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?

You made that clear distinction, not me.

HCA's do have qualifications....

Its not just in nursing, band 4 physio and OT assistants doing complex home release assessments, with significant come back if that patient has a preventable fall etc and is back in.

Death, which is what happened, by your argument, we might as well call 222222 and ask for the nearest taxi.

its ridiculous to even being having this argument, the UK is a supposed to be a wealthy first world country and should have a first world, well funded, effective and fully trained workforce, commensurate with the medical equipment and knowledge available.

Other European countries mange to do so, why can't we? and more importantly, why do we put up with such shite.

Back in my parents day, you could have a single earner in a family doing my job, there was enough income to have a good standard of living with a decent house, car, food and holidays. These days we need to be a joint income family just to afford the basics.
This is what needs fixing. Not how much we earn but what percentage of that income has to go in housing, energy and food costs. When we have government officials stating that people on 45k are going to need support to live there is something very wrong.

This ^ is a really important point & often overlooked. This is what has skewed family life as it was known and the problem with the tories is ‘maximum employment’ to say how great business is doing but the reality is many of the jobs are phony and they’d rather have a higher rate of employment but less pay per post.

This

People on £45k are going to need help to live if they have high rents/mortgages, childcare or a number of children. Plenty will still manage to pay for the basics.
£45k is more than the average family income.

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I'm not sure how old your parents are but when I was a child in the 70s, few people had more than one car and many didn't drive at all. Hardly anyone went on foreign holidays either. Food was very basic too. It wasn't really what people today would call a decent standard of living.

@SwanBuster
Far too many variables for it to be considered.

I think the minimum wage should be increased albeit gradually. A sudden increase would make some businesses untenable and it’s not unreasonable to allow them some time to adjust their business model to accommodate further expenses. It’s also naive to think that larger companies will allow their profits to dwindle to pay for these increases. It’s far more likely that there will be redundancies and staff will be expected to do more for the increased wage. But hopefully the payoff would be people working for a living wage rather than the current low salaries.

How do you think the in parallel required increase in productivity would be achieved to offset the increased staffing costs? Ie if the staffing costs are higher, the output is going to have to be higher to generate the additional income to fund the additional costs.

I'm not certain many businesses will be able to make it work nor individuals willing to accept changes to increase productivity (for example we've all seen the ludicrous revolt by the railway workers when modernisation has been suggested) for the blanket increase to be viable.

It's just put up the cost of doing business here and inevitably make us less competitive on the global stage.

Thoughts?

We need a higher wage economy. To achieve that we need manufacturing back. We need to be investing.

I agree with the fact we need a higher wage evident.

A manufacturing economy isn't going to do it. Manufacturing is low skills and low wages, we'd be outcompeted but China and the like.

Advanced manufacturing might help, but it doesn't have the scale.

If you look around the globe, high wage economies are knowledge economies. That's what we need to target

Higher wage economy*