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

I hope you guys get it some day.

Living costs are high in Australia, but honestly living on minimum wage is a lot more comfortable in Aus that it is in the UK or especially the USA. I know if I was to loose my skilled job here in the UK I'd move straight back to Aus because of how fucked I'd be here on minimum wage

This is why paying attention in history class is important

Hot zinger, except it makes literally no sense. Just because people have made bad decisions while in collectives historically does fucking nothing to absolve them of the evil of their actions.

bitching about how evil stuff is doesn't stop it from happening. You said they should know better but it's clearly evident that the more people you put in a room the more bad shit they'll do before anyone does anything to stop it.

Paying workers living wages is a cost of business

Yes, I completely agree. If you agree with me, why do you think my post is dumb? You can shake your fist at market forces all day long and it won't do a single thing. The only way to actually enforce this stuff is regulation.

That's why I vote for parties and members of Parliament that enforce regulation on crony capitalists, which is about as much as I can accomplish.

Yeah, I vote the same way. It's all that anyone can do. But attempting to shame corporations won't work, and it doesn't really advance the discussion. Missing the point. Raising the federal minimum to 15 an hour would actually really trash the economy in some parts of the country. It'd make sense to (gradually) increase it to that in California, Texas, and some others, but it would make absolutely 0 sense to institute in many other states.

Small increases like this one (which is pretty much all the data we have) don't result in much of a rise in price levels. Any small change is certainly outweighed by the increase in earnings those affected by the change in the minimum wage receive.

I actually agree - we should treat corporations as if they're gonna do the most profitable thing, no matter how nefarious it might seem. And regulate accordingly. The problem is that you politicians running around saying that the market can regulate itself. Just look at Mitt Romney and his infamous "Corporations are people, my friends".

This. Capitalism works great when there aren't externalities... It just doesn't work when they're in play, and acting like it does is fantasy. Also, that comment wasn't really have to do with market self-regulation. The whole "corporations are people" line in general actually makes more sense than it appears on the surface, since the line (and the laws making corporations persons in some contexts) is typically used to protect corporations from the same things that persons are protected from; i.e. government discrimination, which is actually a good thing at the end of the day.

In @Peachy 's defense, it was brought up as "already-redundant jobs". Having a job exist for the purpose of it existing isn't a very good way to run business, or support an economy. If a redundant job is getting axed, then I don't really care for the reason of it other than it doesn't need to exist.