Min wage should be lower up north to make it higher down south.

[Witchofwisteria]

Hear me out. Minimum wage should be given out on more of a regional basis. I think this would help spread the wealth and prevent poverty in such crushingly expensive places like London?

Example: If you live in Hull minimum wage should be £7ph but if you live in London it should be £15ph. Purely because you can rent a lush 3 bed house in Hull for £400-£600 pcm but in London (rougher areas and outskirts) it would be £1800+ at least.

Seems daft to keep increasing minimum wage nationwide when some areas can clearly get more for their money and therefore require less money to live a reasonable life and some require more! (London needs fast food staff, retail workers and cleaners too!) I think something similar with benefits should also happen but I don't know enough about the ins and outs of universal credit to think about the adjustments required.

Thoughts?

Define 'The North'! Outside the M25? North of Birmingham?

Maybe the people who live in your 'The North' can receive an allowance to compensate them for having fewer activities, maybe 'The North' should be penalised for living in some of the most beautiful places in the UK.
Once you go along the lines of discriminating against one group it's a slippery slope. After the Brexit vote there were suggestions that 'old' people should not have had a vote, based on the ludicrous idea that they all voted Leave. That then opens the way for saying that only those who have contributed through tax should have a vote. Can't be done.

OP - perhaps it would be easier to understand your perspective if you confirmed where you live and whether you are on NMW yourself?

If the cost of housing is your problem, then I totally, totally agree that something needs to be done, but making millions of people worse off is not the answer.

People in London consider Hull the north - I used to live in Aberdeen. I guess we are so out of interest's sight to Londoners that we may as well not exist.

I see the OP's point and as others have pointed out, there is a so-called London weighting, or whatever it is called now, for some public sector jobs, so you do earn more if you work in London.

But generally businesses need to pay their staff more. They bleat about how expensive it is. Yeah well, that's running a business. You can't take out all the profit without having the costs. I accept some small businesses will find it difficult, I work for one myself and the overheads are disproportionately high. But if you run a business, that's the way it is. Your staff are the people who make you the money, so pay them fairly.

Metalmidget just pointing out that people are facing the same issue wherever they are from "north" or "south"

I'm now wondering what the op would suggest for the midlands?

Biancadelriosback

I think the main problem with this stupid idea, is that you've suggested taking money away from people already struggling to survive for no reason... Why not just suggest the increase the minimum wage in London? Why take money away? Why make people's lives hell? Who on earth possibly benefits from lower wages in the north?

I did state above that i rounded down from current £7.83 min wage to £7, so i think this should stay the same so there is no "taking anything away" just giving more to those living in extortionate priced towns.

"I did state above that i rounded down from current £7.83 min wage to £7, so i think this should stay the same so there is no "taking anything away" just giving more to those living in extortionate priced towns." Your thread title implies taking away though. "Min wage should be lower up north so that..." ie the "higher down south" is being paid for by taking money away from "up north".

As soon as you put wages up in London then rents will go up and some businesses will move to outside the M25 , or wherever the border lies for the higher pay.
The government help to buy scheme for first time buyers resulted in a rise in house prices and a bonanza for CEOs of housebuilding firms and bumper rewards for share owners (at the expense of the U.K. tax payer). Even the gov doesn't seem to be aware of unforeseen circumstances.

OP. Your original suggestion was absolutely ridiculous. But.. well done for taking on board the feedback and revising your statement.

How often do we get a thread where the OP flatly refused to acknowledge anyone who doesn't agree with them? Admittedly I find them hilarious but at least OP has become aware that her original suggestion was, to say the least, lacking.

So how about we agree, where we live is a choice, preference or not and we can choose whether or not to live somewhere expensive or not. Likewise, we can choose to take action to try and better our financial circumstances, or not. We may be successful, possibly not. Either way no one should be expected to subsidise anyone else.

Except ... For those who genuinely need help and support and cannot do it for themselves. Those who aren't as fortunate who have been treated appaling by this government and that needs priority not nonsense waffling about 'its grim up north'
I live in the Midlands so actually see both sides ;)

MereDintofPandiculation

"I did state above that i rounded down from current £7.83 min wage to £7, so i think this should stay the same so there is no "taking anything away" just giving more to those living in extortionate priced towns." Your thread title implies taking away though. "Min wage should be lower up north so that..." ie the "higher down south" is being paid for by taking money away from "up north".

Gotta grab em with a headline!

Effectively if a lot of people actually read the whole thread they would see I think the cheaper areas should stay the same and the expensive areas in the south should get more min wage. Not taking from anyone just not giving to every one!

Yabu. Most southerners I know are well off because of the property they own, family own or they stand to inherit. What about the unfairness of that compared to northerners? If you live in the south for a few years you can sell up move to the north and buy a much smaller property and live of the money made. I could never move to the south now.
By paying a lower wage in the north the gap would get even bigger.

Sorry I didn’t rtft.

YABU!! As a southerner living in the north, leaving the south was my choice, why should minimum wage be less higher up the country?

If you choose to live in London, you choose to foot the expense of living in London (says the woman who did a 90 minute commute into London each day and found it cheaper to pay the rail fare than live in London...

Hardly fair. Then those who might want to move down south never can as their northern wages keep them trapped. If you can't afford to live in London then move somewhere else for work.

Effectively, why op, do you think minimum wage should be 50% more in the south? Can you image how much of a second class citizen that would make northerners feel? Like we are worth less because of where we choose to live?!

This makes no sense. Businesses pay wages not a central government fund. The min wage is to stop people being paid too little.

Let's be clear, what you're suggesting isn't redistributing money.

I understand your argument that we could set min wage on location but I dont agree with it.

If you can't afford where you live, don't live there.

We already feel like second class citizens when we see our bus routes cut, rail lines not electrified etc due to lack of money but then hear about vanity projects like the garden bridge in London (eventually binned but a lot of money wasted before it was).

nope you do not have to lower it in the north to raise it in the south, you just raise it in the entire country

Most London firms pay higher than the minimum wage anyway, as staff can't live on the minimum here.

Where I live is very popular with city workers moving up to start a family for the schools and cheaper house prices, working here (a certain big company promised lots of jobs but moved staff from London. Threw us a bone with a few cleaning jobs mind) or communting 2 hours each way back to London. As a result social housing is being knocked down and luxury flats are being built in the middle of "rough estates" whilst funnelling out the poor people. I will never be able to rent on the estate I grew up on, let alone buy here. The area I moved to the same is happening now. I'm not sure how far away they can move people unless they plan to build ghettos, bring back workhouses or just fling us all into the sea. Does that mean I should get a higher or lower minimum wage?

Stork - the local company will have had to offer the jobs to existing employees first. They can’t just make all London employees redundant and recruit locally. Over time they should be replaced with more locals but salaries will probably also be brought in line with local norms.

Not everywhere Oop North is cheap or even affordable. It is total ignorance to not realise that.

Edinburgh is a hell of a lot further north than Hull. No way would I be able to live even outside the city center on minimum wage, especially since I'm still under 25 and the government have decided that my work is somehow worth less. If the min wage in 'the north' was lowered (which you said in the title even if you now claim you made it up for attention), I'm pretty sure some people in Edinburgh would be fucked.

@Witchofwisteria do you understand though that people's wages are paid by their employers so how would lowering it in the north mean it could be raised in the south? I don't follow your logic.
Do you also understand simple economics that if people are paid more in the south it would just artificially push up property prices? Also companies would just up roots and move to places where they could get cheaper labour.

My family and friends (neighbours, school friends, uni friends etc) are primarily from the SE and London (with a few to the SW), with none further north than Essex. I've moved away from there twice for jobs - once to the (proper) north, and now to the midlands (which I used to think of as north, but really really isn't!) - so I feel a bit cynical when people say 'oh i can't move, all my family and support network are here'. You can, but you don't want to - and that's fine! Everyone has different priorities.

I have multiple friends in their late thirties who live in shared houses. They complain about the cost of living (and I would personally cap rents in all major conurbations), but in the end it's a choice they've made. I've chosen to move to different places where I have known nobody at all, but again that was my choice - I couldn't bear to live in a tiny bedsit on the outskirts of a city and spend hours stuck on a crowded bus or the tube every day.

I'd like to be able to see my family and friends much more frequently, but again it's a choice I've made. I worked minimum wage jobs before I found a sustainable career, and paying rent on £5.50p/h in the SE wasn't doable, so I moved. I managed on £6.50p/h in the midlands. (My lowest wage was pre-NMW, and that was for the local council, in the SE, and it was just over £3ph in the late nineties - it was only affordable because I was living with my parents at the time!). I'm not going to jeopardise what is now an excellent and well-paid (IMO) career in a company that I really love, so I'm staying put. I've never worked for a nicer place and there's no way I'm letting that go - not even for 3x higher salary and a location closer to my family.

There are structural problems re: affordability of certain areas that can't be ameliorated with a rise in NMW. But since the people who hold all the power are the ones profiting from the workers on NMW, they're not likely to change it soon. So we all cope as well as we can!