I believe that the minimum wage should be enough to enable a working couple to feed and clothe a family of four and keep a roof over their heads.

[Mamarsupial]

I don’t think I am BU for a moment, interested to see how many agree with me.

It is 85%.

But now life is different. Many people would feel deprived if they didn't have at least one car in the family, didn't have mobile phones, had a week's holiday at a British resort.

In the days you're talking about, going out to eat was strictly for birthdays and anniversaries, not a regular 'just 'cos I can' thing. Fast food didn't exist unless you counted Vesta curries.

Gordon Brown introduced Working Families Tax Credits. The idea was to provide a government top up to wages where a working family didn't earn enough to have a decent standard of living (ie where the employers didn't pay properly). the road to hell being paved with good intentions, when it was brought in you could positively hear the rustle of notes and see the pound signs in the employers' eyes. Because it immediately removed any responsibility to pay a decent wage, so they could see bigger profits. That mentality hasn't changed.

YADNBU

When governments rather than markets set prices, it fucks up the economy. Wages should be determined by market forces. Whether they enable you to live in a palace, or sleep under a hedge, is irrelevant.

To be clear, I'm not advocating that people be left to sleep under hedges, I'm fine with the benefits system preventing that. But it is definitely not the job of employers.

It would be extremely damaging to the economy to fix labour costs at a level substantially different from where they would be if there were no minimum wage. The net result would be millions out of work, and many businesses (and public sector functions) no longer viable.

Theoretically, to prevent the damage caused by artificial labour prices, the ideal option is that there should be no minimum wage. In practice, since it was introduced, it has been set at reasonable levels which appear not to have caused too much harm, and I accept it may have done some good.

If we are going to have a minimum wage, the criterion for setting it is that it must be set at or below the level where it starts to destroy jobs. As far as I can tell, it has always been set at about that level.

@SarahAndQuack no disrespect meant but… are you fucking insane? (Okay, maybe a bit of disrespect meant).

I am appalled by your idea that a living wage shouldn’t be enough to save anything or do some arbitrary thing (going abroad on holiday) that you’ve decided is too decadent for the proletariat. How fucking dare you insinuate that some jobs are not worthy of having anything but a joyless existence on. Everyone should have the opportunity to earn enough money to live comfortably and have some luxuries, whether they’re a lawyer or a fucking binman. Life is short and cruel, why make it worse for anyone by choice? I guess that you could make an argument for no one being allowed/able to save or go on holiday on benefits, but even then that would feel a bit bloody Thatcher on steroids. Christ, why not just insist that we pay these minimum wage drones in vouchers payable to the state in exchange for food (spam and potatoes obviously, no fancy-pants linguine or lamb) and a basic roof over their heads (although I am pleased to hear that you do endorse these people- do you consider them people?- being allowed heating).

You must be a troll, I refuse to believe anyone really thinks this way or feels this bleak in their heart (although it would account for this fucking government and the state of things).

Jesus. After reading this thread I need a drink (and I don’t even drink).

I can't believe that 40 years after the Soviet Union failed, there are still people who think it's a good idea for prices to be set by the government. It seems economic illiteracy will always be endemic in a large part of the population. Even Labour cabinet ministers aren't that stupid. (They may have introduced the minimum wage, but they were clever enough to set it at a level to prevent the harm it would have caused, if most of the people on this thread had had their way.)

@HerReputationMadeItDifficultToProceed, I'm really sorry I've upset you so much. I think if you read all of my posts on this thread, you will see my view is absolutely not what you think it is. I am 100% behind us having a fair, decent minimum wage. I also suggested it would be good if employers could be required to raise people's wages if they stay in a job for a certain amount of time. And I have explained that I think if we all had a better safety net and more security, we might feel less in need of personal savings.

But, no, sorry, I don't think minimum wage ought to entitle anyone to go abroad on holiday. If it so happens that you manage to save that amount sometimes (because your contingency fund for the car breaking down or the washing machine needing replacing doesn't need touching), so be it. But I don't personally believe it is something that should be budgeted for.

Minimum wage should be exactly that a minimum.

Far to many employers only pay the bare minimum. People who have qualifications or years of experience should not be on minimum wage.
It really gets me that people like Nursery staff, class room assistants, carers for elderly and vulnerable are seen as minimum wage jobs.

(And, FWIW, in case you think I'm a hypocrite, I haven't had a holiday abroad since I was 22; I'm 38.)

Everyone should have the opportunity to earn enough money to live comfortably and have some luxuries, whether they’re a lawyer or a fucking binman. Life is short and cruel, why make it worse for anyone by choice?

After reading your post for a while, thinking it might be satirical, I've decided to take it at face value. Look, if you feel that strongly people should have good lives, I think you should just work out how much money that would take, and advocate the government printing that amount and giving it to everyone. I haven't thought about this for more than three seconds, but I do believe this would actually be less damaging to the economy than the more complicated idea of forcing wages up.

(There would be massive inflation, and the money given consequently would not buy what you thought it would when you set the figure, but the majority of jobs would continue to exist. Ironically the inflation would result in wage increases so that people might well end up being paid what you would have liked them to be paid in the first place. Though, to be clear, they won't be better off, because the increased pay will only buy what it bought before they got the pay increases.)

Reading your post, @Getoff, is making me really aware of why this thread is so difficult. It's a mixture of ideals and practicality, isn't it? The OP is talking about what should happen, saying this is an ideal we ought to get behind, and we ought to work out how to make it happen. She's not claiming to have the answer to that question. I can see some posters who are a probably a lot more knowledgeable than I am about economics are noticing potential pitfalls that would make it hard for this ideal to become reality.

I think I'm falling between the two camps. I think the current situation is unethical and morally wrong. It must be changed and we must work out how. But equally, I can't imagine how we'd create such a perfect utopia that we could afford for people on minimum wage to be guaranteed the budget for a holiday abroad. It's not that I think, on principle, that you don't deserve luxuries. It's that I cannot see how it would work.

I suspect that the people whose parents/grandparents who apparently lived well on "minimum wage" jobs actually weren't on the minimum wage at the time. Many jobs that would be considered unskilled nowadays were a bit more skilled then. I certainly remember people in the 80s who signed on because they got more money from the dole if they had a family than they would have working.

It's economically illiterate to think you can make people richer by printing money, or forcing up wages. The only way to increase standards of living is to increase productivity.

Money is just a tool we use to denominate debt, it has no intrinsic worth. If you change the amount of money people get for doing the same job, that doesn't make people better off, it just makes money worth less. Nothing you do to people's wages changes the value of their actual economic output. The only way to change the value of what someone produce in their job is to find a way for them to produce more or better quality output. Then they will be worth more, and can be rewarded proportionately, without money simply being devalued.

But (and please forgive me - I have just said I'm no economist!) - why can't we do more to equalise society? No one needs to be as rich as the richest people in this country, do they?

If you want to increase the real earnings of the average person, you need to make them more productive. A massive program of vocational training, similar to what Germany has, might be the way forward.

(I would have also mentioned education, but our current system of trying to have 50% of people by graduates without caring at all whether their expensive education is of any practical benefit is a very bad implementation of the idea that education can improve productivity.)

It should be enough yes and it is criminal that it isn't any longer enough to do these very basic things.

That makes a lot of sense, and I certainly know have been failed by our current education system. I work with a lad who is quite obviously severely dyslexic and who's left school with literally no qualifications, and it makes me angry that a person who is hard working, smart, and motivated, has had such a rough start. I absolutely agree with you about graduate degrees.

But, also ... couldn't we make society more equal, too?

But (and please forgive me - I have just said I'm no economist!) - why can't we do more to equalise society? No one needs to be as rich as the richest people in this country, do they?

The benefits system does do a lot to reduce inequality and is the appropriate tool for this. You can try pushing it to do more, though I think we're fairly close to the limit of what is possible.

But (and please forgive me - I have just said I'm no economist!) - why can't we do more to equalise society? No one needs to be as rich as the richest people in this country, do they?

If there was barely any pay differential between working at Tesco, and studying for treats and taking on the subsequent debtand responsibility of being a teacher, or a doctor, or a business leader, then no-one would bother. And we'd have a shortage of degree level professionals. So basically most NHS and education professionals, engineers, scientists, pretty much all the skilled people we need to fix our problems and develop our country.

Jeeze, I'd have loved to earn the same as I did as a teacher, in a job where I had no responsibility and could forget my work as soon as I clocked off. And my nurse daughter looks back with fondness at her student job on the tills at Tesco. She'd certainly go back if she could earn the same.

There has to be a pay differential if people are to study and take on scarily responsible jobs. But no-one is going to pay professionals a lot more if minimum wage is raised, in order to retain the differential.

...studying for treats

Studying for a degree!!! Fat fingers.

I hope not. I do find it frightening. It seems to me that social attitudes are so powerful here. Taxes on wealth vary a lot across the world, but we all get used to what the tax situation is in our own country, and once it's been established, it is so hard to change. I know it isn't as simple as just saying 'let's tax the rich'. But, but ...

Don't worry the housing market is beginning to collapse which means people at the bottom will finally be able to afford to live. There'll be fewer people in work altogether though. Anyone who has one of those made up jobs like 'chief fart analyst' or whatever should be quite worried atm.

I absolutely get where you're coming from, but I'm a bit unsure about parts of this.

There are - demonstrably - jobs where don't earn enormous amounts more for the amount of study you put in. I am currently transitioning out of academia; most people who go into postdocs (ie., academia at the lowest level after studying) do not become academics (ie., those who are set to earn the high salaries). You could easily do a PhD, several postdocs, and still be earning about 28-30k, which is not so different from what you might earn much earlier in a career that required far less training.

I don't have personal knowledge for other sectors you mention, but I'm not getting the impression nurses and midwives are doing it for the money; indeed, I think a lot of them feel they're appallingly badly paid.

And I think it is a fallacy to assume minimum wage jobs mean jobs with no stress, where you can forget it all when you clock off. If you are earning minimum wage and you are terrified of being fired, you may well be much more frightened all the time than someone who is doing an ostensibly more responsible job, but who doesn't have that fear. Having a portable qualification is an amazingly reassuring thing - some people would happily study or gain expertise, in exchange not for money but for the security of knowing they are easily employable and can move jobs at short notice.

So I think it must be more complicated than you say, right?

I know what my Grandad was earning in 1960 when they bought their house: £15 a week. I know because many moons ago when my monthly phone bill deal was £15 a month (about 20yrs ago) he was shocked at how much it was and laughingly said "that's what I earnt a week when we bought this house!" and it ended up with a family conversation about how much various jobs had paid (memorably my Mum earnt £2 a week in her first job in a shoe shop... I was at the time a waitress on just under £3 an hour).

So £15 a week is £60 a month or £720 a year. The Bank of England inflation calculator suggests that's the equivalent of an annual wage of £12,926.35 today. Minimum wage today (if you're over 23) is £9.50 an hour, or around £18,240 PA for an average working week. So my Grandad was on minimum wage. Less than minimum wage. And they didn't have a luxurious life, I'm not saying that they did. But they had enough to have saved to buy a nice house in a nice area (while renting!) within five years of marrying. And they had holidays, only ever in the UK or occasionally Northern France, but holidays nevertheless. Fish and chips always on a Friday and enough to go to West Ham and have a few beers with his brothers on a Saturday. They always had a Sunday roast. Their quality of life was undoubtedly better than an equivalent family would have today.

I largely agree.

I think that the two biggest outgoings are usually housing (permanent) and childcare (temporary).

I think there should be huge tax rebates and funding for childcare, however I do think it’s fair that those who choose to have children will pick up some cost of that.
So say that your 2x NMW meant £1000 of disposable income, I don’t think it would be unfair for couples with children to find £200 of that goes on childcare for 5 years (rest state funded).

With regards to housing, I think it’s very hard to do something about huge regional variations in cost. Ideally, a fuckton of social housing so that if say £500 is the monthly affordable rent/mortgage on 2x NMW, then that’s what housing costs. In the absence of enough social housing, then I’d support a housing benefit payment to cover the difference, to make 2x NMW still “enough”.

My single parent NMW sister gets UC that’s pretty much equivalent to making up for a missing second person on NMW, after tax. Her social housing rent is £400 and her kids are teens so no childcare. In her case - NMW x2 (equivalent) is enough for daily living, a holiday, some saving. But it’s entirely because her housing cost is reasonable and she has no childcare.