https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-01/fact-check-have-wages-grown-steadily-o...

For example, real wages grew by 5.5 per cent between June 2008 and June 2013, but by just 1.5 per cent between June 2013 and June 2018.

Yeah, but interest rates have been at historically low levels.

That's the problem with higher wages growth, inflation follows like night and day. 

I'm old enough to remember interest rates at 17% 

I dare say that when interest rates get back up to "normal" many people are going to have big problems, being up to their eyeballs in debt.

Real wage growth about 0.7% per year.

Fair suck of the saveloy. Shareholders have families and they need to eat too.

Grappler Truth Teller Feller wrote on Nov 1^st, 2018 at 9:44am:


Illiterate and innumerate my arse. Look where productivity has been heading for the last decade and a half.

crocodile wrote on Nov 1^st, 2018 at 3:57pm:

Not necessarily. Inflation can increase due to external factors not linked to wages or productivity, such as when the price of oil increased sharply in the 1970s.

I also don't accept the argument that productivity is "slipping away", at least not in Australia. If that were true, company profits would also be stagnant and that isn't the case. Perhaps your productivity argument includes the high levels of unemployment and underemployment?

Captain Nemo wrote on Nov 1^st, 2018 at 4:30pm:


So where is the benefit for the worker?  You point out the problem with productivity growth.... not any solution.

A national economy is a symbiotic organism, not a slate on which pure profit can be written without loss.....

The RBA is keeping interest rates low so as to perpetuate the building industry via 'investment' in never-ending population growth leading to demand.... nothing else is left apart from a little banana republicanism in ores and cattle, neither of which employ many at all, and most of which incur loss to THIS economy from offshoring.....

Australia is open for business all right - just not the kind of investment IN Australia that sustains a long-term economy - but only in the chance to tear a profit chunk out of its decaying corpse, like sharks attacking a dead whale.

Captain Nemo wrote on Nov 1^st, 2018 at 9:22pm:


Very conservative of you - but how does that enable the majority to prosper in a prosperous economy and generate by spending a viable NATIONAL economy that benefits the nation into the future??

Are you a Globalist?

If so - where is YOUR profit?

The solution is to have moderate costs of living increases until wages catch up...

Then a truly viable national economy will prevail, and not some myth that 'trickle down' will somehow eventuate from some global economy thus far unproven, and will thus benefit all nations and people.

Captain Nemo wrote on Nov 1^st, 2018 at 4:30pm:


Unfortunately your charts show only labour productivity. Inputs from both labour and capital need to be considered. They do not work in isolation and combine to form total factor productivity.




You will find that capital productivity has been in the shithole for most of this decade and strangling total factor as well. In time this will also stomp on labour productivity as investment dries up as a result. This is the primary reason why wages growth is only just keeping up with inflation.

Attempting wages growth above the rate of total productivity will most certainly add to inflation or unemployment ( but generally not both ).

aquascoot wrote on Nov 14^th, 2018 at 6:22am:


But the rest are catching up, and fast. Some have surpassed. Stagnation of living standards should not be taken lightly.

aquascoot wrote on Nov 14^th, 2018 at 6:22am:


Well except for the 200k homeless and the pensioners that dont own homes and have to pay rent

Spot

aquascoot wrote on Nov 14^th, 2018 at 6:32am:


That's not the salient point of the thread topic. There is no mention of 3 yos and tantrums. The argument is bimbo O'Dwyer and her assertion that wages are growing well. They're not. It is a very grave situation in the long term and by a long shot the most important indicator that requires action.

crocodile wrote on Nov 14^th, 2018 at 7:45am:


bimbo O"dwyer should say this to the australian people

"you are a bunch of entitled lazy pukes.  Get off your fat and lazy asses and go invent a few things and start a few businesses and stop all the pathetic ungrateful sooking".

that would be a truthful and possibly even helpful speech.

but politicians cant make that speech because there are simply too many chodes, too many people who are low energy 'takers".

but heres the paradox Croc.

if you think that a politician and their "policy" is going to "save' you, then you are screwed.

and if you can repeat the speech that O'dwyer should be making to us and accept it fully, then you are saved.

and the fact that so many people are playing such a mediocre game because they cant/wont accept that speech only makes your ascent easier.

it would be hard hard hard if everyone out there was a hungry and motivated wolf.

but thanks to their wanting to be pandered to, thanks to them being sheep, it is so easy to climb it is a joke.

if you live in australia in 2018 and it isnt going well for you, you suck, its on YOU

cods wrote on Nov 14^th, 2018 at 8:53am:


How is that 5 day week going to help a homeless person? Or a pensioner with exorbitant rent?

Spot

Bam wrote on Nov 1^st, 2018 at 5:03pm:


A couple of points. Firstly, this so called growth in "company profits" we have been seeing in the last few years are really more of a short-term cash grab, achieved I suspect from a combination of cost cutting and suppression of wages - rather than actual productivity growth due to investments in R&D and expanding their markets etc.

Secondly, wage growth will only follow company profit growth if employees have bargaining power, which requires things like low unemployment/underemployment and strong workplace protection laws. On the employment front, the most significant development over the last decade or so has been the rise in underemployment, which misleadingly stifles the official unemployment figure. Yet underemployment basically has the same effect as unemployment - reduces the bargaining power of the employer. Basically the employee says "why should I give you a pay rise when I know there are plenty of other people looking for a job and will happily take the crap pay I am offering?"   

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-02-27/companies-profit-season-done-but-where-ar...