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A comment on Supply and Demand Does a Poor Job of Explaining Depressed Wages. Parent comment

Re:Supply and Demand Does a Poor Job of Explaining Depressed... by toomuchtodo on Friday April 06, 2018 @01:21PM (#16775089)
> we need a solution to give people at the bottom high(er) quality lives.

Training and safety nets, funded through tax revenues.

Keep in mind, the national minimum wage in Australia is currently $18.29. The entire US has been getting a discount on minimum wage labor for decades, and everyone is kicking and screaming now that those workers are having their wages ratcheted up to what they should be making when accounting for inflation [1] [2].

[1] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/01/04/5-facts-abou...

[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/21/adjusted-for-inflation-the-f...

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Re:Supply and Demand Does a Poor Job of Explaining Depressed... by comstar on Friday April 06, 2018 @01:45PM (#16775394)
Not to discredit anything you've said, as on the whole I agree with you. But movie tickets are nearly twice as expensive in Australia. [0] [1]

And a popular videogame can be wildly more expensive. MLB The Show 2018 for instance is $60 in the US and $100 in AU. These prices are outside that which is explained by the current exchange rate.

Yes, you are being paid more. The price of living is also drastically higher there. I think there are better case-studies than Australia.

[0] https://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/fact-finders/cinema/indus...

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/187091/average-ticket-pr...

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Re:Supply and Demand Does a Poor Job of Explaining Depressed... by toomuchtodo on Friday April 06, 2018 @02:06PM (#16775666)
It should be noted that Australia has a healthcare system substantially more equitable than the US, making the price of discretionary goods and services less of an issue. Real estate, education, and healthcare inflation is a thing (despite the price of TVs and tech coming down year after year) in the US (although I am aware of the steep cost of real estate in AU and NZ due to foreign buyers).

"Australia has a one of the strongest economies in the developed world. It survived the recent recession unscathed and hasn’t had a real recession in 20 years. And as Australian academics have noted, "Australia and New Zealand, with among the highest minimum wages in the world, have both low levels of unemployment and significantly lower levels of low paid employees.

Bankruptcies due to medical costs, which accounted for 60 percent of U.S. bankruptcies before the Affordable Care Act, are completely unknown there."

https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/laura-chapin/2014/12/09...

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Re:Supply and Demand Does a Poor Job of Explaining Depressed... by orbitur on Saturday April 07, 2018 @12:34PM (#16781441)
> And a popular videogame can be wildly more expensive. MLB The Show 2018 for instance is $60 in the US and $100 in AU

That's actually easily explained by manufacturers tying their product to the US dollar. We're getting fucked by this in Canada, too. My favorite is when Apple laptops fluctuate by $200CAD in either direction while my salary stays the same.

Just look at a chart of your dollar against the USD. Movies are more local in a sense.

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Re:Supply and Demand Does a Poor Job of Explaining Depressed... by ChrisLomont on Friday April 06, 2018 @01:53PM (#16775496)
Cost of living in AUS is decently higher than the US, and they have more exemption categories from minimum wage than the US.

Equivalently to your argument of picking the highest value you can find and claiming others getting a discount, maybe Australia is overpaying for labor, and has been getting less as a result.

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