Back to Harvester?

Until 4:00 this morning, I’d never heard of David Harvey, an “eminent Marxist geographer” from the US. As I was whiling away my nightly bout of insomnia, I followed a link in this post by Don Arthur at Club Troppo, commenting on this post by Kim at Larvatus Prodeo and found  this interview with  Harvey and then this one. Both the Harvey interviews make interesting reading, particularly this section of the second:

I was part of, or very close to, one of the first living wage movements in Baltimore back in the early 90's. They now have become quite wide spread through many jurisdictions of the United States and I think there is a push going on at the grassroots level that says you cannot have people employed at something that is below a living wage. Therefore we have to pay very close attention to that locally, and I think that local movements are likely to push more and more into the national consciousness.

Oh, the Bureaucracy!

Yesterday, I came across this little item in the Sunday Age:

UNEMPLOYED people are $342 worse off a year on average than they were when federal Labor came to power because their living costs have been rising faster than the dole...

An analysis of Bureau of Statistics figures by Canberra-based think tank the Australia Institute shows living costs of people on government benefits leapt by 12.8 per cent between June 2007 and September 2010.

Yet, in that time, the government raised the Newstart allowance by 10 per cent to take into account general price increases. That leaves the unemployed 2.8 per cent - $342 a year - worse off in real terms since 2007.

The institute's senior researcher David Richardson said Newstart was inadequate, creating incentives for people to claim the more generous disability support pension just to survive...

A report released by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development this month warned Newstart has fallen so far behind living costs that there were "concerns about its adequacy" to support people and help them find jobs...

But a spokeswoman for Jobs Minister Chris Evans said unemployment allowances could be only "at a basic level". "Otherwise it will be unaffordable and act as a disincentive to work."

Yeah right. Maybe it's time that "spokeswoman for Jobs Minister Chris Evans" had a taste of those unaffordable "disincentives to work". Her and Chris Evans.