Australian heiress, Gina Rinehart, the world’s wealthiest woman is either totally batshit crazy, a closet Marxist prankster or else she is Mitt Romney’s drag alter ego…
Rinehart—who inherited her fortune and ferrous oxide-rich land holdings from her father, and who is estimated to make $600 per second—thinks Australian workers are overpaid and that the iron-ore business there will be abandoned by Chinese firms seeking cheaper iron ore elsewhere, such as Africa, where Rinehart says miners are “willing to work for less than $2 per day.”
Via Raw Story:
In a video recently posted on the Sydney Mining Club website, 58-year-old Gina Rinehart — who has amassed a $18 billion fortune through iron-ore prospecting — said that Australia could be more competitive by emulating Africa.
“We must be realistic, not just promote class warfare,” the billionaire explained. “Indeed, if we competed at the Olympic games as sluggishly as we compete economically, there would be an outcry.”
“The evidence is unarguable that Australia is indeed becoming too expensive and too uncompetitive to do export- orientated business,” she insisted, adding that “Africans want to work. Its workers are willing to work for less than $2 per day.”
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard dismissed Rinehart when speaking to reporters Wednesday. “It’s not the Australian way to toss people $2, to toss them a $2 gold coin and then ask them to work for a day,” she said. “We support proper Australian wages and decent working conditions for Australian people.”
Last week Rinehart wrote a column for a mining industry magazine advised people who are “jealous” of the über-wealthy—like heiress Rinehart herself, of course, people jealous of her—to “spend less time drinking or smoking and socializing, and more time working.”
Who thought she was going to top that one so fast?
I nominate Gina Rinehart as the undisputed winner of the “Marie Antoinette of the 21st century” award (not that Kirsten Dunst will be playing her in the movie version of her life. Too bad Ernest Borgnine isn’t around for the role).
Now off with her head!