Tuesday, February 25, 2014



Miserly

Yesterday the government raised the minimum wage by 50 cents, to $14.25 an hour. While its better than last year's miserable 25 cent increase, it still shows National's complete lack of commitment to reducing inequality and raising living standards of ordinary kiwis. But then, that's not surprising - National is the party of the 1% who benefit from inequality and from grinding people's faces into the mud; their policy goal is not to raise living standards, but to keep wages as low as possible while still getting re-elected.

Meanwhile, Labour has made it clear that their $15/hour election promise - which has since been heavily eroded by inflation - is a beginning, not an end: they're planning not just an immediate increase to $15/hour, but another substantial increase 6 months after that. Which even if they then drop back to annual increases, will put them well on course to meet that inflation-adjusted target over the term if they become government.