There is no such thing as a worker shortage. There are only price movements to reflect the relative availability of labour. This is a maxim that years of trickle-down economics brainwashing has erased from the Australian press.
We would expect to see this kind of partial analysis from the AFR, which is has been governed by overly simplistic trickle-down economic thought since the appointment of Michael Stutuchbury as editor. Hence, we see a story like the following today in which an employer has a good old whinge about lazy workers:
- Rashid Khan, the chief executive of Khan’s Supermarkets, wants to hire 50 workers.
- But, he says, the unemployed are bludgers and frauds, preferring JobSeeker.
- Only foreign workers have any get up and go.
Where we should not expect to see such tripe is the ABC:
The worker shortage crisis is forcing some farmers to move towards more automation, replacing seasonal employment opportunities in Australia long term.
Potato farmers have welcomed the steep rise in demand for their produce since the start of the pandemic, but many are left with the impossible task of securing enough workers.
Virginia Farm Produce chief financial officer Jessica Snaddon said they saw a “huge uplift” in demand for their fresh potatoes, but “since the working holiday-maker pool dried up” due to the pandemic, sourcing labour was their biggest struggle.
This is not, as the ABC would have it, a problem. It is EXACTLY HOW IT SHOULD WORK.
If capital needs labor and it’s not available then it should hike prices to attract it. The rising wages increase demand more widely. The rising wages then trigger the drive for more efficiency of production via automation.
This culminates in two outcomes. Productivity rises and so do profits. Those still working get higher wages. All are better off.
Sure, there may be fewer jobs at the one firm initially but the higher profits and wages trigger more investment and demand which reallocates resources into new jobs, so on and so forth, to the advancement of all.
Consider the alternative scenario that the ABC is implicitly campaigning for. Cheap foreign labour is imported. Wages don’t move at all. The farmer does well for a while but if he’s in a tradable sector, and he is, then his efficiency will fall and cheaper imports rise. The farmer’s capital base erodes.
This is disproductivity. Wage-earners go backward and demand turns chronically weak. Interest rates crater and asset price rise. The worker now can’t buy house let alone get a pay rise. Speculators prosper as workers and the real economy are hollowed out. Inequality skyrockets.
Why has the ABC, supposedly the bastion of leftist or even centrist thinking in Australia, become the useful idiot of this short-term economic stupidity? Because all it sees is the race issue in less jobs for foreign workers.
This is a microcosm of everything that has gone wrong with the contemporary fake left.
