Aibu to not want a £15 minimum wage?

[Israisingwagesworthit]

This morning I saw a post saying there are calls for a £15 per hour minimum wage.

I understand fully that the current minimum wage doesn't give people enough to survive on and something needs to change to ensure everyone gets a comfortable living wage, and I support this.

However by pushing up the minimum wage doesn't that just add additional costs for businesses, therefore increase costs to consumers removing any benefit of an increased minimum wage in addition to reducing the disposable income and pay gap of anyone above minimum wage.

Surely this only benefits the government with additional income tax?

Is this the best option in a time of potential 18% inflation, would this not increase it further?

Capitalism is the issue, rather than sharing the profit wealth, CEO's (of all levels of business, small and large) keep the profits for themselves and just raise prices when costs go up.

Am i being unreasonable to assume that in order for the £15ph wage to be successful, companies must accept lower profits rather than increasing prices in line with the wage increase otherwise its just pointless and daminging to all wage earners not just the minimum wage.

Won't the government have to threaten windfall taxes to those who increase prices to maintain profits to make it work and to actually benefit minimum wage earners?

I'll admit I'm a middle earner (£40k) civil servant (so no chance of a payrise anytime soon) so would be financially damaged by a raise in minimum wage if nothing is done to stop the subsequently price increases of products after a minimum pay rise. As a result my view may be biased, but am I wrong?

If there are no businesses, then people aren't going to be paid anything, let alone £15 an hour.
If the minimum wage is raised to £15 an hour, the wages of nurses, doctors, teachers and many others in skilled stressful jobs will have to be raised too or they will take the less stressful equally well paid “minimum wage” job. Inflation will be massive and £15 will be the new £5.

They have built up on a manufacturing and export base. They export more - 'despite the restrictions' of being in the EU, then the UK did/does.

Our economy is more vulnerable because its more service based. We build upon a banking base. Which was partly driven by being a centre of enabling off shoring. Then promptly fucked a lot of that with Brexit. And wondered why everyone also started to notice and ask questions about the off shoring.

That said the Germans built off the back of relying on cheap Russian gas despite warnings over energy security and Russian political control. That might not work out too well in the coming months.

This is what needs to happen. It can still pay more to be a GP vs a checkout assistant. Just not “that” much more. £60k vs £30k, instead of £80k vs £20k.

If that happens, I'm quitting teaching and going back to work in retail, that was much much easier!!
What is the point in training and doing a stressful job if you don't get rewarded for it?

Do it. I would encourage everyone who can go from a job that pays the same as something unskilled just takes that other job. Because then there will be a shortage of, say, teachers and the price should go up.

The problem isn't the NMW as such. The biggest problem is big corporations sucking at the neocon teat. Pretty much all the assumptions here are based on the system itself staying the same.

But it doesn't have to. If we look at what works in other countries, we can see what parts of those we want.
For example: in France the trains are fab. Why is that? how do they do it, and why don't we do that in the UK? (the answer is re-nationalise the railways and embark on a vast amount of infrastructure improvements. That not only improves the rail network, it provides jobs. And those people earning money spend it...)

Fuel poverty is a problem and it's getting worse. Where is that not such a huge problem (I don't want to say France again because i'm sure other countries do well here). IMO the answer here is that industries such as fuel, transport, water, and the like should not be in private hands. It is an absolute joke that water was privatised because that makes things efficient and releases funds for infrastructure improvements. It does make things efficient in terms of executive pay/bonuses and offshoring profits. So: renationalise and all profits should be ploughed back into the infrastructure. After that? infrastructure is maintained and profits go into the tax system where they belong.

Capitalists are so keen on "the market regulating itself" but it doesn't in an economy where a government won't do what needs to be done for the citizens of that country. The housing market needs urgent attention. They need to embark on an ambitious programme of building social housing. And not for short term lets - for long-term contracts of at least 5 but preferably 10 years. People do up the gardens, carry out the small maintenance tasks like decorating etc if they can have the security of a long let.

Education? It is bonkers to expect so many students/graduates. We need tradespeople. Here we can look at the German aprenticeship system. A properly regulated, 3 year scheme, with an excellent qualification at the end- overseen by the chambers of commerce and the education authorities. Apprentices are paid around EUR 900 per month (it varies) here in the first year. And when they have finished and worked a while they do their Master Tradesperson qualification. Many then set up their own business: customers KNOW they are properly skilled.

etc etc.

NMW isn't the issue - the capitalist system we have been led into is.
(yes - up the revolution.)

@beachcitygirl "Working in a supermarket is a far far far tougher gig than teaching"

I can just hear echoes of every teacher in the country laughing out loud right now😂

But it costs 5 years at uni so you have paid or are in debt to the tune of 10s of 1000s

So you’re happy to cut the pay of people who studied and worked hard for their profession then? What is with people crying people are evil if they point out financial repercussions of proposed policy. Yet, people who have spent years crafting their skill, studying, you’re happy to slash their salary by 20% and no doubt expect them to keep shouldering all the tax.

It’s staggering hypocrisy.

In terms of economics we should be looking towards the demographic time bomb in Japan which offers us some alternative pictures over what happens to quality of life. Today's Japanese don't have jobs for life that their parents did. They struggle with the cost of living. And the economics of supporting the aging population are all too similar.

They are probably a decade or so ahead in terms of recognition of this but haven't found those elusive solutions.

I suspect that GPs in Finland do not have the stressful experience that GPs in the UK do. I think a lot in the UK would go for less stressful minimum wage job if it was just half the salary.

You are not wrong about an increase in wages fueling inflation. That doesn’t change the fact that workers need to be paid a living wage.

what I would really like to see is companies checked for taking advantage of their lowest tier employees. Companies that rely on benefits to subsidize their low wages should be penalized. In practice this is actually tricky to do. We don’t want to discourage employers from hiring people with dependents. some companies also intentionally hire marginalized groups with higher needs and they shouldn’t get in trouble for that. This difficulty is why I think people come back to advocating for a wage increase. I still think checking benefit rates is more reliable because the effective living wage rate is just going to change over time.

Show us the research that somehow proves that pension funds and investment funds used by individuals (eg Vanguard index funds that ordinary people might put into ISAs) only own 3% of FTSE listed companies. If you can. I’ve worked for several FTSE businesses, in external reporting, and I know who owned the biggest tranches of shares.

The ‘burning £50 notes’ thing referred to shareholders, not CEOs. It poked fun at the people who think that ‘shareholders’ are versions of Scrooge McDuck. No. Some might be, but to claim that all shareholders are a uniform bloc of Marie Antoinette types is ludicrous. Because many of them are ordinary people paying into pension funds. You must see that?

As for your last paragraph, you have no idea what I think about minimum wage. I’ve challenged some lazy and poorly informed statements on this thread. Quite how you’ve got from that to making statements about ‘people like you’ is a mystery, but it says something about your ability to assimilate and analyse information.

OK, divide those salaries by the number of staff employed and you'll see that each staff member would be barely a few pounds better off if the CEOs weren't paid at all. Just crunch the numbers!

And not just teachers.

Out of that £25 the will be tax on it so take £5 off the have to fund training ,insurance ,management structure , NI pension contributions ,fund at least 4 weeks holiday and of course make a profit or it would go bust
also the have to pay staff contracted hours if there work go them or not
you don’t have any of that out of your self employed £20

No, the min wage should not be £15 an hour (and I say that as someone earning £20.5k a year full time).

Most min jobs (including mine) don’t entail a huge amount of skill/expertise etc, why should I (admin) earn the same as someone like a trained teacher or nurse?

However, it certainly needs increased, just not to £15 an hour unless everyone else goes up too.

@Whyareyouasking @ThrallsWife et al

The horrible attitude you display towards those working in undervalued underpaid roles is horrible.

It's not a skilled or stressful in the accepted sense no.

But I would absolutely argue that dealing with the public on a shop floor for long hours is tough physically and mentally.

It's largely an insecure role with zero respect, zero status. Unsociable hours & often part-time (wanted or not) working for large corporations that don't give a fuck. The hours you can be expected to be available are 24/7 365

No dream of upward progression or sense of satisfaction or knowledge that you have helped people, no autonomy & gut wrenchingly mind numbing boring and monotonous with zero self satisfaction and (as evidenced here) so so many people look down on you.

Whilst teachers & nurses absolutely should be well remunerated, why on earth does it matter if someone else gets £15 an hour?

• it's horrific to assume other jobs are "easy" because they are low paid.

if the government is so keen on free market economics - they should apply it across the board. Teachers pay should be able to set itself, likewise that of care home workers and nurses.

Telephone sanitisers - well, they'll have to retrain, won't they?

You really think people are going to train for years to become GPs to earn just £60k? We've already a major shortage of GPs when they can easily earn £100k so you'd just cause an even greater shortage!

It’s absolutely no surprise that the three countries suffering the most of the US Australia and the UK all entirely service reliant reliant economies, full of non contributors. Was fine whilst they were importing cheap labour but now the tides gone out we can see who was swimming without trunks.

@Bluesky2507 yep. I'm sure they would. Just what I'd expect of a lot of teachers, laughing at the stresses & horrible working conditions of those in unskilled jobs.

It’s not horrible to point out your posts are incoherent, poorly thought through with no grounding in economic reality. You really aren’t coming across as all that switched on. Just full of unrealistic and poorly thought out demands.

What is that phrase, sorry not sorry.

Is this right? This morning listening to report re dropping below parity against US dollar the explanation was US not so exposed to global market energy prices as have domestic supply

The economist made some good points re why eurozone is finding things difficult

US has issues of course, imo higher inequality than most countries although I’ve also seen posts decrying lower top salaries in U.K. v US so not always appreciated

Shortage of GPs - pay them more
Shortage of care workers - pay them more
Shortage of teachers (some subjects) - pay them more (some subjects)

Shortage of shop workers - not really - maybe a temporary one but it will soon sort itself.

NMW to £15 - no - I or my colleagues would mostly lose our jobs as our organisation doesn't have the funds to pay us more.

@Whyareyouasking

So so so Tory. Sorry not sorry.