Aussies want employers to help with cost of living, travel to the office | Hacker News Reader

Aussies want employers to help with cost of living, travel to the office

ia.acs.org.au

31 pointsewgfdgdfgdf42 comments

Australia is currently a case of too much money chasing too few goods [1], especially in its rental market. Huge net migrations into Australia without commensurate increases in housing stock have caused rent increases but also left some without a place to live and caused some long-term tenants to be unable to continue to afford their place [2].

Most Australians just see their salaries go a little less far (due to inflation), but on the extreme end it means homelessness, at least in the short term, and all the associated stress.

Media has a tendency to piggyback off the hype around this legitimate problem to peddle all sorts of weird and wonderful ideas, sometimes over simplifying the narrative to (wealthy|employer|landlord) == bad, and (poor|employee|renter) == good.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand-pull_inflation#:~:text=....

[2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-12/immigration-house-pri...

It's astounding sometimes to see the sheer scope of conspiracy theories people will invent just to avoid even considering building more housing.

The problem is housing in Australia has been turned into an investment. The Howard government in the 90's gave houses only 50% capital gains tax, which puts it inline with stocks. This has led to rampant speculation in the property market and the idea the price can only ever go up.

I wonder if there are numbers available on this. E.g, oversimplification, if 50% of the population owns 100% of the real estate would mean that the other 50% can't buy.

Legal reform is still needed though

Negative gearing must be scrapped and the capital gains tax wound back to pre-Howard levels

The speculation on people’s shelter needs to end

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Reforms aside, I agree housing stock must lift. How we can achieve that with such pervasive red tape at the local government level is beyond me

One fairly extreme capitalist approach (Japan’s) was covered in this great summary by ABC Australia (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5pPcV54kiQ)

I don’t think it’s a conspiracy theory to say that Japanification of the west’s economies is here to stay, and we need legal, economic and cultural reform to adapt to the changing needs of our housing

The status quo cannot persist without great pain

I feel like this is sort of silly. Unless I am missing something I would expect almost everyone to answer the survey in such a manner that would financially benefit them. With the exception of remote work I would imagine if a want isn’t met no one would quit.

We sort of have this. My employer REALLY wants everyone back at the office, but there is the obvious pushback, so everyone can choose how much money they want/need to commute and the employer hands the cash. Even with this cash option, many are only doing 2-3 days per week at the office, other simply refuse all together and said they will resign if there is any mandatory at-the-office days.

No, what I want is a higher salary and lower tax.

Australians are getting an income tax cut next year, so that's nice.

What will you cut from government spending to get the lower tax rate that won't affect anyone negatively?

I know you didn't say this, and I'm not trying to put words into your mouth, but I'd rather have higher taxes and a better safety net than lower taxes and a look-after-number-one dog-eats-dog world.

Not OP and not necessarily in favour of blanket lower taxes:

Dramatically push up capital gains taxes on non-speculative investments like land ownership, housing and superannuation (capital movement must be slowed here)

Australia has too much unoptimised capital appreciating in these “non-functional” assets which should be moved into more “functional” investments

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I use “functional” in the sense that certain asset types have potentially emergent utility over others eg: investing a growing business or working-age person has a higher probability of high or non-linear growth over linearly appreciating assets like bonds, stocks or land.

Businesses and people “do” things invariant of their quantitative value, while stocks, land and bonds are just fancy ways of dressing up bearer bonds/instruments

Our economic system needs to reemphasise the importance of systems which provide utility over a baseline static capital to just syphon into the shortest path to profit

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Disclaimer: I’m not an economist and don’t claim to be

As an Aussie that has spent significant time in the USA - have a look at what lower taxes have done to the quality of life in the USA.

You DO NOT want Australia to be like the USA, trust me.

Isn’t that what your salary does? Are these people children yearning for the days of the company store and company towns?

But it's well understood that salaries aren't keeping pace with inflation / retail cost inflation. If salaries aren't then the ask starts to make sense.

But in terms of real dollars would total compensation go up? How would this even work? Isn’t this just moving around the chairs on the deck of the Titanic?

Probably the way tax exempt American employee healthcare does, which to sum up is a disaster.

Japan currently has tax exempt commuting allowance.

Am not familiar with Japan but the US exempts commuting reimbursements.

https://www.irs.gov/publications/p15b#en_US_2024_publink1000...

In Japan, the commuting allowance allows a full pre-tax writeoff of up to ¥100,000 a month, which before the start of Japanese inflation was about $1000 a month, so it is significantly more generous. https://globalvoices.org/2014/11/05/are-employee-transportat...

So, you prefer the situation where CEO salaries are rising significantly faster than housing costs, and everybody else's salaries are rising slower than housing costs. I suppose you also consider homeless encampments an eyesore?

Unfortunately rising cost of living is mostly generated by people’s salaries going up (due to gradual increase in productivity), then it’s ripe for the taking by landlords. The rising rent requires everyone to raise their prices, thus eating most of the gains of the initial salary increases.

Productivity is actually falling. What's happened is that a record number of migrants came in after the fastest rate rises in the country's history, into a historic housing shortage. Competition for rentals (1% vacancy rates in many areas, sometimes lower) has kept the rental yield high, which has in turn buoyed housing prices despite the increase in interest rates. In addition to this, migration and tightening credit are both depressing wages after a short burst of growth during COVID. A big part of this is that work restrictions for student visas have been lifted, which means a flood of full-time cheap labour for those who only use the student visa to gain entry into the country. All of this in a country with a significant money laundering problem in real estate, that has been known about for more than twenty years, and a government that has zero interest in investigating the issue, because 60% of the population either own a home outright, or have a mortgage.

Inflation has started increasing again because the cost of housing is included in the CPI, and government price controls on energy (enacted during COVID) are coming to an end. This likely means more rate rises are on the way, at a time when we're seeing a significant decline in per capita GDP.

The article says “are demanding” instead of wants, but I don’t see any hard examples of workers demanding anything but remote work in the article. If anything people are wanting more independence from their employer by having more money and time.

Which certainly cuts down on commute expenses.

"demanding" is a favourite clickbait word.

In this case it feeds the zoomers' sense of importance and feeds boomers' opinion of zoomers as entitled.

Win-win.

Sounds like a line from a dr Seuss book.

A lot of young people can't manage their lives so yes.

Google campuses circa 2016 are the dream for many of them.

I'd rather just have additional salary, which I could invest/use however I wanted.

What's more, companies and the 1% also want us to have additional salary, they just don't realize it yet :-) This business of 99% going to 1% is creating serious economic distortions, and when those resolve themselves 100% of us are going to wish we hadn't created those distortions in the first place.

The additional salary would just be diluted too? Proper Ownership in the company would be better.

By Ownership do you mean;

1) shares that earn dividends from profits?

2) responsibilities such as signing personal surities with suppliers, landlords, banks?

3) being paid last - with whatever is left over?

4) sleepless nights from wondering if enough money will come in to make payroll this month?

5) endless meetings with customers, suppliers, employees, to make sure that everyone is happy all the time?

6) being discriminated against by banks when applying for a home-loan and describing yourself as self-employed.

7) feeling responsible for the livelihood of all your employees. Who would all go to zero income immediately on the day your business fails?

8) signing the financials being supplied to the tax man, with associate penalties for inaccuracies?

Some combination of the above?

I say this only because I have a business. One where multiple people have stepped into and out of ownership from time to time. Most, frankly, just want the ability to profit-share (which we cater for) only some want the other responsibilities and obligations that come with ownership.

This is a great post, thank you for posting it. Starting a business truly is great endeavor.

I mean #1. I am mostly talking about companies that pay such low wages that the government needs to subsidize with food stamps and other benefits. Or the fact that the job does not pay enough for rent. I don’t believe the monetary difference between the Walton’s and the cashier is ethical.

On the flip side I have seen employees give their life, blood, sweat and tears to a company that made the owners very wealthy. They were promptly laid off upon sale and did not benefit proportionally (or at all). This was a fast food franchise.

I guess everyone is being squeezed now.

I wish you all the best luck with your business.

Firstly, I'm against wages that don't pay enough for people to live. Then again, I work in IT where we can charge enough to pay high wages.

Profit share is a complex topic because it's the upside of an equation. Not surprisingly most people want to be part of the upside to any equation. Unfortunately with every upside comes a downside.

So your concept of ownership is difficult because the upside is shared by many, but the downside is shared by a few.

Naturally you see, and remember, the upside of "Betty sold her business and made millions". You don't see, and don't remember the 19 Paul's who tried, failed, and lost for each successful Betty. Those downsides become invisible.

You pity the worker who sweats blood and tears, yet shares in none of the sale. And I agree that is a poor outcome. But that's balanced against a stable salary, and a lack of risk.

I guess what I'm saying is that you should be careful of seeing just one story - life tends to be a lot more nuanced and includes a lot more metrics than just financial outcomes. In the bigger picture you might find more risk, more work, more responsibilities.

Which is not to suggest at all that life is fair, or that there aren't bad employers (or bad employees.) It's easy to cherry-pick lots of examples on any part of the life continuum.

However, if all you want is a share of upside, when it exists, then there is an avenue open. And it doesn't even require your employment there. You can purchase these "shares" from any stock exchange, and you gave any number of successful businesses to choose from. So rather than focus on squeezing the place you eork, squeeze the places you don't.

These are deep insights that I appreciate.

I do feel like workers do take on risk, however. People invest their time in a company and can be arbitrarily let go. Years of domain knowledge they have invested that may not be transferable. The people laid off from the fast food franchise I mentioned are having a tough time finding new, relevant employment.

What do you think about companies like Publix and their stock buy in program ? Do you think that is feasible ?

Employees don't invest their time, they sell it. It's a short-term transaction, I work, I get paid.

Owners invest their time, often get short-paid, late paid, or not paid at all. It's an investment because they are foregoing short-term returns in the hope that there's a long-term pot at the end.

Of course employees are exposed to some risk. Things outside their control, sometimes outside the owners control, happen and you lose your job. Short of working for govt there's no "can't get fired" job.

Sure companies can sell stock to employees. Personally I wouldn't recommend stock where you work (if the company goes under you lose your job and your savings at the same time ala Enron).

Companies can also give stock to employees. If it's not tradeable, then I'm not sure it's worth much. If it is tradeable, I'd sell it (see above.)

It might make employees -feel- different (which is why employers do it) and good feelings are very good for all concerned.

Nah I think the argument here is we can work from home, so if the employer chooses to require us to work elsewhere, they should pay for that travel.

Disclaimer: Live in Aus but this is the first I've heard of this.

I'm in Australia also and have (amoungst other things) worked FiFo on and off for four decades now .. mining & resource companies certainly pay for the flights to and from the work place .. and provide accomadation while there.

I live outside of Perth, if I consult | work for folk in the big smoke I quote charge for time on deck + travel allowance .. if I'm travelling for their benefit it's detracting from time I could otherwise spend on myself or other clients.

There are a lot of things related to business expenses that you cannot ask employees to pay for such as first aid kits, desks, chairs…even travel outside a certain range. this is simply to say that perhaps the categorization of transportation could be expanded

No, and calling people children is unproductive. Especially in tech, RTO mandates can require significant expense, in time and money. Working from home, I spend another $20/mo for more bandwidth so my zoom experience doesn't hinder meetings. To work from a local office, I'd need to buy and maintain a car and spend an hour a day risking life and limb in traffic; or spend two hours a day taking transit. Or, I could buy a very expensive apartment to shorten my commute to my office. If my office wasn't local, I'd need to relocate my family, buy a new house, on top of all those other expenses.

Negotiating with your employer to cover the rising cost of living, and especially expenses incurred by their policies, is a very mature thing to do. Why do you consider that behavior childish? If you're working a job that forces you to make lifestyle changes that you cannot afford, what do you think the mature response should be?

Not what the article discusses, but there is often a significant tax difference between reimbursable expenses and wages.

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