My friend Sam the CEO has sent me some brief comments about my previous blog post:
Sam said:
U are 100% right. The Minimum Wage always hits the bottom half first.
Because:
1. The lower income bracket jobs are the ones that are provided by small business employers (SMEs) that cannot afford increased Minimum Wage costs because the resultant cashflow issues affect their costs and sales.
2. Increase in overhead costs due to higher Minimum Wage is passed on to customers (through higher prices) and again will hit the lower income groups first.
So jobs will be lost as employers either reduce hiring new workers, reduce existing manpower or the business gets hit with lower sales and closes down.
97% of our businesses (1.15M) are SMEs. They employ the largest number of Minimum Wage workers. Die la.
My Comments:
I was really shocked to read SOCSO's statement that from January to September 2024 over 550,000 job seekers were looking for work. However only 125,000++ vacancies were available.
To the politicians 550,000 is just a number above 400,000 but below 600,000. Thats all.
Is it 550,000 kambing, or lembu, or Bangladeshi workers, or the output of the chicken farms in Johor, or the price of a new Mercedes Benz - they really dont know and they really dont care. It means absolutely NOTHING to them.
- I can assure you many, many of the politicians will be scratching their heads trying to understand HOW DO HIGHER MINIMUM WAGES CAUSE THE PRICE OF GOODS TO GO UP?
- Or HOW DO HIGHER MINIMUM WAGES INCREASE THE OVERHEAD EXPENSES OF THE SMEs?
- Some of them may even wonder WHAT ARE OVERHEAD EXPENSES?
They will not understand anything. They have not run or managed any real businesses. Yet these are the people making policy decisions that are now destroying the economy.
This is like appointing Chief Hungkadungka of the Nobu tribe as the new Chairman of the World Bank.
The first Minimum Wage in 2013 started to kill the economy.
Then the GST in 2015 killed off the survivors from 2013.
Now this RM1700 Minimum Wage is killing off the survivors from 2015.
Thats it. Mampos.
- What is overhead expenses ah?
- What is this OutSyed The Box making so much noise about?
- Why he always complain about monopolies, monopolies, monopolies ah?
- Why he dont like monopolies ah?
- Why he always complain about APs, highest in the world car prices ah?
- Why he complain about banking oligopoly?
- Why he complain RM1,700 Minimum Wage will shut down SMEs?
- Why he always complain, complain, complain?
- What is wrong with this OutSyed The Box?
