The world’s most wealthy woman is warning that firms are in danger of having to abandon iron-ore mining in Australia if wages are not cut, pointing out that African miners are “willing to work for less than $2 per day.”
In a video recently posted on the Sydney Mining Club website, 58-year-old Gina Rinehart — who has amassed a $18 billion fortune through iron-ore prospecting — said that Australia could be more competitive by emulating Africa.
“We must be realistic, not just promote class warfare,” the billionaire explained. “Indeed, if we competed at the Olympic games as sluggishly as we compete economically, there would be an outcry.”
“The evidence is unarguable that Australia is indeed becoming too expensive and too uncompetitive to do export- orientated business,” she insisted, adding that “Africans want to work. Its workers are willing to work for less than $2 per day.”
Under current exchange rates, $2 a day in Australia is worth about $2.04 in U.S. dollars.
Yeah, you know what would make America and Kentucky really competitive? A maximum wage for coal miners of $2 a day. I'm sure that would play GREAT here in Friends Of Coal country. Well, for the owners. Not so much the workers.
Of course, isn't this the "logical free market endpoint" according to Republicans of where the union-free American worker needs to go and should come to expect from his/her bosses in the future? "Maximum competitiveness in a global economy?"
We already pay teachers, firefighters, cops, civil servants "too much". We have to break those unions so we can reduce their wages down to where the rest of us are, stagnant in real terms for 40 years. With no unions, and no minimum wage laws, employers can hire for whatever they want.
Great idea, huh?
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