I was amused at Mr Kitchener's suggestion (9/9), that economic rationalists should not be allowed to control the debate on industry policy. There is little danger of this in The Age.
Those opposed to economic rationalism want to impose their own, doubtless well-considered, solutions on the community. Barely five years after the fantasy of communist central planning was led to the slaughterhouse, it is emerging re-clothed by those who fancy their chances at winner picking by using other people's money. Private and public sector investment decisions have major differences. Decisions of the private sector that go bad do not impose costs on the general public. And, as the contrasting experiences of free market and planned economies demonstrates, overall the private sector picks more winners than governments.
The Age's editorial of 9 September maintained your approach to the debate between control versus free markets by calling for increased minimum wages. Increased minimum wages deliver a vicious kick to the unskilled by pricing them out of work. Employers can only hire people at a profit. Gerard Henderson's piece the same day clearly showed how well meaning directions of government officials to increase the wage rates of Aboriginal stockmen threw tens of thousands of them on to public charity. Compassion for the lower paid is cheap. Solutions to our problems require the creation of more jobs not the destruction of existing ones by ratchetting up minimum wages.
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