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?

I actually cannot believe you have thought that this idea sounds ok, logical, or fair. In your world then maybe all benefits should be means tested according to where you live!!!!!!

A 'lush' 3 bed house were I am up north can be £1200 and that's not even with a good bit of land, literally a driveway and an average size back garden .... which I couldn't afford on minimum wage 😂 why do people from London assume if you live 'up north' it's really cheap ?

also again - see the point further up - it's up to EMPLOYERS what they pay - minimum wage is the minimum - it's London employers choice not to pay more

But Hessle is the East Riding - it’s not even in Hull. There are a lot of relatively wealthy localities around the city of Hull.

Here’s a nice place in Hessle [https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-66140566.html]

Much cheaper than a southern equivalent, sure. But this idea just assumes some homogenous place called “The North” - it doesn’t exist.

'this would help spread the wealth' No, it would increase poverty in the North- already the majority of the poorest areas in the country are in the North.

The North/South divide is alive and flourishing in OP's world.

London still needs minimum wage workers, every office block needs cleaning and someone needs to pick up the rubbish! You can't say "move then" as if all the min wage London staff did that overnight the city would near on collapse.

Unfortunately you cannot rely on companies paying staff more out of the kindness of their hearts.

I just think minimum wage should be increased in expensive areas and kept the same in areas where you can achieve a good quality of life on minimum wage.

Click www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-66140566.html

I lived in Hessle for 2 years about 10 years ago. Would love to go back. But I was paying £550 pcm for a decent flat there all that time ago.

YABVU. In Barrow in Furness in Cumbria every other child lives in poverty. Want to make that worse?

@Witchofwisteria you can't achieve a good quality of life on minimum wage anywhere. Unless you are in a household where your OH is on a decent salary. I would be amazed to find a single person on minimum wage with their own residence, mode of transport and comfortably afford the necessities.

hahahaha ...are you trying to cause mayhem on mumsnet op. I think your idea is unworkable for a number of reasons.

Minimum wage jobs are just as backbreaking or mind numbingly boring whether you live in the north or the south. Who is going to work for less than half the wage for this kind of work in the north than the south? People would simply move south. OK they might have some more expenses but they would have all the advantages of living in the nation's capital city. Some expenses would be cheaper ...no need for a car with cheap regular London transport instead of long expensive commutes for cheap work from northern villages into towns.

When all these northerners start moving south for double the minimum wage for the same work and all the convenience of a London life there will be more workers than work. Then the inevitable would happen and employers would start reducing that amazing minimum wage.

If you think its so much better up north ...come and live here ...never mind if all your family is in the south ...northerners have been doing this for centuries when there hasn't been work of any kind up here.

oh and £600 gets you at the most a 2 bed flat here!

No. Just...so much no.

@witch, I was on min wage in Newcastle for a long time. Good qualify of life? No. Any luxuries? No. Small studio flat with no car, no dish washer, no garden. Come up and try it some time!

you can't achieve a good quality of life on minimum wage anywhere

this really!

I think it would be a fucking disaster to divide minimum wage by area though

Why? Salaries are already weighted more in London, so why is that consideration only for richer people?

I read the op and thought I can't even be bothered to listen to the northern outrage...,

But I feel that you should know that £600 gets you at MOST one room in a shared flat / house in London.

And no, nobody HAS to live anywhere but when you've grown up here and all your friends and family are here it's understandable you might want to stay in your home.

Same as you lot up there!!!

We need to start to pay realistic prices for the food that we eat and the goods that we consume.

At the moment the benefits system enables employers to pay low wages (minimum often rather than market) and so we pay low prices. Wages won’t rise until we address this. We need to pay realistic prices.

Aside from London, what about the surrounding areas in the south such as Surrey, Gatwick, Croydon, Redhill etc where the minimum wage is also extremely disproportionate to what rent you can afford?

As many have said it's not the government that pay the min wage, but how else can we get people on a better income without hemoraging money from the government in things like subsidisary benefits.

I think a rent cap would be nice but it's impractical because landlords need to buy property which has skyrocketed in price, so they have to rent it at a huge price!

Ideally there would be more provisions for social housing but that's never gonna happen either.

People are talking about living wage but this is surely subjective on where you actually do live?

I really don't think it would work, where would the money come from?

Here's some hypothetical numbers.

If the minimum wage was £10 per hour in Newcastle and you ran a corner shop, to pay your staff, (never mind your bills) lets say you had to put a 100% markup on every item. So if you buy your mars bars in for 50p you'd sell them for £1, lettuce for 75p you'd sell them for £1.50.

If the minimum wage was £20 per hour in London and you ran a corner shop, to pay your staff you would have to either sell double the quantity or increase the markup on your products. To only need to sell the same quantities of products your mars bars will have to be at least £1.50. (My figures might not be accurate, but I hope you see my point and I have massively simplified this.)

Unfortunately this will be a minimum as your electricity bills, gas, rates etc will all be higher as the (local) suppliers will have higher wage bills too and many many costs will spiral out of control. And your mars bars you buy in to sell in your London corner shop will start off as higher than 50p as your local supplier will have higher wage bills than a Newcastle supplier. But then, if your Newcastle corner shop has to buy things in from London, his base price will be higher than it would from a local supplier. It gets more and more complicated and spirals out of control again.

Also, in places like Tesco etc. if the minimum wage is £10 per hour in Newcastle and £20 per hour in London then as a woman living in Newcastle I could be getting paid half the wage a man living in London could be getting paid. Would screw up the chance for equal pay for women, depending on how many men and women worked in each area.

Also, how would you sort out which areas had which minimum wage? As the town I used to live in in the NE basically had one 'posh' expensive side and a cheaper side. The posher side would need a higher minimum wage than where I lived, otherwise everyone would sell up and come live near me. (Apart from those already on more than the minimum wage.) But Newcastle is so much more expensive, so would they have a higher minimum wage than my old town? But some people living in Newcastle worked in my old town, would they get the Newcastle minimum wage or my old town minimum wage? Would my old town subsidise the Newcastle dwellers? Or the other way around, some people living in my old town work in Newcastle. Would they get a higher Newcastle minimum wage and be better off than their neighbour doing the same job in my old town? Or would the Newcastle job be able to pay them less as they live out of town, therefore Newcastle employers would be more likely to employ people from out of town, but they'd need more money to be able to afford public transport or petrol and parking charges. It is very, very complicated

My brain is going to explode, I also tend to over complicate things anyway.

But here's something controversial, wouldn't it be easier to charge exactly the same amount for something where ever it is sold, north or south, and pay everyone the same wage, no matter what job they do? Then we would all be equal and live in a Communist country! (I am no way a Communist.)

It would probably be fairer to force the costs of living down in the more expensive areas, particularly London, rather than trying to bring in graded minimum wages.

(Sorry everyone, I might be looking at things incorrectly, so if I am please ignore me rather than ripping me apart and derailing the thread. If I am right then hopefully I have made a good, even if oversimplified, point.)

By doing this though, you'd make the North even less desirable than it is now (proud Northerner)

Opportunity is the difference between North and South. Many northern towns are supported by a handful of main local employers plus public sector.

Those who can get good contracts with the main local employers tend to do quite well and can have a great standard of living, but still lack choice as there is unlikely to be another similar company nearby to move to if you don't like your job. So you're a bit of a wage slave.

In lots of places in the north, a wage of say £40k is seen as very good indeed. In the south, there is more scope to move around employers, build up a CV and increase your salary than in the north.

YABU don't be so ridiculous

@someonekillbabyshark

A 'lush' 3 bed house were I am up north can be £1200 and that's not even with a good bit of land, literally a driveway and an average size back garden .... which I couldn't afford on minimum wage 😂 why do people from London assume if you live 'up north' it's really cheap ?

Because it is.
London living wage (not minimum) working full time is a little under £1500 pcm after tax.
You'd struggle to find a decent two bed flat in most of London for that. A 3 bed house with a driveway and back garden larger than a rug? You might find something in Zone 5 or 6, most likely a tiny terrace with box room not proper 3 bedrooms.

Almost like London Weighting is a thing, huh op? 🤔

or....OR the government, both centrally and at regional levels could invest more in infrastructure OUTSIDE of London to make other cities attract some of the wealth and investment London currently enjoys.

This^. The vast amount per head which is spent on London and the South East compared to the rest of the UK is shameful.

It should be the other way around. There should be more capital investment in the North and the South West to encourage people and companies to move. Government departments should be located 'oop North' to jump start the economy.

A large part of the reason for the UK's poor productivity compared to other countries is overcrowding pushing up costs and lowering return on investment. This could be improved by companies expanding in the North but the infrastructure just doesn't support it.

If the minimum wage was £20 per hour in London and you ran a corner shop, to pay your staff you would have to either sell double the quantity or increase the markup on your products. To only need to sell the same quantities of products your mars bars will have to be at least £1.50. (My figures might not be accurate, but I hope you see my point and I have massively simplified this.

But this is already what happens? Everything is more expensive in London from beer to chocolate!