Unskilled migrants drive wages lower
Stephen Vines' analysis of the interaction between subsidised government housing, health services and low wages is well thought out ('The Scrooge class', April 10).
However, perhaps there are alternatives to a legislated minimum wage that may avert some of the damaging, unintended consequences of such a move while allowing wages to increase in response to market forces.
For restaurants, warehouses and other businesses to pay a paltry HK$20 an hour to unskilled and semi-skilled workers, there must be a huge pool of such people actively seeking work to keep wages so low.
The government is interminably speaking of the need to transform Hong Kong into a 'knowledge-based economy' (a nonsensical term, as what is the alternative, an 'ignorance-based economy?'), yet every year it imports tens of thousands of unskilled labourers from the mainland as migrants.
While these poorly educated people are industrious and decent, more than half of them will never pay tax, rent or buy a home or medical insurance. They are arguably a net burden on the Hong Kong taxpayer from the day they set foot in the city.
They likewise drive the wages for unskilled labour downwards in a dramatic manner.
