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Thread ID: 119846	2011-08-12 16:48:00	NZD v USD v AUS - Why The Big Difference?	SurferJoe46 (51)	PC World Chat

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
1222851	2011-08-15 04:38:00	Nobody should race around if they're rabid - fer sure! As far as I care - and I do - if there's one more way of certifying that a foodstuff is cleaner, purer or meets certain dietary conditions - then I see that as a good thing.	SurferJoe46 (51)
1222852	2011-08-15 06:54:00	Just another reason not to buy Cadburys chocolate anymore - And I don't !	Digby (677)
1222853	2011-08-16 22:23:00	And now Quantas are laying off 1,000 employees because they cannot compete with low cost Asian airlines. This is another fact that supports my contention that Australian wages and costs are too high and will have to come down. All we need to do is get our housing and electricity costs to come down (so peopel have some spare cash) and keep our wages where they are, and then we will start to do well.	Digby (677)
1222854	2011-08-18 12:38:00	Digby says Australian wages re too high - As someone living there I beg to differ. QANTAS are exporting jobs, Why? - Simple to make more bottom line - They have delivered record profits for years, and have been already caught out by the Aircraft Engineers union, of having dodgy repairs done in Singapore- a faulty wiring loom tacked back together and stapled to a strip of wood for support. Singapore owned Tiger Airlines has just had it's license reinstated, following being grounded by CASA for over a month for unsafe practices and failing to follow laid down civil aviation procedures. The trade of Aircraft Engineer has a 14000 hour apprenticeship - one of the longest, and Aircraft Engineers are required to have a maintenance type rating for each aircraft they work on. They are highly skilled people as of necessity, and yes they are well paid, but not all that well paid. My son is one and also qualified as a Aviation Quality inspector, he is earning between 60 & 70 grand a year on a base 37.5 hour week,(not with QANTAS) not exactly brilliant money compared to many who get a lot more for less responsibility. I have no sympathy for QANTAS, they charge top dollar, and the quality of their service and customer relations falls well short of many other airlines - Their cabin staff are surly and don't know what constitutes good service. QANTAS cost structures are on a par with Air New Zealand, taking into account the variation of national ruling rates, and one could imagine the uproar if that Airline decided to export their major servicing making Kiwis redundant. There was a remark about retail staff being paid $18 per hour which was opined to be too high. A single person on the new start unemployment benefit gets the equivalent of $7.50 an hour with rent assistance and can qualify for additional allowances on top of that. A single person on the age benefit with rent assistance gets the equivalent of just under $10 an hour on a standard working week. Most Australian major cities are not cheap places to live, in Brisbane a two bedroom unit within reasonable commuting distance of the CBD say a 15-20km commute costs at least $300 a week, with commuting on public transport at least another $30/week. I am definitely not a socialist, but one cannot fairly expect the average worker to be some underclass on survival wages - to quote the unlamented recently discarded Labour PM Kevin Rudd, "all they want is a fair shake of the source bottle mate". In Australia retail margins a bloody high, many products are marked up well over 100% quite frequently a much more, ( Jewelery 4-500%), that is why they can make big markdowns in sales without going broke- Virtually everything one can buy in any of the big chains is MCCFC (or More Cheap Crap from China), but the lack of quality and durability is not reflected in the high markups. One can buy product on line from USA businesses, and even factoring in the not insignificant cots of UPS etc, still achieve savings in the order of 50% on quality named brands. For those into fishing can I recommend basspro.com and tackledirect.com, the latter's freight rates are better. The Gerry Harveys of this world, the Woolworths and the Coles, make many millions out of retail each year and have become addicted to obscenely large profits, and they will blame everyone and everything, except their high level of margin, for losing sales to on line businesses. The point I would make, is that we should not have to rely on paying workers subsistence wages to run a viable business, and if this is really necessary then it is time we have a major rethink where the economy is going. Big business in Australia is doing very nicely thank you, but they are always amenable to doing better. There is only one thing better that a big trading profit, and that is an obscenely big trading profit.	KenESmith (6287)
1222855	2011-08-18 20:37:00	@KenE Smith You are missing my point. I am saying that Australian wages are now about the highest in the world. That will make Australia increasingly uncompetitive internationally. Its is now a Global economy. And of course as you say all internal cost structures are based on these wages. Yes we have big businesses here putting on 110% markups eg Briscoes so that they can run 50% off specials. And as you say this only encourages more people to start buying online.	Digby (677)
1222856	2011-08-18 22:34:00	I don't understand why people think it's news that businesses apply a 100% (or more) mark-up to the wholesale price. That practice has been common since Adam was a cowboy - more so on higher volume, cheaper items ("cheap" being a relative term)...	johcar (6283)
1222857	2011-08-19 00:35:00	Australia's remuneration rates have been driven up by the resources sector, that has needed to pay well above par rates to attract workers to the mines, and this has had a flow on affect on most other occupations. In too many countries there are low paid underclasses, who do the lower skilled work, and all too frequently there has been a barely covert encouragement of 3rd world immigration to fill these jobs - It is done in the USA with Hispanic peoples contributing heavily to the underclass. In Europe and in Britain especially, it has been going on for decades, and what horrendous consequences they are reaping, with an added extra in Britain, of fly in for 6-12 months of Indian IT professsionals, accountants etc on temporary work visas, so driving down salaries for middle management and specialist workers- and the British workers so displaced, frequently professionals in mid life with families and mortgages become casualties, often unemployable at anywhere near a n income to meet their costs. This is happening, not because the employers are struggling to survive, but because it is a way of increasing the bottom line for the shareholders. So be very careful what you wish for, the third world has no shortage of highly skilled people, especially in India. If a nation's employers wish to force third world remuneration and conditions on their workforce to boost profits, then it reduces the quality of life for everyone except a few at the top of the pile- That is not what living in NZ and Australia is about, all people prepared to do an honest day's work should be entitled to share in some of the benefits of a successful economy, not just a select few.	KenESmith (6287)
1222858	2011-08-19 01:02:00	I don't understand why people think it's news that businesses apply a 100% (or more) mark-up to the wholesale price. That practice has been common since Adam was a cowboy - more so on higher volume, cheaper items ("cheap" being a relative term)... 100% markup is not the norm, it has become the entry level, and markups are no longer a matter of calculating what is necessary to obtain a reasonable return on investment based on Inventory carrying costs , stock-turn and business overheads, it is now "go for it" add as much as one can get away with, frequently plus a bit, so a mythical markdown can be offered. Are not the new business ethics: Greed is good. Anything is OK so long as it is not specifically illegal, and then the 11th commandment kicks in: "Thou shall not be caught" Tax avoidance is perfectly OK for the super rich, and all the lower social orders are bludgers riding on their backs. Brierley, destroyed NZ businesses, started the rot in NZ by putting 1000s of Kiwis out of work, and he was given a knighthood - for services to business, namely "F*cking his fellow New Zealanders" QANTAS calls itself the Australian Airline, but doesn't want to employ Australians and is racing to open Asian based businesses, I trust that even more Aussies will decide to use anyone but. An airline run by accountants, I am ashamed to say. If a business, registered in the country it operates in, should not operate to the detriment of the citizens of that country, or evade paying tax in that country by any mechanism such as transfer charges. A hypothetical operation of transfer charges is as follows: A multinational with plants in Australia sells product into the NZ market. The Product is sold only marginally above cost to the Head Office or a subsidiary in a tax haven, thus avoiding a tax liability in the country of manufacture. The goods are then sold with a generous profit margin added to the NZ subsidiary, they are then on sold to NZ distributors only marginally above the new cost, so the NZ subsidiary makes negligible taxable profit, and thus the governments of both the manufacturing and consuming countries miss out on a contribution by the multinational to their economies. This is a gross simplification, and it is supposedly illegal in NZ.	KenESmith (6287)
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