"Harney refuses to rule out cuts in minimum wage"

tolosenc

Taxipete29 wrote: »

Ok you claim that a 10% reduction would result in more employment and lower prices, but if companies use the reduction in mimimum wage to employ more people they are still spending the same amount of money. How does this reduce prices??

Supply and demand economics. Lower wages decreases demand, therefore, prices fall until a new equilibrium is reached.

Taxipete29 wrote: »

What about the arrogance of our Government who are amoung the highest paid in Europe for a nation of about 4 million people??

Yes, their wages should be brought down. The government only has (and should ever have) the right to set wages in the public sector. These wages are clearly too high on all fronts.

Taxipete29 wrote: »

What about retail managers who earn 100k a year. Arrogance??
What about doctors, lawyers, dentists,??
What about bankers??

All these groups are overpaid, what about reducing their salaries significantly
That would result in far more scope for job creation??

No. Just no.

There are only ever so many doctors, lawyers and dentists. Reducing their wages is not going to result in Micko from Finglas hopping of the dole, and immediately starting a job as a brain surgeon.

Are bankers/managers overpaid? In a job like that, your pay is linked to your performance. If you make huge money for the company, why should you not be rewarded handsomely? The only thing I have an issue with is rewarding people regardless, à la the Public Sector, or bankers who feel entitled to a bonus just because it's the end of the year. There's nothing wrong with people earning huge salaries if they are very productive, and that's one thing that lefties just don't seem to grasp. You've gotta make money to make money.

freedom of info

the_syco wrote: »

http://news.eircom.net/breakingnews/16117366/
http://www.fingal-independent.ie/breaking-news/national-news/politics/minister-refuses-to-rule-out-cuts-in-minimum-wage-1831696.html

What sort of la-la land does she live in? If the minimum wage goes down, everything else stays the same price, and the poor will become homeless, as they won't be able to afford houses.

only 4% of the working poulation are on minimum wage, the govt mission is then to hit those just above next, and to reduce sw, while their cronies gain increases in their profit margins, that has always been harneys agenda

tlev

obl wrote: »

Are bankers/managers overpaid? In a job like that, your pay is linked to your performance. If you make huge money for the company, why should you not be rewarded handsomely? The only thing I have an issue with is rewarding people regardless, à la the Public Sector, or bankers who feel entitled to a bonus just because it's the end of the year. There's nothing wrong with people earning huge salaries if they are very productive, and that's one thing that lefties just don't seem to grasp. You've gotta make money to make money.

The only problem is that a lot of people were making a lot of money and weren't productive...

anonymous_joe

tlev wrote: »

The only problem is that a lot of people were making a lot of money and weren't productive...

That's rarely true.

The business of business is business. I.e. generating profits. If someone earns you profits (ignoring non-profit maximising business for a second here, so the likes of increasing market share and so on so forth are a tad unwieldy for an argument) then they're worth keeping, promoting and paying more.

If someone doesn't earn you profits, you don't give them bonuses, you don't overpay them.

It's very rare that someone earning a high wage doesn't deserve it. One very Irish example of that would be taxi drivers - up until ten years ago, because of the tiny numbers of taxi drivers, tehy made huge money, far more than they deserved, simply because there were artificial barriers to entering their industry.

The reason barristers, doctors and so on earn such high money is because the barriers to entry in their profession are rarely artificial - to be a doctor you need to be very smart as well as very hard-working, not one or the other, both. The vast majority of people will fail to match at least one of those two criteria, and as such are unable to avail of the high wages.

Most of the people who worked for the banks were intelligent, hard-working people. They made big mistakes, primarily caused by 'greed' or more accurately, a desire to increase profits, ignoring a potential crash in the future. They weren't lazy, stupid or feckless though.