There used to be such a thing as slavery…
Well, actually there still is such a thing but – like all good civilised people – I tend to ignore something that isn’t actually happening in my country… Well, not legally.
Anyway, there were a number of ways that one might become a slave: Being made prisoner as a result of a war, being born a slave or when you or your parent got into too much debt and you were obliged to become a slave until it was all paid off.
At times I suspect that the only reason that the Liberal Party hasn’t tried to adopt the last one as policy (because of “Labor’s debt”) is the prospect that then employers would be obliged to pay for the board and keep of their slaves.
However, I can picture Eric Abetz – in between weekly press conferences to call for Tony Abbott to be restored to his rightful place in Cabinet – arguing that if we’d all just work for nothing then there’d be plenty of jobs for all. That it’s the cost of paying a wage that stop firms from working 24/7 providing plenty of work for everybody.
Some Keynesians may argue that – with nobody being paid – demand may slump to such a point that there’d be no need to have people working any more. But that overlooks the idea that work and production is good in itself. Like cleanliness, it’s next to godliness.
Or something like that.
While many Christians on the Liberal side of polics use the Bible to argue for all sorts of things, they mostly agree that God got it wrong when he wrote the Ten Commandments. That bit about making the Sabbath a day of rest didn’t allow for the sort of switched on world that we need if Australian cafes are going to be able to compete with China for the Sunday dining dollar. You see, unless we do something about penalty rates, most of us will pack up and go overseas every weekend, just so we can get a cheap meal.
I think that’s how the logic goes.
Of course, when I use the word logic when talking about Liberal philosophy, I am bordering on an oxymoron.
Ok, let’s look at the argument for reducing penalty rates. I’m going to take it out of the theoretic and use the shopping strip where I sometimes have my Sunday latte.
There are some seven cafes within walking distance of each other. All of them shut early on a Sunday. Two of them don’t open at all. Presuming that the reason this is the excessive penalty rates and not some strange desire that the owners have for time off, let alone time with their family, reducing penalty rates would enable them to open. And this would provide more jobs.
Or so the argument goes.
However, there’s only one cafe that has people lining up to get in. The rest are all relatively quiet. If the other two cafes were open, then there’d be less business for the ones that are open. Lower penalty rates would reduce costs but it’s also likely to lead to a reduction in turnover.
I mean there’s a limited number of lattes that we chardonnay socialists can drink. Has anyone done an analysis of whether the reduction in penalty rates would make up for the increased competition from all the businesses now able to open on a Sunday?
This is before one takes into account that – with more people working on a Sunday – there’s even less people out to eat and drink and shop because, well, some of them are now working.
Economics – it’s pretty simple. But not as simple as the Liberal Government!
