quote:

---

Originally posted by bruce_the_vii:
So a working class couple, say a low IQ couple

---

[ 02 January 2007: Message edited by: bruce_the_vii ]

quote:

---

A labour group representing 195,000 workers in the Greater Toronto Area is launching a campaign today to persuade Queen's Park to raise the minimum wage to $10 an hour.

The grassroots campaign follows a study by the Toronto & York Region Labour Council that found more than one million workers in the Toronto area earn less than $29,800 a year.

"This speaks to the incredible two solitudes growing in this city," labour council president John Cartwright said yesterday. "There's lots of money in this city and in this province, but less and less is going to a just society."

..."If the argument is we can't give low-wage workers a raise because it will create inflation," Cartwright wonders, "then how did you find those billions in our economy to give to the corporate sector?"

The Ontario government announced this month that it will raise the hourly minimum wage from the current $7.75 to $8 on Feb. 1.

But a growing number of community, labour and anti-poverty organizations are pushing for passage of a private member's bill by MPP Cheri DiNovo (NDP-Parkdale-High Park) calling for a $10 minimum wage. They say $10 an hour is the minimum required to meet the cost of living, especially in urban centres like Toronto.

The bill received second reading and has been referred to committee for further discussion.

Over the coming weeks, the labour council will hold six town-hall meetings to rally low-wage workers in various neighbourhoods across the city. The first takes place tonight at the Parkdale library on Queen St. W.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by johnpauljones:
$10 an hour is not enough. That figure if and this is a big if but if someone worked 37.5 hours a week is still below the LICO level for determining poverty.

So they are in fact advocating a minimum wage that will still result in someone being below the LICO level.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by unionist:
Please don't mix up minimum wage legislation with solving the poverty problem. There is absolutely no connection.

---

Unionist I am fully aware of this. But to solve one problem while ignoring another does not help either.

The issue is that people do not have enough to live on.

Therefore only when both sides of the equation are answered will their be a solution.

quote:

---

The Liberal government says boosting Ontario's minimum wage to $10 an hour could put up to 66,000 jobs at risk.

Finance Minister Greg Sorbara says most economists agree the economy could not absorb a $2 hike in the wage, which rises 25 cents to $8 an hour on Feb. 1.

Sorbara says most employers would simply keep their total payroll the same and cut hours for minimum-wage workers.

He also says almost two-thirds of the 200,000 lowest-paid employees in the province live at home with their parents.

---

I guess believing people live at home with their parents is sound financial planning for MP's making $100,000 a year...

CTV News

...oh yeah, it also says,,,

quote:

---

The finance minister admits he's been facing pressure during pre-budget consultations to do something to address poverty.

---

Poor man, pressure, pressure, pressure. Maybe he needs a raise?

[ 24 January 2007: Message edited by: lonewolf2 ]

[ 24 January 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

[ 25 January 2007: Message edited by: bruce_the_vii ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by bruce_the_vii:
Whoa boy, there's not much in the way of reports of widespread shortages. Prices would go up if there was and you'd hear about that. What there is is a political promise to import 100,000s of people with advanced degrees. This has next to nothing to do with a shortage of such.

---

To be sure, there is a sector of our economy that wants plenty of unskilled labour in order to suppress wages and unions. We need to move away from reliance on burger flipping and other lowly-paid, low skill and non-unionized employment. Next to the U.S., Canada now owns the second largest percentage of lowly-paid lowly skilled workforce. We're a country with unparalleled natural wealth, and the NDP knows we should be doing a lot better than we are as a whole. Canada's is a prolific under-achieving economy. We are too dependent on exporting energy and raw materials to fuel the most wasteful economy in the world south of us.

I think the shortage is real. Last I'd read, there is an annual deficit of 500 family physicians across the country. If we were doing two-tiered private health care like in the U.S., there would be no shortage, because a large section of the population would simply not be participating in preventative medicine, and there would be plenty of empty hospital beds across the country. And our mortality statistics would fall in-line with our U.S. counterparts.

This is but one example of the crisis created by successive Liberal and Conservative governments across Canada. And it's being done on purpose. Our two old line parties never really believed in socialized medicine, but they were pushed and prodded into implementing universal health care by the CCF/NDP.

And the article points out that we are, in fact, short of skilled workers across the country. Our Liberals in Ontario have admitted that there is a lack of job training in Canada's largest province. Stephane Dion has conceded that there is an infrastructure deficit across Canada. In order to be as competitive as the four or five socialist democracies placing high in the top five or six of Harvard Business School's list of most competitive economies, we've got to begin providing skills training to unemployed and under-employed workers in this country. Big business is fickle wrt demanding skilled workers. The nature of the global workforce has changed since the 1970's, and countries like Sweden, Germany, Finland, Denmark and Norway understand that people can be thrown out of work in a short period of time. The capitalist business cycle did not disappear with the rise(and collapse) of IT-based economy in 1990's North America.

[ 25 January 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

Japan in the 1950s produced cheap goods by low paying companies. This would be plastic toys and such. Then they moved up to world class quality products that were made by companies that paid well. The worst industries were exported. This is how economies work. When there's growth there's all this dynasism in the labour markets and the worst companies are squeezed out by labour shortages. That's progress. That's how Canada can get rid of the low paying jobs, broaden the middle class. The process is interrupted when you have inappropriate immigration that prevents labour shortages. In fact the growth of low paying jobs in Canada is a function of a population problem, the baby boom cohorts, their Mothers and immigration. Immigration to Canada should have gone off 30 years ago as it did in France and Germany.

In France they have a $12 minimum wage. They did the opposite of Canada. They legislated against the growth of low paying companies. As a result you have no economic growth for 30 years and a resultand persistant unemployment and build up of an underclass of immigrants. The Canadian way should be to find the balance, do what you have to do. Canada became an advanced country by being businesslike, welcoming foreign investment or whatever. It's time to get back to that.

[ 26 January 2007: Message edited by: bruce_the_vii ]

There may well not be a demand for workers in Ontario, especially since ScotiaBank economists have slashed projected growth rates in half since December. The manufacturing sector in this province is now in recession.

Canada is short of skilled workers of all kinds. In fact, we'll be short of new Canadians period in the coming years if:

1. our birth rates continue below replacement

or

quote:

---

Originally posted by johnpauljones:
$10 an hour is not enough.

---

Minimum wage must take into account local effects, cost of living in various locales.

quote:

---

Originally posted by lonewolf2:
Martha... you didn't account for taxes.. not just income tax (currently unfair to lower incomes), but the GSt that low income people pay in greater disproportion as they have no 'disposable' income to invest.

---

You're right. That was stupid of me.

Suppose you earn $19K per year. Federally, you pay nothing on the first 8K and 15.25% on the remaining 11K. (These are the 2006 rates.) So the federal income tax on 19K is $1677.50. If you add $665.50 of Ontario tax, then someone earning $10 per hour ends up with $16657 after income tax. This is still more than what I live on.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Fidel:
Canada is short of skilled workers of all kinds. In fact, we'll be short of new Canadians period in the coming years if:

1. our birth rates continue below replacement
or
2. the feds and professional certification authorities continue barring qualified immigrants from practicing in Canada, and inadvertently diverting them to live and work in the U.S. where bureaucratic red tape is less, and there is a lower tolerance for racism in medical and engineering professional associations in general. The feds are doing a piss poor job of competing with other countries for skilled workers we need but just aren't producing. Sure, anybody can flip burgers, clean toilets, and pump gas. It's not going to support a prosperous civilized society though to dedicate such a large percentage of workforce to low wage philanthropy.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Martha (but not Stewart):

$10 an hour at 37.5 hours per week is roughly $19K per year. This is (substantially) more than what I live on. I have everything I need.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Southlander:
What about a graduated pay scale where people over a certain age earn $10? Then the 2/3 living with parent/s arn't forced out of a job.

---

quote:

---

Percentage of employees who were paid minimum wage: 4.3

Percentage of minimum-wage workers who were
- working part-time: 59.2
- between 15 and 19 years old: 44.5
- students living at home: 33.2
- heads of a household with children under 18: 5.4

---

Increasing the minimum wage has no measurable effect on poverty:

quote:

---

[E]ven if the effects on employment are small, that doesn't mean it'll do much to reduce poverty. It's instructive to play around with a few numbers here. In a study using Canadian data from 1993, Nicole Fortin and Thomas Lemieux find that 26.4% of minimum wage workers were from households in the bottom two income deciles (there's no official poverty line in Canada, so I'm using that). That's an over-representation, so an increase in the minimum wage that doesn't affect employment will have a progressive redistributional effect. That's a good thing, but the effect will be very small. If we suppose that this ratio held in 2005, then we can use the fact that 4.3% of workers earned minimum wage and that the employment rate was 62.7% to find that the proportion of people in the bottom two deciles who are minimum wage workers is about 4%. The vast majority of those in poverty would not benefit from an increase in the minimum wage.

---

[ 26 January 2007: Message edited by: Stephen Gordon ]

quote:

---

thus I suggest bringing back the minimum wage to 0 for everyone in order to make disappear poverty

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Stephen Gordon:
Percentage of employees who were paid minimum wage: 4.3

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Fidel:
But almost one in four Canadian workers doesn't make $10 an hour. And many of them do have mouths to feed and firetrap rents to pay. Not all Canadians are teenagers and live with their parents.

---

1. I am not a teenager living with my parents. When I noted that I live on less than $16657 per year, perhaps I should have added that I neither live with my parents nor accept any funds from them, but I thought that this was implicit in my remarks.

2. I was replying to another poster who said that "$10 an hour is not enough." I know that many people live on less than $10 per hour: nothing in my posts suggests otherwise. In particular, I offered no opinions on whether $8 per hour is enough.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Stephen Gordon:
[QB]Who gets paid minimum wage in Canada:

---

In Calgary and Lethbridge we hear that Tim Hortons has to pay quite well. Laboour shortages would be the alternate route to better wages at the bottom.

When I said "low IQ" it's a technical term refering to the bottom of the wrung in the labour force. They should be able to work and look after themselves.

Lots of educated people can't find work or full time work in their field yet the concern in the media is with immigrants not getting plum jobs.

People are concerned about the declining birth rate but in fact the economy can contract at the bottom and leave the country better off. Normally any contraction would be at the bottom as people would move to better jobs and leave the worst.

[ 26 January 2007: Message edited by: bruce_the_vii ]

On the other hand, countries like Canada are not even replacing our population with current birth rates. Our very modest economic growth rates aren't encouraging Canadians to have children as is the case in almost all developed economies aside from the U.S. where pop. growth is positive, even though birth rates in America began to fall below replacement rates(at least 2.1 children per couple) in 1970. Sure, we can breed ourselves to being a smaller country, but there will be shortages, and the economy will take a hit in the mean time.