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?

Yes because it's fair that two people doing the same job in different cities should get paid so vastly different.

That already happens and is why lots of people want to live in London, i.e. the higher wages on offer! Living costs are vastly different between regions, so why should wages be the same?

I dont think that plan would work its madness

Why can’t we just pay people a decent fucking wage wherever they live?

So if you were born in London, grew up there, and your friends and family live there, but you don’t make enough to afford life there, it’s just tough luck and you should just up and move potentially miles away?

Plenty of people do. I did.

Loads of jobs in London do pay more than they do outside London anyway.

Also, lots of areas already have a problem of people from London buying up the nice houses, what's to stop our imaginary London minimumwager from buying up all the housing stock in Hull as buyto let and now the hull people have nowhere to live and they're still getting paid less.

This sounds like the kind of argument that my in-laws would make, because they easentially believe that people who live outside London are less cultured and just worth less.

Sorry, shooting myself in my uncultured northern foot with the spelling there.

Find me a single lush 3 bedroom house in Hull for £400!

Are you on glue? Of course that's a stupid idea, you'd have to be thick as two planks to think it's a good one.

So if you were born in London, grew up there, and your friends and family live there, but you don’t make enough to afford life there, it’s just tough luck and you should just up and move potentially miles away

I moved from Liverpool to London aged 18 in 1988 as there was fuck all work in Liverpool - and yes I left my family and friends behind - 20 years on I made it as far back as The Midlands

People have to make 'tough' economic choices every day!

Actually I agree.

And it's not as if there is no precedent, the benefits system has housing benefit to cover variations in cost of living.

My old company pay based on geographical location for the same job. Two colleagues lived in the same town, commutable to Manchester and Birmingham and doing the same job - one getting paid £36k and the other £43k, because Manchester was considered cheaper to live than Birmingham!

I'm currently negotiating with them to move back, after changing jobs to move down South, and may potentially get paid up to 10k more for the same job - colleagues in London get 15k more than I used to get.

So it definitely already happens in some industries.

That’s ridiculous and would depend how far north your talking because I’m in Edinburgh and i can’t find a decent central 3 bedroom for less than £1000

I don't really get your logic, OP. While some companies do operate nationwide, most companies do not. Therefore, setting minimum wage at one level in the north wouldn't provide most companies with more money to pay wages in the south.

The capitalist/free market argument is that eventually labour will become scarce enough to force wages up in high cost of living areas. Clearly, this hasn't happened yet, so some people must be able to survive in London on low wages. I accept their standard of living might not be very good, but they may also have more opportunities than someone living e.g. in Hull or who is in a rural deprived area.

I suppose this might move some jobs out of the capital, but many min wage jobs are service jobs and the workers need to be where the customers are.

Really, what is needed to help less well off people in London is rent control.

Bloody hell so people up north could struggle even more ...

Do you have any idea of the poverty in the North of England? I am furious reading your post OP. I live in the north-east and the poverty currently is shocking. Not for all people, but those it affects really suffer. You shouldn't be arguing for less money for the poorest areas of the country - which have been neglected by this government throughout their time in charge. Perhaps London should have a higher rate but not at the cost of the North- who also deserve a higher rate.
DH is Head in a school where 100% of the children live in the poorest 3% of postcodes nationally in terms of deprivation. Most of us have no idea what that means in reality.

When I was a teenager I worked in retail and we definitely got paid more down south than other stores, also because we were a ‘posher’ store with carpet and more expensive products. It’s not that bizarre a suggestion.

What the actual fuck?!

www.theguardian.com/society/2018/nov/08/life-on-the-poverty-frontline-un-turns-its-gaze-on-uk

So fuck the north so and give the money to London? Yeah, that'll help

My friend was renting a 3 bed terraced (1 bedrm is miniscule) in Hessle in Hull (considered an ok area of Hull) for £600pm. Its ok, but not exactly fabulous. Housing is much much cheaper up here but wages are much much lower. I think that london weighting should be more, but its a struggle to live in the depressed North on min wage

YADBU. The solution is that wages should be increased in line with inflation, rents should be lowered in London, and an end to Urban Credit.

I’m really surprised this is so controversial!

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?

Spread the poverty, you mean. No-one has to live in London.

Where do you live, OP?

Obviously I meant Universal Credit

No, laws should be introduced to control living expenses everywhere