Living and mowing
From 3News tonight, spoiling a story that was otherwise accurate and reasonable (if one-sided).
A new bridge in the Auckland suburb of Bayswater cost the Auckland Council $2.5 million. It would be about the same to bridge the gap between the minimum wage and a living wage for council staff.
The bridge is a one-off cost; the wage increase is an annual cost. This isn’t a sensible comparison.
Given the preoccupations of the Auckland media this week a better comparison would be to the $3 million quoted as the savings for not mowing the berms in the old Auckland City area (especially as these savings are presumably achieved partly by not paying the type of contractor who currently gets less than the ‘living wage’).
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »