overpaid baggage handlers, page-55

whoneedsmoney,

You said:
'I'm sorry Twinsen, I have to disagree with you. The notion that the free market will fix all may well be true, but the efects of it fixing itself may be unpalatable. We regulate economies, labour markets, financail markets because the consequences if we don't can be catastrophic. '

Not much to say to that accept that the consequences of regulation and government interference have been catastrophic. There are numerous examples of this. We can go into these if you like.

'How many on this site, for instance, would have been utterly wiped out if the GFC had been allowed to run it's course free from interference?'

It's hard to say as no one knows for sure what would have happened. What we DO know for sure is that there was no free market. All the big banks were supported by the central banking system, and the knowledge they would be bailed out, fully at the tax payers expense. If we had anything approaching a free market the banks would never have behaved as they did because they would have gone out of business long ago.

And we have to big to fail banks that are even bigger, debt transferred from the private sector to the public sector (the tax payer), even more banking involvement in politics and a looking and unavoidable sovereign debt crisis. Not to mention the theft of all our money via inflation.

'At the end of the day, we have artificial mechanisms like minimum wages and collective bargaining for a reason, to avoid some of the worst aspects of 'the free market'.'

I don't care about collective bargaining meaning that I fully support, 100%, the right of workers to unionise, bargain, strike etc. But I also fully support the right of employers to pay wages that they see fit. Left alone the two will come to a agreed solution that the market will ensure is fair. As for minimum wages.....ask yourself how many jobs this destroys? People need to think about the law of unintended consequences.

I should add that I'm not supporting the executive management of Qantas. I think the fact that they are gettin gay rises at a time when the share price has performed so poorly is just astonishing. If I were in charge I would almost certainly sack the whole board. But management of a business has to make the final decision on how the business is run.

That's final.

Twinsen