Jake's View | Employers, and not just the minimum wage, distort Hong Kong labour market
While driving along South Bay Road the other day I had to swerve around an old man, I would guess at least 75 years old, with a pronounced limp, who was pushing an overloaded rubbish trolley up the incline to a collection point.
"[The minimum wage] is an ineffective solution for addressing poverty, and its main outcome is to distort the labour market decisions of employers and employees.
I'm a coward. I like easy targets. But let me pretend to a least a streak of courage by disputing economic matters with one of Hong Kong's most eminent economists.
While driving along South Bay Road the other day I had to swerve around an old man, I would guess at least 75 years old, with a pronounced limp, who was pushing an overloaded rubbish trolley up the incline to a collection point.
What a shameful thing it is when one of the world's wealthiest cities has so little regard for its indigent elderly that it must still condemn them to depend on heavy menial labour for their livelihood in their declining years.
A minimum wage was first proposed years ago because senior government officials recognised it as a disgrace to Hong Kong that so many elderly people were employed as toilet cleaners and rubbish collectors at only hundreds of dollars a month.
Either fix it yourself or we'll fix it for you, said Donald, then chief secretary, to their employers. They didn't fix it.