Desperate for the attention of anyone, Phil Goff recently told Labour delegates that if he somehow found his way into the Beehive in November, the first thing he would be doing is to price unskilled labour out of the employment market, which is exactly what raising the minimum wage to $15/hour would do.
It's like kicking out the bottom rungs of the employment ladder, and telling the unemployed you're doing it for their own good.
If you think that putting up the costs of a thing won't affect how much of the thing can be bought, then I have a large number of overpriced things right here to sell you.
It's no different for jobs than it is for milk, cheese and petrol.
John Key reckons he knows all this though.
He reckons Phil Goff's wrong.
Mind you, if he did know it and if he did care about it enough, then his party wouldn't have raised the minimum wage rate in February.
But they did, so he clearly doesn't .
And if he did know about, and care about its effect on marginal employees, his party would have voted for Roger Douglas's bill to abolish the ban on youth rates and so allow employers to pay youth rates again to young unskilled employees (the abandonment of which has seen youth unemployment soar).
But they didn't. So I doubt he does.
Graham Clark, Kaimai.