Judging from cost of living pressures on living wages is wrong

Ibec has claimed that the living wage is not an accurate way to assess cost of living pressure and is a structurally wrong concept to begin with.

The living wage puts a lot of pressure onto the business. Whether the business’s are able to pay is not accounted for in the living wage. This was following the Living Wage technical group, who sets the living wage figure, increased it by 20 cents to €11.70 in Ireland for 2017.

The reason for the increase? It was accounting for the current housing shortage and the increased rent levels.

This is different than the minimum wage set at €9.25 and set by Government’s low pay commission.

The living wage was created in 2014 updated every July. It is ideally the set average wage for full-time employees to cover the minimum cost of living.

It is set by the Living Wage technical group. They consist of researchers and academics and directed by Vincentian Partnership for Social Justice.

It is priced by many factors which include: health insurance cost, food cost, Universal Social Charge weekly …

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Budget night 2015: Vincent Browne’s ‘Tonight’ show on TV3

On the night of Budget 2015 we were asked to participate in a large panel discussion on Vincent Browne’s ‘Tonight’ show. We tried to make the point that the budget was not one that should have people too disappointed, it was the first time in years that anything came back to tax payers rather than taking more (apart from the better paid who now have a super USC rate).

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GO TO JAIL! Do not pass go, do not collect €200 million

The talk of ‘Economic Treason’ and calling for the heads of every banker are sadly starting to gain more and more traction, all of this is happening without concrete evidence thus far of exactly ‘who’ we are chasing and ‘for what’ specifically, largely the financial leaders greed is central to accusations of wrongdoing, and while greed may not be morally acceptable to right thinking individuals it is not actually a crime.

The FT recently had an article showing that executive pay misguided but that it didn’t make them criminal by nature, stupidity is an ‘equal opportuntities’ trait. It is important that every person in finance is not villified for what was something that all of society played a part in.

One question nobody is asking is ‘what part did I play in this?’, as a brokerage we are culpable, as a consumer I am personally culpable and as a citizen I will be paying for mistakes made on both …

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Trade Unions and recessions, why they should not be considered.

Trade Unions, by definition are not academic organisations dedicated towards finding working solutions for the economy, rather they are protectionist in nature, specifically towards their members, which is why I am constantly surprised by the media leverage they achieve in various ‘solutions’ they arrive at for the current crisis.

To put it simply, Trade Unions are to economic progress as Kryptonite is to Superman. The wage deflation required to restore a working status-quo in our nation will not be achieved with increments, or guarantees of high wages, rather the inverse is true, now more than ever there is an argument for removing the minimum wage and allowing employment to find its own level, alternatively we can tax ourselves into oblivion and support artificially long dole queues and public spending.

‘Artificially’? How? Simply put, there are many people now who would likely show up to work for eight Euro an hour, and there are perhaps employers who would be happy to pay this to them, but the minimum wage …

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