Ireland’s small business association, the SFA (bad choice of acronym!) are trying to grab headlines at the moment with their latest madcap idea. The SFA’s Patricia Callan was on morning radio today advocating that Ireland’s minimum wage should be slashed by 1 euro.
Why?
Seemingly doing this would somehow “save the economy”.
So who exactly is paying a minimum wage anyway?
Who is on a minimum wage?
Wouldn’t doing something about the cost of a loaf of bread or litre of milk be a little bit more useful?
Drawing parallels with other EU states is dumb, as you aren’t comparing like with like.
hostyle says
Actually I think its a great choice of acronym – SFA describes rather accurately exactly what their combined knowledge amounts to 🙂
Michele Neylon says
@hostyle
I was waiting for someone to say that 🙂
Michele
metec says
SFA greedy little people most who live above their means on the backs of the lowest paid who are made work the longest hours.Is it that they think they can expect more to work for less,a form of slave labour.
Georgie says
The US have a low minimum wage and their economy is fundamentally strong. Shouldn’t the markets be deciding wages and not the government? I think there should be no minimum wage.
Patrick Comerford says
The SFA press release mentions Japan as having a low minimum wage but last year they increased the minimum wage to boost the economy
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6445087.stm
Des says
@Georgie – the market in the USA decides wages but yet the Gov has to bail out home buyers and the Fannie/freddie macs ?
So when thing sgo well feck the Government and when things go bad let the Governments (i.e taxpayers) bail out the guys who made the problem/megabucks…