Thread: Is unemployment so low?

Originally Posted by JDNSW

I am one of those who was chucked out as too old in my fifties.

I took the opportunity of a redundancy when I was 54. My job had been transferred to abother compnay. They offered me the job at a higher wage but I'd had enough. I applied for two jobs and got one. I finished with Telstra on the Friday, started this job on Monday and have been here just over 5 years.

So in 42 years of employment, I've been unemployed for 2 days in total and had two employers.

Ron

Well said John.

Originally Posted by William

where oh where did the old C.E.S. go

The current government, the runt and the weasel, on achieving power in 1996, commenced their agenda of dismantling the public service and paying off debts to supporters by removing public service jobs and handing out golden contracts to their mates. Just about the first to go was the C.E.S starting in 1996. You now have "Job Service Providers" who have prospered mightily whilst doing little.

The unemployed are still the unskilled, the illiterate, the unattractive, the older worker, the partially disabled, the sole parents, the isolated ( both geographically and socially).

We need a mass manufacturing industry, and not just in the Golden Triangle of Sydney, Canberra, Adelaide, Melbourne to provide unskilled & semi-skilled jobs for these disadvantaged workers. They need a C.E.S. to find them jobs and push them into them. Many are disillusioned to the point of no longer seeking work because of the embarassment of constant rebuttal, the costs of job search, the insulting and/or arrogant attitudes of potential employers.

I accept there are people who are unemployable, unwilling, lazy, drunk, stoned, etc. who will not or can not be placed in jobs. The question is should we pay these people who are not legitimately unemployed a welfare payment, or do we leave them to starve on the streets, and accept the inevitable increase in crime if we do not support them. " Don't starve, steal".

Originally Posted by away

Come to WA. If you can't find work here...you ain't looking. Unemployment rate is down to 3% and these are mostly the "unemployable". My daughter worked at an employment service until a few weeks ago and she reckons the only people left on her books are the dregs that don't want a job anyway.

Before getting my first job in Perth I applied to loads of agencies and applied for ever job I could, I wanted/needed to work. Without boring you I have qualifications, at least 10-15 years experience around the 35 years of age (at the time) it took me three months to get a job and I wasn’t being choosy. Labor shortage, I don’t think so. Unless you are a tradie.

Originally Posted by Brian Hjelm

......

We need a mass manufacturing industry ...........

Sorry Brian, I have to disagree with you. For a start, mass manufacturing no longer provides large numbers of jobs for relatively unemployable people (if it ever really did). Subsidising or protecting large industries as a means of welfare is not only unfair to everyone else, but is simply another example of "handing out golden contracts to their mates", whether these be the factory owners or the union bosses. There is a place for manufacturing in this country, but not as a means of welfare.

Somewhat as an aside, the main problem of manufacturing (as well as other industries) in this country, is, in my opinion, not tariffs, but the fact that the Australian dollar is overvalued - and this is caused by an excessively high interest rate, which in turn is needed to contain inflation because governments will not do anything else to contain inflation. Same thing is the root cause of balance of payments problems.

John

Hmm, this sounds interesting for someone like me who hates the city: http://forums.overlander.com.au/view...5679&highlight=

Ron

Originally Posted by JDNSW

by an excessively high interest rate,
John

Speaking as an investor and self-funded retiree, I consider the current interest rates in this country to be miles too low. Investors funds are the fuel of the economy and Government should be concerned with keeping rates up to encourage investment. The long term bank deposit rate should never be below 10%. The govt. should not be concerned with keeping rates low to the detriment of investors and to the benefit of brokes, bums, and borrowers. I consider the current rates to be stealing the use of my money. After taxes and inflation the return at current rates is negligible.

Originally Posted by Brian Hjelm

Speaking as an investor and self-funded retiree, I consider the current interest rates in this country to be miles too low. Investors funds are the fuel of the economy and Government should be concerned with keeping rates up to encourage investment. The long term bank deposit rate should never be below 10%. The govt. should not be concerned with keeping rates low to the detriment of investors and to the benefit of brokes, bums, and borrowers. I consider the current rates to be stealing the use of my money. After taxes and inflation the return at current rates is negligible.

I can sympathise with you - I am a self funded retiree myself. BUT the major problem with high interest rates is that it strongly discourages investment long term. It does this in several ways - it encourages people to put their money into non proprietary investments rather than directly into productive businesses and at the same time prevents businesses from borrowing to do productive things with the money. But most importantly, it makes any long term planning impossible. If you are investing money today which is not going to produce a return for, say ten years, such as developing a new product or market, exploring for minerals, doing research, training skilled workers, or anything like this, the new project needs to produce a return that allows for the interest paid on the money during that ten years. (or whatever period is the relevant one). The result of this calculation is that once interest rates reach 10% or more, the rate of return needed to justify spending the money (for a return that does not start for ten years) becomes so high as to be almost impossible. This results in successful businesses becoming locked into short term projects (the ones that try to do things long term either go under because they can't compete with the short term oriented competitors or get taken over by "leveraged buyouts" or similar, and dismembered).

Since reasonably complete records have been kept there are no examples of economies that have been successful for long with the long term deposit rate or equivalent more than about 5%. Historically in Australia it has rarely been much more than this except in the last 30-odd years, and current rates are higher than in most other comparable economies, in some cases much higher. There is, of course, no magic number, it is just that the higher the rate the shorter term everyone has to work. While we can get away with this for a while, it leads eventually to the sort of problems we see everywhere today - decaying infrastructure (high interest rates mean governments can do a lot less) and lack of investment in anything long term, such as training doctors and nurses, building new factories, and so on, and more and more effort being put into parasitic occupations whose profits depend on swapping money around.

John