the risk of upsetting the market purists again, the government needs to have a strategy to create jobs, not focus on trying to stuff more beneficiaries in the “employed” bus than there are seats on that bus. And that means getting creative and incentivising, just like they did with The Hobbit. Or is attention only paid to the needs of employers when there’s a Hollywood premiere and a photo-op for the PM involved?

When an employer is forced to pay more re minimum wage, where does that cost come from? Usually from the cost of product/service provided. So those suppposedly helped by a minimum wage increase are then hit with increased prices of everything! Ironically, those employers most likely to be paying minimum wage produce services/goods generally consumed by minimum wage employees (yes I know its a generalisation, but none the less valid).

Also there is scant appreciation by politicians for the knock on effect. Every increase in the minimum wage means those that are more skilled and/or experienced and justifiably earning more see a decrease in relativity and therefore demand a pay increase as well, putting further pressure on the employer to increase prices or reduce the labour bill by shedding staff.

I agree with DPF about the minimum wage and especially I would argue again for the need to bring back youth rates. Youth unemployment is over 25 %! Something needs to be done to get our young people working. We need to bring back youth rates so employers can afford to hire them and our kids can get a job.

I must admit Bill English provided a good laugh on this topic when he suggested we close the income gap with Australia by lowering wages.

And the Don Brash idea – abolish the minimum wage to increase productivity and close the wage gap with Australia.

Real bright ideas chaps.