Minimum wage raised by 3.5% to $18.93 in Australia - Sensationalist Headlines

Minimum wage increased by 3.5% to $18.93 an hour | Australia new.. Hooray for more money.

shits good

This is welcome.

But it's so unfair to the businesses! They should be able to almost-illegally underpay people so they're forced to work unreasonable hours, multiple jobs, and have no life beyond a menial grind that will spiral them into unhealthiness and depression! Goddamned governments, helping the weak and worthless succeed while I sit on my arse eating Vegemite from the jar and watching Iron Chef! Those liberal bastards!

Hope you guys win the dice roll as to what this will actually do to your economy

Businesses will shift tack in a relatively modest way. Some will cut corners, or use it as an excuse to expunge already-redundant jobs, which is very unfortunate and downright evil, but beyond that the market won't McFucking Die from a 3% increase in the minimum wage. The UK's recent yearly Living Wage increases have shown that not a single fucking thing gets worse from this kind of change, and time and time again we've had proof that 99% of the fear around minimum wage increases is entirely borne from big-market companies influencing the public perception of increases so as to convince the common man that it would be a bad idea. Literally nobody is going bankrupt because of this change, stop drinking the kool-aid.

I didn't say anyone would go bankrupt? Adjusting the minimum wage has effects that are widely debated and massively varying in actual implementation.

Your statement was heavily weighted to imply that this is somehow throwing the future of Australia's economy to the roulette board, that the whole fabric of its society hinges in the balance entirely on this change, when in reality we have resounding evidence that fuck all will really change, in practice.

No it was actually me just saying good luck because I have zero strong reservations about Australian politics whatsoever and I know how these things can swing both ways.

Fuck I'm jealous. Minimum wage in my area is less than half of that.

Despite the fact that cost of living in Australia is extremely high, this is still pretty good. Hopefully things go well. Minimum wage where I live is $14 and its most likely going to stay that way for at least another 4 years.

I was going to post "when you're making a couple of dollars over the minimum wage and the lowest paid aussies are still make more than you"* or something like that but then I went to check what the m.w. was in my area I found out it's increased basically to what I'm being paid now :/ https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/109874/7773e6c1-8a33-4ff3-b477-b1f517408a71/image.png The middle spike is when minimum wage increased recently here and my pay kinda had to go up to keep me from being below minimum wage despite starting a vaguely decent bit above it. Also, none of it's really all that much to scale. *Note: I did convert prices.

Needs to be more. We're as prosperous as we have ever been yet wage growth continues to be low. Who's seeing the benefits of a bigger Australian economy if the worker's aren't getting their fair share?

dude you're hinged, relax

ha, look at us for the answer.

3.5% is good. Hell, fairwork Australia recently cut my yearly pay increases from 3.5 to 2.5% this year.

It's good but we all know it could, and should, be better.

Good Job Australia, proud of ya.

That's like $15/hr USD which is what the democrats want to raise the minimum wage to

That's a fair whack for min wage, but then the cost of living in Aus is quite a bit higher than the UK so it makes sense (for comparison UK min wage for 25+ is about 13.80AUD/hr)

Increasing the minimum wage isn’t really going to do much for wage growth. A significant majority of workers are either salaried, or paid at an enterprise agreement or award rate. It’s actually quite rare to find anyone in Australia who is paid at the minimum wage.

Living costs here are insane though.

They want to raise it to that over a long extended period. It would make 0 sense to do a nationwide 15 dollar minimum wage.

I was gonna say I get paid 20 an hour, 24 hours a week. I get 460, 250 of that goes to rent, 50 on groceries, 40 for fuel and most of the rest on bills. My house isn't even in a good area and it's a kitchen and living room, a bedroom and a bathroom. Still an increase to the minimum wage is good, people seriously get shafted doing jobs that are hard and highly stressful but getting paid fuck all.

at this rate even if it's a losing dice roll it's gonna be a p. small loss

How is a business firing people that don't make it money "evil"?

Their use of an increase in the living wage as an excuse is the evil part, since it basically creates this backwards-forwards ass mentality that convinces people that moves like the Living Wage, which are ostensibly to help the average man, in fact fuck the average man over.

It's their job to maximize profit. I see absolutely no reason for them to do anything else at any point in time. Attributing morals to them is kind of pointless since they aren't really acting as individuals.

Corporations are comprised of individuals, and I have an even higher moral expectations of collectives of people. If there's a lot of you, then you should have the collective brainpower to know better. If not, you're a gaggle of assholes. If none of you can turn around and go "Hey, this is kind of fucked up, right?" then there's something wrong in your moral makeup.

This is exactly why unregulated capitalism is a terrible idea