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?

Do you ever buy a takeaway?

Do you buy from small independent shops?

What about nurses? Social workers? Teachers? All are on less than £15 an hour until they've been in the job 3 or 4 years. Why would people train, accrue all that debt, for a minimum wage job that comes with loads of stress?

Pension terms for the under 40s are significantly less favourable than a generation ago. This isn't open to debate. Its a reality. Thats not having a go at the 'mean old boomers' in an emotive way. Thats what has happened.

Having greater political voter power HAS put one generation at an advantage over another because its meant their concerns have been prioritised over the concerns of the younger generation. Thats not having a go at the 'mean old boomers' in an emotive way. Thats what has happened.

Many under 40s don't pay into pensions or don't pay as much as they should because of the cost of living. They can't afford to. The fact is they are far less likely to be home owners. Which means they have less financial security than a generation ago. Homeownership levels a decade ago where far higher in the 30 to 40 age group. This is significant. Thats not having a go at the 'mean old boomers' in an emotive way. Thats what happened.

In reality because under 40s have less long term financial security we have an issue with living standards because they are less in control of their financial future. Coupled with a reality that even if they pay into pension, they have to pay in more compared with a generation ago because terms are less favourable.

I go back to my point about our benefits system being set up like a pyramid scheme. Those who go into it first do well, but those who come in late end up losing their money. Thats effectively what we are seeing happening in slow motion.

Because there was so much short termism going on and very little thought to long term planning. WE KNEW that paying for hospitals via PFI would have higher costs down the line. The priority at the time was to keep state borrowing down in the short term. All that has down has helped to push state borrowing up a generation later. I personally sat reading through all theses documents relating to PFI and reading the numbers 20 years ago as a byproduct of my job. It was awful and read like a car crash waiting to happen. And guess what? It did.

Our benefits system pays the biggest chuck out in pensions. It relies on the number of workers it has paying into it. Yet the number of workers we have has shrunk in terms of the percentage it has to support. This is a problem.

At the same time, people have far more complex health needs which the NHS didn't have at the time it was set up. The expectations of health care have gone up. This costs money. Money that wasn't put in by the people who are now needing that healthcare because it wasn't planned for.

Its all about poor long term planning, and the interests and concerns of those in younger generations not being adequately considered. Loads of this WAS known about 20 years ago, but represented an inconvenient truth.

Even Brexit represents more of the same. Older generations got the future they wanted, but its younger generations who have to live that future and they feel they have lost out on certain opportunities and have to live with the consequences of greater economic barriers. I DO think we have had failures in considering employment and manufacturing development as part of that where it was often easier to employ low paid foreign workers rather than invest in training and paying British workers adequately. But Brexit DOES NOT address these problems. It only draws attention to the structural flaw and oversights.

So bog off with the emotive shite on 'lets blame the boomers'. Short term populism focused on the desires of the voting majority at the expense of the wider needs of the country. This is something that is not arguable.

We've known about the pension timebomb and the social care timebomb for years. And still nothing has been done to resolve many of these problems.

That is also not quite how it works, though. The only footballers paid this much are the ones at the top of their game - they often start training as young as 5, are in national teams by the age of 12 and are already pros by the time they leave junior teams. And often our premier league is a mixture of Brits and talent bought in from abroad.

You are equating that with just about anyone cleaning toilets. Well, no, you'd have to look into the wages of the top cleaners - those who clean for the famous and the rich, perhaps those who make it into cleaning for the royals. They are on way more than your average Jane cleaning the loos in the pub down the road.

@MarshaBradyo well you would be wrong. I don't want my taxes to prop up profits of business (benefits paid to working people are a cause & consequence of too low salaries )

I literally couldn't give a rats arse if a business thst doesn't properly remunerate its staff fails. It was never viable.

Essential public services should be under control of government.

Profit of private enterprise is not more important than people affording to live.
Sorry not sorry.

The irony of someone earning circa 40k moaning about a £15 an hour wage makes me want to vomit.

Before you vomit, perhaps consider someone earning 15 pounds an hour could easily be earning 40k a year.

How many would you like to see fold and how many unemployed as a result? How does it help the people losing their jobs as a result?

I get your punchy talk and sorry not sorry quips which are a bit silly, but no I don’t think you are following it through.

You must be unaware of the current strains on many small businesses which are abnormal and extremely high

@ColonelCarter I don't get the point you're trying to make?
It's utterly despicable that anyone whatsoever is on a wage under £15 an hour.

Teachers/nurses etc are extremely important as are bin men & care workers
Skilled work will always be better remunerated than non-skilled but EVERYONE who works full time deserves to be able to live on their wages.

Those who have to work part time for health issues or caring responsibilities should be paid a decent wage for the hours they work or topped up by society in form of benefits.

People should stop the race to the bottom
People should stop blaming the poor
People should stop voting Tory

If more people have to work for large multi-nationals they are at risk of this dynamic forcing a depression in wages too.

If people can't find work elsewhere then why would these companies pay more?

It doesn't improve things for workers. I personally LIKE working for small companies even if they pay less because of the working environment being less corporate and more personal. I don't have to buy into the bullshit corporate ideals which I don't actually agree with.

There are reasons why people might WANT to work for small business and why people might want to RUN small businesses.

They can be set up for the interests of their workers in ways that a large corporation might not. Simple stuff like greater flexibility if you have an issue at home. You might need to make up the time, but it might work better for you.

Yep you’re absolutely right. Doing this would cause runaway inflation very quickly. It’s short sighted to think otherwise.

I think many business would fold if they had to pay £15 MW
we can bang in about CEO wages but realistically how would cutting them make the make cafe I go to be able to afford to pay if
Most small business it’s what goes in the toll pays the wages
£15 MW would make a lot of business non viable

I’m a childcare provider with one member of staff. If wages go up my fees will increase to cover it.

@MarshaBradyo I am not unaware but if private profit driven business can't function if paying people a decent wage then it's not viable. It's that simple.
It shouldn't be aided by government

This might have been said already but if minimum wage increases to £15 then all other jobs need increasing by an equivalent amount, particularly nurses, teachers and other sectors that have not had a meaningful payrise in a decade. I'm a teacher and I promise you I will quit if I can get paid more working in a supermarket, and I won't be the only one. And it's not because I don't enjoy my job or care about the kids, but I need a decent wage to support my own family.

It's not capitalism per se that's the issue. That's a loose framework that defines or rather aligns the self-interest of human nature (profit for me) with the system (in theory, profit can benefit all). The issue is that capital has accumulated with management because 1) automation has reduced the cost of production, 2) the advance of global logistics technology means there is always a cheaper place to produce things. Those are things national governments should have been managing though legislation and regulation for the last 30 years, and they haven't.

Seems to me capitalism doesn’t work unchecked. Growth doesn’t work infinitely and you end up with hoarders of wealth blocking its movement, or the ‘trickle down’ if you like. I’m all for a cap on wealth but that won’t work unless it’s globally.

For any sort of adjustment to take place something is going to have to lose its current value.

And of course you need to feel better than other people...
Working in a supermarket is a far far far tougher gig than teaching. Most looked down on careers are.

It is not only the impact to the economy here, it is the fact that as a country competing globally there are countries that pay less with fewer employee rights and protections, so our companies cannot compete. Therefore whilst our in work benefits essentially subsidise businesses, they do subsidise global businesses to compete globally.

It's a shame there's no prize for completely missing the point of a post.

Wages need to increase for services to be filled.

I work as a private carer and charge £20 per hour, doing mental health and additional needs community support as well as more traditional personal care. My self employed rate could be higher and I’ll probably need to put it up again soon.

I am constantly offered more work than I can possibly take. I only take packages very close to where I live, to reduce travel time and fuel. I arrange hours that suit me.

Yesterday I saw an advert for a carer locally - the advertised rate was £10.31 day rate. 12 hours shifts… a “very generous” sleep in rate of £60 something for the whole night… who is going to take that? And if they do, how long will they stay?! There is a lot of work about and some of it is less stressful.

Care companies paying such a low rate is why there are so many people stuck in hospital who can’t be discharged- there are no discharge packages available because they can’t get carers.

and the owners of the companies (who bill adult social care at least £25 per hour) are moaning about how hard it is to find and keep staff… 🤦🏻‍♀️

£15 ph on 37.5 hrs pw = £29,250 pa

i am in favour of the principle of a minimum wage but there is no way that kind of figure is appropriate

@Iamthewombat
Thats irrelevant to people under 40 in reality who are unlikely to get much of a pension full stop due to the current economic reality
(The ‘irrelevant’ thing, according to this poster, is the fact that the shareholders of FTSE quoted businesses are often pension funds. The type that invest the savings of ordinary people saving for retirement)
Is that so? They will end up with a lot less if you get your way, won’t they? When corporate profits are curtailed so that these mythical shareholders can sit on their diamond encrusted thrones setting fire to £50 notes. Which in reality means that ordinary people’s pension savings will grow more slowly

Pension funds don't "own" much of the ftse100 listed companies, some research has put it as little as 3% it is difficult to measure but either way, they spread investments very widely, not least in bonds, which have taken a hammering recently as inflation, interest rates increase and yields have risen.

CEO's of FTSE100 companies are indeed burning £50 notes, their pay has risen exponentially in the last few years.

Meanwhile everyone else's has fallen in real terms esp those working in the public sector, based on inflation, nurses have seen a pay cut of about 3k based on 1994 pay... but that all seems ok with people like you.

Most of retail ,hospitality and care then

Hahahahahahaha seriously? What skill is needed for stacking shelves? Come on now. If teaching is so easy why are there not enough. Do you feel the same about nurses, barristers et al.? My DC didn’t have a primary teacher for a year, maybe we should’ve asked Tim at Tesco.

Totally clueless.

And of course you need to feel better than other people...
Working in a supermarket is a far far far tougher gig than teaching. Most looked down on careers are.

Having worked in both, you are talking complete and utter bullshit.