This entry was posted on Saturday, May 7th, 2011 at 7:00 am and is filed under act party, children, coalition management, Cost of Living, inequality, low pay, minimum wage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Yeah and maybe we could also then reduce the shocking rate of unemployment for youth. They have been priced out of the market.
Or do you think it is better for a youth to be unemployed rather than have the ability to earn say $440 for a 40 hour week. It was a stupid Labour (popularist) policy and this is the price. The Nats are spineless for doing nothing about it.
Youth have not been priced out of the market,there are NO jobs!
Marsman, Not that I agree with National’s Job Ops policy but if employers can and do create jobs when a subsidy is offered, that proves there is work if the labour price is affordable. That is Monty’s point.
BTW, is that poster about health or benefits/wages?
Is it better to earn $10 an hour ($400 per week) or take the unemployment benefit of $160 a week?
Looks like Trevor got a bit excited and didn’t proof his posters.
I thought Paula Bennett’s response to Roger Douglas’ brilliant question in the house earlier this week was quite weak, wonder why nobody in Labour thought to post that as an example of National’s pathetic attitude.
It’s just not a valid one. You actually do need a minimum weekly income to cover living expenses and going to work (going to work isn’t cheap) which is why there’s a minimum wage. If we had a Universal Income then we might look at dropping the minimum wage.
Draco – please tell us how $160 for a youth on a benefit doing nothing (except being a drain on society and wrecking self esteem) is better than $400 earned and learning basic skills of life such as responsibility and other skills that can only come with work experience. Labour’s policy of increasing the minimum wage for youth has been a failure and National for political reasons will do nothing about it. In the meantime too many kids are simply not offered the opportunity to work and earn something and get work experience. When will you understand that it is simply not economic for an employer to offer a job to a youth at the current minimum wage and that is the reason why youth unemployment is so high.
Foolish policy and those who continue to support such a policy are deliberately ignorant.
Thats not true Victor. My current employer use to specifically offer 40-50 jobs to local high schools at the end of each year to help us with seasonal increases. Last year we didn’t.
It wasn’t because we weren’t busy but rather who ever was hired was going to be paid exactly the same amount so instead he chose to hire 20 adults who knuckled down and got the work down.
To be frank the the fact that National have kept this failed policy is extremely disappointing however one upside to the whole story was that due to the new 90 trail rules at the end of their contract period felt comfortable enough to offer 13 of them permanent jobs, and included the 3-4 weeks that they had been already been working for him as part of the 90 days already served. This is something he has never done previously.
Remind me….why did Labour blow out the DPS budget by nearly $600k in 2007/8?
http://www.parliament.nz/NR/rdonlyres/F934EC2F-847A-4499-AB94-411CEA91300E/118089/QWA_18457_2009.pdf
Are you going to explain that blowout to us all since you are carping on about the current budget blowout?
Or are the rules different for labour?
“Yeah and maybe we could also then reduce the shocking rate of unemployment for youth. They have been priced out of the market. ”
Youth are first laid off because they tend to have been last on and don’t have families to support. Once the youth unemployment numbers peak, the rest of the workforce follow.
Repeating the line doesnt make it true Monty and IF you are right you are actually advocating for cheap labour at the expense of ????? Adults with families.
I’m thinking slavery would be pretty economical too.
fureongo – only one thing missing from your barb, that the PM PROMISED to be better than Labour, to have higher standards and to be accountable. Ergo, the standard required by the current Govt must be higher than the one you outline of the previous Government. Or was that a lie to buy votes in 2008?
@ fureango: Don’t like your link that does not lead anywhere, is it genuine? Anyway even if it is the the substantive point is that spending on DPS should be limited to the genuinely necessary whoever is in office.
Helen Clark gave a better example by regularly declining the attentions of the ‘curly wires down the neck’ crew. Whereas PM Key zips them off to his bach in Hawaii. Does anyone in Ho’olei even know who he is? Dunno, but I do know that there are native Hawaiians concerned about historical burial grounds in the area and neighbouring Wailea that developers of condos have had to defend court cases about.
True wheel….the link does work. must be your computer.
@fureongo. The 2007/8 blowout happened because Key requested and received DPS cover from early in the calendar year. Part of the image build and it would have been inappropriate for Clark or King to stop it happening. Note that Clark generally travelled with one officer on official international business and none privately. Key takes four when he goes on holiday.
Really? the blowout furengo refers to was partly down to the current PM????
Well, well, well, that makes a mockery of Key’s claim that he has no control over the DPS doesn’t it. I presume Labour will be advising the NZMS (NZ Media Squad) of this information?
Come now Anne, the PM is just really busy that’s why he gets things wrong, like his first response to the BMW’s and this one. Of course being busy was never an acceptable defence for the former PM. It would be cool if someone could find the campaign promises about higher standards, and then list all these behaviours… I’m sure in the end it will be the fault of the earthquake, and Labour
The right is obviously feeling a little precious these days, repeating ad infinitum that the person third in charge at the UN is still running the Labour Party. And they accuse everyone here of being conspiracy theorists. Well, let them show me the emails and other documented trail, like Hager showed in Hollow Men. Money where the mouth is time boys and girls, or will you just smear?
As I recall the thing that most upset many National people about hollow Men was not what it revealled, and it revealled plenty including about Key, Brownlee, Joyce and McCully was how did the truth get out and someone must be hunted down by the police and charged…that’s how much they value the truth.
Have you noticed Tracey they havn’t been very vocal about hunting down the source of the leaked emails lately. I wonder why?
Anne- to busy leaking their own stuff??
OK Guys, if we get rid of the minimum wage, what do you think will be the average wage for non skilled workers in areas of high unemployment.
Im picking it would be just above the dole, Say $5.00 per hour.
There’s a good blog post at Offsetting Behaviour on this issue. Youth unemployment and evidence-based policy
One day politicians may come to understand that there is such thing as unintended consequences and that good intentions aren’t enough.
Tracey, if the intention of the policy was to harm youth employment in order to help adult employment then supporters of the policy should be honest about their intentions. I don’t think it was though. I think the intention was to help the youth. If judged by that the policy appears to have been a failure.
And how many of that difference would have had jobs if the Nats hadn’t slashed the funding for industry training especially apprenticeships. But of course that would be an intended consequence, or at least one the government would have known would occur.
I wouldn’t know. Since the cuts to industry training were made last year have they had enough time to have much of an effect on the labour market? Also, youth unemployment has been higher than the expected historical trend since 2008 when the youth rate was abolished, before the recent cuts. What do you know from your research in this area?
Here’s a blog post from Carpe Diem on youth unemployment and minimum wage with some interesting graphs.
This is pretty rich coming from Labour. You guys did more damage to the Social Security Act than any tory government could’ve done in the time you were government. When are you going to front up on the question of whether you believe what you did, like axing the special benefit and bringing in a work-test for people receiving the invalid’s benefit and other nasties, was the right thing to do, or whether you’re sorry and have abandoned those policies?