Thread: $16.88 minimum wage

The U.S. has a $7.25 minimum wage. Australia’s is $16.88

By Dylan Matthews, Published: August 19 at 2:49 pm

Minimum wage advocates love to point to Australia’s $16.88 an hour minimum as evidence that a very high wage floor needn’t stifle a country’s growth. After all, Australia hasn’t had a recession in 20 years. But Australia is hardly an outlier.

Most developed countries have a higher minimum wage than we do, as this chart from Business Insider’s Matthew Boesler — using data from the ConvergEx Group — shows:



This holds up if you compare the minimums to the median wage in the country in question, as the OECD did. Here’s what they found:




The U.S., unsurprisingly, is on the bottom but it’s tied with Japan. And Australia isn’t on top; that goes to France, which has a lower average wage than Australia, which makes up for a lower minimum wage and leads to a higher ratio.

The Center for American Progress has proposed setting the minimum wage at half the average wage (mean, not median as used above) for production and non-supervisory workers; at the current level, that means a $10.07 minimum. If we were to adopt France’s 60 percent ratio, that’d put us at about $12.08.

Of course, there are all kinds of pros and cons to that kind of increase. I went through many of them here. And it’s worth noting that Australia’s minimum wage comes with all kinds of exceptions, especially for younger workers.

Update: Another point, which Guan Yang reminded me of on Twitter – a large number of countries, including Denmark, Germany, Italy, Norway, Singapore, Sweden, and Switzerland, don’t have minimum wages at all. Most of them make up for it with widespread collective bargaining, which sets de facto minimums.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...lias-is-16-88/

What they fail to get is while a min wage being significantly higher *could* work it would require a whole host of other changes that effect business's. I bet Australia, New Zealand, Portugal and so on have anything near the mess the US has for business taxes, for strict regulations that drive up costs considerably, and many likely have a form of universal healthcare with a much smaller welfare system that likely puts people to work. Those business's I'm betting are allowed to be much pickier who they hire with much more freedom to fire without high risk of wrongful termination suits. I'm also betting business related insurance such as from law suits is much cheaper and the laws tend to protect the business more from major financial loss due to frivilous suits that fail.

US Business's have a HUGE amount of extra costs most countries don't have. The way we keep costs down in many of these small business's is through lower wages. Get rid of the rest of the garbage and small business's could afford higher min wages.

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what the article fails to mention is that Australian businesses and individuals pay more taxes than most other nations. Forcing businesses to pay higher wages means the government gets more revenue from individuals.

Resident Tax Rates 2014 - 2015/2016/2017

Taxable income	Tax on this income
$0 – $18,200	Nil
$18,201– $37,000	19c for each $1 over $18,200
$37,001 - $80,000	$3,572 plus 32.5c for each $1 over $37,000
$80,001 - $180,000	$17,547 plus 37c for each $1 over $80,000

1 more row

Current Australian Income Tax rates | Exfin - The Australian ...

www.exfin.com/australian-tax-rates
============================



The Federal income tax currently consists of 7 rate brackets: 10%, 15%, 25%, 28%,33%, 35%, and 39.6%. The amount of tax you owe in April depends on your filing status and income level. Remember, only the money you earn within a specific tax bracket is subject to that specific tax rate. Nov 10, 2015

Projected U.S. Tax Rates for 2016 | US Tax Center - IRS.com

https://www.irs.com/articles/projected-us-tax-rates-2016

$16.88 X 40 HOUR WEEK = $675.20

$675.20 X 52 WEEKS = $35,110.40