Whats Up with the Wages

Once upon a time, you could look up the chart, set by the Australian Govt. which explained all the wages for everyone. They did some high level math, and worked out how many years were needed to study to learn to do the thing you'd be doing for the rest of your life, and figure out the extra compensation for doing it.. Now? who knows.

A long winded, mathmatical rant about the future.. you have been warned.

Minimum Wage, Middle management wage, broken

Things were simpler, when the rules for things were done by rules lawyers and fair play experts. There was an unwritten rule, that Unemployment earned you $X x 1, Minimum wage was x2, skilled but common jobs, x3, Average Wage was x4, blue collar management and scientists and retail management was x5, professionals x6, professional management x7, doctors, lawyers, skill professionals x8-x9, and the lofty management x10+

There were lists, biiig lists, hourly wages for those jobs you'd maybe never heard of, cleaners, clerks, clock-makers, etc etc, there were tiers to all this, hairdressers had 4-5 tiers, bartenders had 7, I know bar-tending cause I was climbing that little ladder: from tier 1, under 18 glassy for $4.50 an hour, trainees on tier 2 at $6 an hour, full staff tier 3, lead/head bartender 4, manager 5, hotel manager 6, chain manager 7, @ $7.10, $7.40, $8.50, $10, $12.70 respectively.. all nicely laid out in this chart you could look up, knowing how much you'd be paid.

Oh there were cavietes too, if you had an educational certificate, you got a bump in your teir, there were time and a half, double time, triple time, leave loading multipliers, etc.

Maybe it got a bit hard for the govt to keep tracking these things, but surely with computers, even 70s computers these things could be adjusted with inflation, changes in economic policy.

There was at one time an adjustment for cleaners, as the demands of cleaners was going up, but the wages weren't. Some strike, then votes, then stuff happened.

What happened

The reason it all changed, was because the system, stupidly, allowed businesses the ability to vote, i.e. bribes, so that businesses could set the wages. Oh there was a kerfuffle, a lot of gnashing of teeth, protests, but since most people didn't understand it, they just believed their rep and it all happened.

Part of the system now huh. your local rep knows squat about the realities, usually cause they're too young to have learnt anything.. well its all broken.

Now? Unemployed get less than $X x1 from 20 years ago.. if we put x1 as the GDP of what you could buy in 1995 as an unemployed person in comparison to today, you probably get x0.7 now. most of that is utility bills, rent and the increased costs, in '94, as a new unemployed person, I got $133 a fortnight, paid $80 in rent, $40-$50 in food, struggled to pay the $20 a month for the phone, and had to take in a 2nd to pay half the rent, to afford the electricity.

Now, they get like $250 a fortnight, rent is $300 for a cheap place a week, food is easily $150 but maybe you can scrimp to $100, electricity is $50 a week, gas (most places have gas now) is another $25 a week, but now you got to pay water too, $50 a month, internet $50+ a month, mobile phone $20 a month if you're lucky. on$13k income? how?

There's our basis of minimalistic living..  share the rent, buy cheapest crap food (no fresh fruit or meat) changes the globes to 25w, turn off the lights, no TV, no computer (how do you get a job now?) no phone, wash once a week, and maybe.. just maybe, your slum lord won't kick you out when your rent is late.

Minimum wage

What of minimum wage.. Look back at those costs, rent, food, gas, water, internet, mobile, If your a family of 4, one income, $320 for a cheap 3 bedroom, $150 minimum for food, $99 a month for bus pass, monthly $50+ internet, $30 for your mobile, quarterly, $500 for electricity, $200 for gas, $150 for water. your outgo is 29,988 to live, not including clothing, school fees, childcare?, and you can forget about Christmas, Easter and birthdays. Oh to pay those 30k of bills, you'll also need another 2.5k income for tax.

semi-conclusion:? Minimum wage is needed to cover costs in 2018, where unemployment used to be that bar, partly because of internet, mobile phones, the bigger one being rising real estate prices. yet, get this, full time, minimum wage = exactly the tip of the tax bracket.. so the extra 7k you earn, is another 1k of tax, if your working full time, you probably have to make lunches to take to work, not a big cost increase, but averages $500 more a year.. so minimum wage after expenses 

The Average Wage

The Next bracket? Standard Living? you'd think might be a step up, but if your working 40 hours a week in a job that needs a completed high-school education, and some experience, you need some rest too..

The possible shift in variables is a lot, from rent being between $300 and $500 for shoddy to nice, food quality means doubling that cost, now you maybe want to eat out, uber eats for lunch at work, pressies for the kids, clothing at least something every month.. it can range from an increase of $10-$30k.. but what of the common wage..

Well, in our 80s model, we added again the minimum wage, so double minimum wage, and you get $74k.. Looking over some statistics pages,.. not so good.. Retail? $55k, social Media $45k, labourers $45k, ok, so maybe some of these jobs are now "skilled but common".. ahh, no, that's $55k.. so labourers and their ilk are underpaid by $10k..

Ok.. So who is earning the "standard wage".. blue collar officer workers? Clerks? real estate agents? salespeople? nope, nope nope.. they're all in the skilled but common wedge..

Graduates?

Graduates? surely graduates, professional graduates.. nope.. most graduates are getting it worse than standard wages..

Ok, no this is weird.. you go to Uni for 3-5 years.. lets say 4, your income is between 10k and 0, benefits between 7k (if you earn 10) and 10k because students need less money than unemployed..

So, if you went and got a 'skilled but common' retail job at 17, 4 years later, you've earned $200k, and maybe (unlikely) pocketed $25k of that. If you went to uni, you'd be lucky to have earned $40k, and will also have a unit debt of $20k (at least).. but it'll work out long term right?

nope.. That 4 years in retail will likely end up getting you a position increase, so your on management wages, right? well.. ok its $10k more, but still.. lets compare 4 more years.. $240k for the retail guy.. and the graduate? more likely their first year.. $40k, second year, maybe $50k, third, approaching $60k, IF they have been job hunting each year, more realistically, they'll suffer the standard 5% increase in their second year.. to.. $42k.. Lets be kind, round it up to $45k and add it up..

Retail 8 years: $440k, Uni graduate for professional position? $235k, Minus the cost of living we talked about? Retail guy, might be lucky/smart enough to have $50k in the bank.. Uni grad? might be paying off that $20k uni debt, might have saved some of the last 2 years.. maybe she's put $10k in the bank..

How about managers?

Now.. after 8 years, maybe we'll see it swing the other way.. lets look up professional wages(i.e. accountant, mid level management needing mba, any corporate job that needs uni degree), 4 years experience, vs retail management 8 years experience..

p.s. this could be for bartender->bar manager, rel estate agent-> real estate manager.. or many positions of similar standing.. 

On Par.. On F'''ing Par.. $60k would be average for all the above.. bar manager, accountant, sales manager, retail manager.. 4 years of uni, doesn't put you above average.. You have yet to even hit average.. average income for middle class should be $74k, as according to my overly simplistic 80s wage comparison..

but I'm off base here.. because we should use the tax tier.. 37k for tax tier 1, was almost on par for minimum wage... so the next tax tier? 90k (in 2018).. so the govt thinks that the average joe, earns 90k...

Wow are we soo off base...

Who earns 90k? Senior Accountants? having served 5+ years, nope.. typically they get 70k, General Managers of hotels? 80k.. real estate corporate development manager? well ok.. now we are getting some.. Hold on.. corporate, development manager.. lets look back at the 80s scale.. thats in the professional management tier, these guys should be getting $130k!

Ok, So, we've worked out a kind of 2020s scale:

If we reset Unemployment at 0.7x (using cost of living for minimum wages as a comparison), Minimum wage at x2 ($37k), skilled but common jobs..x2.45 ($45.. down $10k).. average wage x2.7 ($50k.. down $24k),.. blue collar management x3.2 ($60k, down $22k) Senior staff x3.8 (70k.. down 12k) professionals, that's likely IT engineers these days x4.2($78k, down $33k) professional management 5.49 ($100k, .. down $30k) doctors? lawyers? 

Doctors and Lawyers

I may be naive, I'm quoting alot of stats here, much of which I've checked for accuracy, but I'm not quoting anything, lest I get a number wrong and someone later wants to call me on it.. but I know that doctors and lawyers get paid somewhat similar salaries.. right?

Wrong..

Lawyers,.. getting $60k, ?? Doctors.. $100k? ok. there is a spectrum on all these jobs and wages.. and the spectrum is much larger the higher we go.. Lawyers, between 40k and 110k, doctors, between $55k and $250k.. thats a huge spectrum, but puts doctors at 2x lawyers.. which surprised me

Except it didn't, because a few years ago, everyone was being told by parents to be lawyers, and Australia has too many lawyers, so supply vs demand, lawyers are cheap.

This right now is the driving thought on IT jobs.. right now everyone is being told to get into IT. not enough people. jobs are going crazy nuts, I could relocate my family to another state for x2 the money (and x3 the cost of living) or another country for x3 (and x5).. but as all those students start entering the work force in 5 years, and get 2 years experience in the job, you can be sure than 2025, we'll start looking at similar wage drops.

So.. Lawyers are down down down.. lets be mildly generous,.. $80k.. down $68k.. ouch.. and doctors.. down $38k.

Last, but certainly not least, by a long shot, are those corporate executives, govt ministers and the like.. they 'should' be getting 10x the unemployment.. and if we look at the tex thresholds again, you can see it, $180k is the TOP of the tax pile.. no more tax tiers.. you've reached the most tax, so its all flat rate from here...

If we compare the previous ratios.. 1, 2, 2.4, 2.7, 3.2, 3.8, 4.2, 5.5 and 6.. statistically the next value should be between 6.6 and 7.2.. right???

CTO? average at $148k = 8. Low end.. $97k = 5.3x  yet High end $247k = 14x

CFO? average at $155k = 8.5 Low end, $98k =   5.4x and yet.. High end $259k = 14.2x

CEO? average at $177k, = 9.5  Low End $98k = 5.4x, and look at this.. High end $360k! = 19x!

But their CEOs, right? profitable companies that help our country grow..

Well, no, this is the declared average, not including the top tiers, the ones that hide their incomes.. these guys, the CEOs on a quarter of a million, they're nothing.. small time.

If you took away that excessive 4x extra.. you're only going to bring up the incomes of 4 unemployed people to become minimal wage earners.. all the CEOs and CTOs and CFOs incomes combined, brought down to the more normal 10x, will barely bring a few thousand peoples incomes up, all my stats on 2.4, 2.7, and 3.2 for the low middle class. wouldn't even get to 2.5, 2.8 and 3.3

But the top 1%.. well.. the top tier get $20 million, the next top 100 are all $10mil.. If they were brought into line.. the simple answer is, we'd maybe all get a $50 a week pay rise.. but even that is a crock..

because these are people.. they have worked hard (cough cough) and shaken hands, taken bribes  donations, gifts and made deals to get where they are..

No.. the big ones? the non-entity, businesses.

Lets Make this Fair

First up.. if you are a legal entity, you pay tax, the same rate that anyone else does..

If we taxed all businesses the same way we tax people.. there would be more that enough money to give every Australian a $10k a year increase, no matter their income. We could slash the unemployment system and just have a basic UBI system, saving a few bil of govt money, and reduce taxes..

I'm going to end it here with my mathmatical rant, you can trust or not, that I've done the math on this, but after a few months of research, I figured out:

* We tax all entities the same way. one system, = reduced costs to govern. massive increase in tax revenue

* We abolish the policing of unemployment, and make it a basic UBI system. Once you turn 15 your parents get $5k a year extra, til you're 21, then you get $10k a year, earn what you want, its not enough to live on, but enough to cover basic needs, you still need a job.
* Tax can now get scaled according to the UBI index, 20k = 10%, 40k = 20%, 80k = 30%, 160k = 40%, 320k = 50%.. honestly, who needs more than 320k.. and as prices rise, index it to the UBI base rate.. 

down the rabbit hole

* better yet, quit all this ursary, if I put 10k in the bank in 1970, I could almost buy an apartment, now, in 2018, I can't buy a car with it. Lets scrap this b******t, Money is electronic, banks are practically superfluous, ditch the inflation altogether. prices don't need to rise, ever, there is no point, logically. the only reason it does, is to ensure that poor people can't save up and retire, I can write a whole rant about that.
* supply and demand will still affect jobs, lower skilled jobs will get taken over by robots, mid tier skills by programmers and then by programs, higher skill jobs will need augmentation from robots and programs, and at the end of the day, bots are making more money on the stock market, so we could likely program them to make better business decisions, all those CFO, CTO and CEOs can probably go too.. but supply and demand and innovation will mean tha backyard scientists will once again become the village blacksmiths and tinkerers and shamans, and everyone will grow food in their backyards, because its free, sunlight will power anything we really need, and it'll probably all go to sh*t anyway.. but we might be able to avoid terminator and exist another 50 years, long enough to figure out what the next evolution of our existance is going to be..