In today’s daily USPS junk mail delivery, I was deluged (as is everyone these days) by a pile of political flyers. One of the flyers in particular caught my eye – it was entitled “Common Sense MMXIV” (why the Roman numerals? But I digress).
One of the supposed “common sense” proposals listed on this flyer was to “…. enact, as Australia has, a $20/hr. minimum wage”. Since I was not aware that Australia had a $20/hr. minimum wage, I googled this topic and found that in fact Australia does not have a $20/hr. minimum wage (source: http://www.wageindicator.org/main/salary/minimum-wage/australia). What Australia does have is a 16.87AUD/hour minimum which translates (at the current exchange rate) into 14.84USD/hour (AUD and USD are acronyms respectively for “Australian Dollar” and “US Dollar”). Furthermore, there are all sorts of caveats that apply; for example, there’s a schedule of minimum wages (expressed as a percentage of the 16.87AUD/hour baseline) based upon the age of the worker:
| <16 years: 36.8% |
AUD6.21 |
USD5.46 |
| 16 years: 47.3% |
AUD7.98 |
USD7.02 |
| 17 years: 57.8% |
AUD9.75 |
USD8.58 |
| 18 years: 68.3% |
AUD11.52 |
USD10.13 |
| 19 years: 82.5% |
AUD13.92 |
USD12.24 |
| 20 years: 97.7% |
AUD16.48 |
USD14.49 |
For more on the economics of the minimum wage, I recommend reading the attached article by David Neumark; Dr. Neumark is an economics professor and director of the Center for Economics and Public Policy at the University of California, Irvine.
Who Really Gets the Minimum Wage, by David Neumark.pdf