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The Morrison government abandons the working poor

The Morrison government justifies its horror about the idea of the minimum wage keeping up with inflation by lamenting that it would lead to the death of small business.

What they neglect to mention is that over 60% of small businesses don’t employ anyone and a further 30% have between 1 and 4 employees.

The minimum wage is currently $40,286 a year. A 5.1% wage rise would increase that to $42,341 but, as Michael Pascoe points out, once tax is taken out, their take home pay only increases by 4.6% from $35,284 to $36,908.

Business would have to come up with an extra (tax deductible) $5.63 a day, of which $4.45 would go to a minimum wage employee to help cope with the soaring cost of living.

A business with 4 employees would have to come up with an extra (tax deductible) $157.64 a week.

So, to sum up, the 60% of non-employing small businesses wouldn’t be affected at all. The 30% who employ 1-4 people would have to come up with less than $40 per employee per week which they could then further reduce by claiming it as a tax-deductible business expense.

As for being inflationary, this paltry wage rise would go nowhere near covering the increased cost of petrol, electricity and food. And any small business that cannot absorb that small outlay wasn’t viable in the first place.

Now to the promise that “A re-elected Coalition government would help create 400,000 new small businesses by 2027.”

The government refused to specify if this was a net increase but, either way, it’s nothing special.

In 2020-21, the ABS reported that there were 365,480 entries as new businesses. With 277,674 exits, this meant an annual increase of 87,806 in the number of businesses.

It’s a bit like their promise “to create 1.3 million new jobs over the next five years”.

The labour force is projected to grow by 1.5 million over that time.

Let’s be clear – a Coalition government will never support employees regardless of the economic case for doing so. As with everything, they claim credit for things that happen in spite of them, not because of them, and wash their hands of any responsibility to do anything meaningful to address the plight of the working poor.

 

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5 comments

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  1. Phil Pryor

    Morrison the faecal fraud and fantasiser has no plan, no vision, no policy, no sense, no experience, and so, has done a MAGIC PUDDING con job announcement, whereby one dollar will be clipped and divided, sliced, halved, BUT will miraculously become TWO real dollars, one into housing and one into superannuation. Fishes and loaves be stuffed, just look at that productivity!!! So, suckers, your 50,000 removal from super to reinforce a housing deposit, which may soon be half to one MILLION, and then a whopper mortgage at ever higher RATES will be a further miracle. Prices should rocket, which Morrison’s donors, patrons, followers and supporters want. One day we will all own a ten million house, or if you are a grub in cabinet with umpteen properties well geared, a huge FORTUNE. And, the real super fund grubs are rubbing the hands, the real estate maggots are chuckling, and the gig workers are facing a thirty hour day delivering shit food, It all makes sense, to a conservative parasite.

  2. New England Cocky

    This last paragraph says it all really: :”Let’s be clear – a Coalition government will never support employees regardless of the economic case for doing so. As with everything, they claim credit for things that happen in spite of them, not because of them, and wash their hands of any responsibility to do anything meaningful to address the plight of the working poor.”

    STOP THE LIES VOTE LABOR

    It’s time!! Again!!

  3. Ill fares the land

    And all this, from a Pentecostal, who uses his faith to justify and “square the circle” of his abject disdain for the disadvantaged (remember, under the tenets of his faith, selfishness is a virtue), who has announced a personal epiphany, after years of soulless and relentless attacks on the disadvantaged (boat people, the unemployed, the aged, victims of bushfires and floods, Robo-debt victims …..) and announced he has now found a miraculous way to access the deep well of empathy that lies within. This is the guys who announced, to great fanfare and fawning by the sycophantic media (strangely, the ABC seems to have stepped back a little on its previous and palpable anti-Labor bias), plans that will further fuel demand for and the prices of housing. The outcomes of his plans matter nothing – he wants his grand announcement. Sadly, I think most of the “undecided” are Liberal voters who are trying to reconcile the fact of Morrison being the most vile, nasty, incoherent, corrupt, neurotic, bumbling and intellectually mediocre PM since Federation with their unhappiness about voting for Labor when they barrack for the Coalition and they need little to decide trhat Morrison isn’t actually so bad after all. But consider this. Aside from what amounted to the sacking of an AAST member for handing down decision against the government on Robo-debt, a second member has been, effectively demoted for doing the same thing – by the newest deputy president of the AAT wo is a Liberal flunky. Whatever rambling babble Morrison spews forth from one of the holes in his body, this is what he really stands for – transforming Australia into an authoritarian state and carving out our democracy and secularism, from within.

  4. wam

    “never”??? didn’t some rich and poor get $250??? My millionaires go it??
    spot on PHIL.
    karen andrews 4 in qld, 5 in nsw, 2 in vic and 1 each SA, WA

  5. New England Cocky

    @Phil Pryor: The COALition and banks have coveted Industry based superannuation funds since Keating legislated The Accord, and despised the much higher returns to the workers from these industry funds that obviously make members totally unfit to spend their savings properly as any private school educated person would do on lavish over-priced imported consumer items.

    Should Australia unfortunately re-elect this rabble of a Scummo COALition misgovernment, then first home seekers must expect the banks will demand a contribution to housing loans from your own superannuation fund to off-set their ”investment” in your home.

    THAT is the way parasitic capitalism works – to benefit the wealthy over the poor. It’s time!! Again!!

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