The living wage is a dumb way to help poor working families
Friday, 5 September 2014, 2:11 pm Press Release: ACT New Zealand
Media Release 5 September 2014 ACT Leader Dr Jamie
Whyte
ACT backgrounder: the living wage is a dumb way
to help poor working families
The Treasury found that two-thirds of
households earning between $14.25 and $18.40 per hour had no
dependants and receive little in the way of welfare
payments.
The red bars in the diagram below show how much
goes back to the government in taxes and reduced welfare
payments, such as abatement of working for
families.
A
living wage helps the government claw-back a lot of welfare
payments including working for families, it then helps
single people who have no children, and last of all, working
families on low wages. That payoff matrix is before any
discussion, and there must be that discussion, of the job
losses from a higher minimum
wage.
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