Not as fucked up as it sounds. Federally, the minimum working age is 16 and parents are legally required to keep their kids in school until they’re 16. Most Aussies believe you need to be 14 and 9 months to get a job (beyond the family business), as that was an older minimum schooling requirement (decades ago).
Combined with the high quality of living, low poverty rate, high immigration (suppressing wages), and high minimum wage, this functionally meant that there was never any reason for the states to mandate a minimum working age — businesses didn’t seek to employ them.
Obviously now that capitalism has corrupted most governments and abandoned the social contract, we need to rethink all norms of modern society.
Eh, I agree with you on most of that except the high minimum wage bit.
The minimum wage for anybody 15 or under is 40% of the wage for anybody over 21. I believe that not all industries do have that provision in their award, but all entry level jobs do. I guess it’s a bit of a miracle that it doesn’t keep going down further than 15, because if it did, maccas would probably be run by 11 year olds making 10% of the 21+ wage.
But even besides that, our minimum wage isn’t really high compared to the cost of living, which is the metric that really matters. Our minimum wage compared to elsewheres cost of living is not a good comparison
What? Source?
Edit: So there isn’t.
https://www.safework.sa.gov.au/workers/wages-and-conditions
that is so fucked up
Not as fucked up as it sounds. Federally, the minimum working age is 16 and parents are legally required to keep their kids in school until they’re 16. Most Aussies believe you need to be 14 and 9 months to get a job (beyond the family business), as that was an older minimum schooling requirement (decades ago).
Combined with the high quality of living, low poverty rate, high immigration (suppressing wages), and high minimum wage, this functionally meant that there was never any reason for the states to mandate a minimum working age — businesses didn’t seek to employ them.
Obviously now that capitalism has corrupted most governments and abandoned the social contract, we need to rethink all norms of modern society.
Eh, I agree with you on most of that except the high minimum wage bit.
The minimum wage for anybody 15 or under is 40% of the wage for anybody over 21. I believe that not all industries do have that provision in their award, but all entry level jobs do. I guess it’s a bit of a miracle that it doesn’t keep going down further than 15, because if it did, maccas would probably be run by 11 year olds making 10% of the 21+ wage.
But even besides that, our minimum wage isn’t really high compared to the cost of living, which is the metric that really matters. Our minimum wage compared to elsewheres cost of living is not a good comparison