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?

@ivykaty44

We have a shortage of midwives due to crap pay and crap working conditions. Hiring midwives without the medical knowledge to safely do their job isn’t going to help that. It makes the system even more unsafe.

Madwife123 So reverting to the training a midwife received previously wouldn’t be an option? It’s better to have no midwife’s than a midwife trained in the same manner a 1960s midwife was trained?

The manner in which a 1960’s midwife was trained would not be safe today.

Maternity has changed enormously since then. Women are older, unhealthier, with pre-existing conditions that you require knowledge of to be able to safely care for them.

Women who previously couldn’t safely have children now can thanks to medical advances and again we need to be able to safely care for those women, with cardiac conditions etc.

There is much much more medical knowledge required than previously and without that underpinning knowledge they would be unsafe.

It’s not better to have no midwives but replacing an unsafe system with another unsafe system solves nothing. We need to tackle the root cause. Why are their no midwives? Why are staff leaving the NHS in droves?

Otherwise all that will happen is we train more just for them to leave again. Are you aware that for every 30 midwives trained the NHS gains 1? That’s how bad it currently is! It’s nothing to do with training them, there’s no shortage of people being trained, it’s keeping them!

The practices on the high street are all private businesses. The business might have a contract to do NHS work but that doesn't mean they are part of NHS. They do the dental work and then either NHS or the patient pays them. A large proportion do both private work and NHS work (or they would do if they had signed a contract saying they would do some in NHS work) but the price isn't much different once in many areas especially once you take into account that they do the NHS work much more quickly.

You are absolutely twisting what I am saying, and you know it. I have made it clear that what I'm saying applies to people who choose to work as doctors in the private health care system. I am unaware of what other jobs might specifically require people to be qualified doctors - other than perhaps working in universities to train new doctors, which seems perfectly in line with the public service angle - so I cannot offer an opinion on those.

Re other professionals - I'm not sure what other professional qualifications are funded from the public purse so I can't really comment. I'm not aware of other degree subjects where there is additional state funding beyond the standard student loans which already have to be paid back when people earn enough, but if there are comparable examples, then yes, I think the same principles should apply if there is an equivalent "state sector" for them to work in. If there is no equivalent "state sector", then I would want to understand the reasons for the state subsidising this training before passing further comment.

The vast majority of teachers and doctors work within the state sector. What I'm proposing would benefit them. It is only those who move to the private sector who would pay more, and their private sector employers could make it financially beneficial for them to do so by building this into their costs.

I'm not twisting what you are saying. You are the one constantly twisting things to try and make your ridiculous suggestion sound more reasonable. You said if they use their qualification in the “private sector” not the “private healthcare system”. That would include working in any business where medical qualifications would be useful, and certainly not just higher education e.g Pharmaceutical industry, journalism, research, and a lot of other industries.

There will be many degree subjects and qualifications which cost more than the tuition fees. For example engineering and some other practical science subjects. Those people will go into private sector jobs and pay a lot of taxes which more than pay back the costs of the state paid for their initial qualifications.

There are indeed other degrees such as engineering that cost more than the standard tuition fees, but these are generally subsidised within the universities themselves from the fees for classroom based degrees which cost a lot less to run. (And yes, we could have a discussion about whether or not that's fair, but that's a whole other thread.) I'm not aware of the Government investing extra funds to subsidise these degrees on top of what universities get from tuition fees, but ready to stand corrected if they do.

As for people "using their qualifications" in other fields, well yes they do, but you don't have to be a qualified doctor to work in journalism or the pharmaceutical industry etc, regardless of how useful your experience might be. It's not comparable to private practice medicine where you would not legally be able to work as a doctor without having done that taxpayer funded training first.

As for me twisting things to make it sound more reasonable... what exactly have I twisted?

@dianthus101 Yes I get that-

I'm not pro it being charged 'at all' unless it's 100% cosmetic. Surely it should come under health? The sheer cost these days is stopping people going. There are plans yes, but basically they want your teeth in very good order indeed to be able to get that- whereas people who actually need a lot of work need to pay a fortune to get to them 'very good indeed' stage

The government/tax payer don't need to give extra money as they are paying the tuition fees for all courses in first place. The students doing cheaper courses are only subsidising those doing the more expensive courses if they actually pay all the loan back. In reality, those that do the more expensive degrees are more likely to pay back the loans as they are likely to get higher earning jobs so if anything it will be the other way around.

I don't see what difference it makes if you have to have medical qualifications to do a job or if it is just useful to have the medical qualifications. But if you are saying that it will be fine for doctors to work in a field such as the pharmaceutical industry, journalism, research (where they would be paid a lot more because of their medical qualifications than someone who doesn’t have them) then I'm sure everyone who doesn’t want to work for the NHS will just do that rather than pay thousands back for the cost of medical training. i.e. your policy would have absolutely no impact on whether doctors remain in NHS and will just put people off training in the first place, particularly the less privileged.

The above post was to @Anothernamechangeplease

At least you get a good pension, flexible working conditions and paid holiday and plenty of overtime.

Ah, the middle earner on £40K doesn't believe in raising the income of the poorest earning individuals in society..... nice

You have already seen reaction to price increases. Imagine increases due to corporate greed. People stop buying and business fails. Unless business wants to go back to high school employment, they need to be employee competitive!

It's possible to want to raise the income of the poorest in society without believing that raising the minimum wage is the best way of doing this.

Of course, I understand the principle behind giving people the dignity of earning a wage that enables them to pay for a decent standard of living, and in theory, I'm all for that. In practice, though, I just think that a £15 nmw would force lots of employers out of business, leading to mass unemployment.

So I wouldn't support a minimum wage of £15 but that doesn't mean I want the poorest to go without - I would quite happily pay more tax on order to ensure that everyone has access to a decent standard of living, whether that is done through tax credits or similar, or through some kind of subsidy to reduce the cost of housing and other essentials. I don't begrudge anyone a decent life, I just don't see how putting loads of employers out of business and loads of people out of work is going to help anyone.

Yes, as a small business owner I don’t draw from the business anything more than a lot of my staff are paid. If minimum wage goes up I have two choices, raise my prices or slim down my workforce. With VAT, Coro tax, my own tax, pension, NI, etc. you could run a small
country on the tax that my company and staff pay!

The OP nailed it, increasing pay to increase peoples affordability because costs are increasing is just a way to line government pockets further in the long run and actually benefits nobody because it just excuses the increase in cost of living…

Some smaller companies will become unsustainable.

Have you shared your brilliant economic theory with No 11? It is incredible that this amazing idea hasn't already been thought of, piloted, evaluated and written into policy by now. You work in the civil service, so already have an advantage of the other 5 million or so other people who have ideas how to drive the economy. Don't waste time getting opinions here, because clearly you feel they do not understand your point.

YABU.
You're not on minimum wage

Your moral view on why peoples choose to do things are neither here nor there.

They are not obliged to train for the best part of the decade, Incur huge debt, work very antisocial hours in a very stressful job and then be expected to be paid the same as a road sweeper.

Don’t be so ridiculous. A shelf stacking job should not be paid the same as a surgeon or a trained engineer making decisions which could if made badly, kill thousands.

And your raising eyebrows at this notion of their apparently questionable motives doesn’t make it wrong.

Agreed. Way too many degreesC and way too many shitty degrees too.

Those poor kids who were sold a line that this was better when all they get is tens of thousands worth of debt and a job in a call centre.

As I've explained before the difference when we lived in Denmark was that people had much higher wages but much higher tax, so essentially ended up with similar monthly pay to here-- the big difference though was masses of good quality social housing ( even me as a bit of a snob would have lived in it) - childcare at a quarter of UK rates and no NI or council tax. So a couple with a take home of around £3500 would often have£600 housing, £300 childcare plus their utilities and that was it. Hence very few totally stay at home mums , but a lot of security. The people who lost out were single people and to some extent older people (high pensions though) and those with no kids- but it was accepted as part of a well functioning society

To add to this though we are stuffed for going for the scandi system because of the obsession of house owning over last 40 years and the fact that the UK mentality is as it is with regards to a fair society.

There are people there who are way better off than others but it's far less noticeable
And yes it's expensive- but the main expense is eating out and drinking out and things like haircuts- but they aren't 'essentials' unlike housing and often childcare or public transport(also quite cheap and very good)

DS had a Belgian girlfriend through university she thought it mad to own a property. Her parents both professional working rented their lovely home. Their standard of living was very high

To add to this though we are stuffed for going for the scandi system because of the obsession of house owning over last 40 years
To be fair, the obsession with home ownership is because of poor UK legislation in relation to tenancies. In other countries the market is rent controlled so landlords can’t put prices up. Tenancies are more secure, notice periods are longer, eviction is harder, and the tenant has first refusal if the property is put up for sale.

My uncle has rented the same property for 54 years, he has been able to decorate and put down carpets as he saw fit. Even installed his own fitted kitchen, secure in the knowledge that he would be living there long enough to have full use of it. Never been inspected or had anyone looking over his shoulder. That would never have happened in the UK.

It’s tricky though as when a city goes through change prices can rocket. Berlin has seen change recently and the price of ownership has become more an issue and some may feel left behind once that happens.

I prefer ownership without a doubt, it gives us options later

That sounds amazing! I would have rented for longer if I wasn’t so nervous about putting up so much as a picture for fear of losing a deposit.
Renting could be a very secure yet flexible option for people, but nope, you’re made to feel like you should be grateful for a landlord letting you use “their” home, when you’re actually paying through the nose for it.

The more I think about it, the more I think private landlords should be outlawed. Or massively regulated.