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World's richest woman calls for wage cut

published by Tom Sullivan on Thu, 2012-09-06 22:59

Mining heiress Gina Rinehart says Africans willing to work for $2 a day should be an inspiration for Australians, whom she appears to believe are lazy and overpaid. The irony of an obese blob whose vast riches were not worked for but inherited from her father telling the Australian "proles" to work for less doesn't go unnoticed.

Read the story at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19487985

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AUSTRALIA

Comments

Submitted by Heydrich on Fri, 2012-09-07 00:19.

In 1992 Ms. Rinehart was worth only $75 million. By 2011 it was $10.1 billion. In the last few months it tripled to $29 billion (Australian). She now collects $52 million per day, and at this rate will soon become the world’s richest person. And yet she whines… 

 “Africans want to work, and its workers are willing to work for less than $2 per day. Such statistics make me worry for this country’s future.”

No, Jabba The Hutt, they are not willing to work for less than two dollars a day.

The South African mining system is finished in its current form. The miners’ protests are not a temporary, passing phenomenon, in which the miners let off steam and go back to their slavery. No, this goes far deeper. It’s not only about wages, or lack of safety conditions. It’s about having no health care, no electricity, no water, no schools, and no money to buy food. It’s about living in cardboard boxes, while facing death every day in the platinum mines.  It’s about exploitation by foreign and domestic capitalist owners. It’s about massive unemployment and massive government corruption, plus debt games played by the World Bank. It’s about police using live ammunition on strikers.

South Africa is done. Even if the strikers wanted go back to work, they could not, since they are dying. Their conditions are now far worse than under apartheid, while the gap between rich and poor is horrendous.

Since South Africa’s economy is mainly based on mining, South Africa is done.  Finished. Kaput. No exaggeration. You will not hear much about this in the corporate media – but soon you will. South Africa will burn. Hyperbole? Just wait…

Or perhaps Gina Rinehart is referring to West Africa’s mining industry, fearing that it will attract investment away from Ms. Rinehart’s holdings in Australia.  However, West Africa is also a tinderbox. Mali is at civil war. The French had to militarily invade Ivory Coast to protect their investments.

Besides, Rinehart admits that Australia still has a pipeline of investment projects worth US$510 billion. In 1999 she even got the Australian government to name a mountain range after her family.

I agree with her opposition to taxes on carbon emissions and coal and iron-ore profits, since Australia, being monetarily sovereign, creates its own money, and does not need these taxes. However, Ms. Rinehart also wants to crush her own workers. She wants a reduction in the minimum wage. In May 2012 she hired more than 1,700 foreign workers for her Roy Hill mining project in Western Australia.

In a video presentation posted on the Sydney Mining Club website. Ms. Rinehart said,

 “If you’re jealous of those with more money, don’t just sit there and complain; do something to make more money yourselves -- spend less time drinking, or smoking and socializing, and more time working.”

This from a blob that has never had to toil a day in her life.

Here is Ms. Rinehart’s personal theme song.

Submitted by Heydrich on Fri, 2012-09-07 00:49.

Forbes magazine says the blob has US $18 billion.

Submitted by andie531 on Tue, 2012-09-11 03:24.

Anyone who has never worked is not qualified to talk about work or wages.  She needs to get a real job. 

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