Why isn't work paid better?

[malificent7]

People who work hardshould be able to afford a better life for themselves. So many work in stressful jobs and also have stressors outside of work too like poor housing, expensive food and childcare etc. Please explain to a simpleton why jobs aren't being paid in line with inflation...espwcially public services.

So when workers strike they get demonised and hated by the public

Because the country is on its knees and can’t afford it

If everyone gets more money, prices will rise and you’ll still only be able to afford the same things. Salary increases drive inflation.

People have always worked hard and today they have a better standard of living than 99% of people who have ever lived.

Because the relationship between the value of work and the cost of living has been broken, largely because of rising house prices. It isn't that work doesn't pay enough, it is that necessities of life are too expensive.

Having said that, noone wants to volunteer to have their house value reduce by half, even if your next purchase has also reduced.

Companies will pay the minimum they can get away with.

The NHS and schools count on those who have spent a chunk of time/money on training to stay in underpaid roles as teachers and doctors/nurses.

Work should be paid better and it should be possible to purchase property on one income.

Wages are not too bad - it’s rent/utilities/food and everything else we need to survive that is draining our finances

The country has never been wealthier. The problem is corrupt politicians, bankers and businesses sucking the life out of the economy.

Wage stagflation caused by various waves of increasing supply vs. demand of employees in the job market. First women and then batches of immigrants. Increased competition drives down wages.

So the CEOs can make 500900000x the workers' salaries. And bonuses.

Yup

Tesco made a profit of £2.9bn last year … and today they were bleating about the rise in National Minimum Wage and NI increase. They can easily afford both, it would mean slightly lower dividend for share holders.

It’s not just Tesco, you can repeat that across multiple large employers.

They want to keep all the money in thier pockets, rather than pay a decent wage.

Because businesses are about profit and always have been. They pay you less than the value you provide and less than the cost of living.

The Great Money Trick

If you're really asking about standards of living and why they're not better- this is a huge issue. Economics 101 says the only way to raise living standards is to raise productivity. Which means more economic output per employee.

This isn't necessarily about working harder; the lack of business investment in this country has paralysed our ability to do more with less.

After decades of continued productivity growth in the 20th century, the U.K. has had virtually no productivity growth since the financial crisis. Blame austerity and Brexit uncertainty for lack of investment.

In 2010 average UK wages were 82% of the US. The figure today is 60%. We are standing still while other countries continue to improve productivity.

It's not that work isn't paid well. It's that housing is too frikking expensive.

Wages for the lower / middle paid are suffering from a double whammy.

The huge expansion of university education in the late 90s (to manipulate the unemployment figures) created a lot more people holding degrees. But, the government of the time did nothing to invest or incentivise investment in sectors like technology that would then absorb all these graduates. Instead the increased supply just put downward pressure on the graduates jobs that did exist, and displaced graduates into what had traditional been non graduate jobs, depressing those incomes as well. But, those at the bottom have been lifted (rightly) by increasing the minimum wage and the personal allowance. Result, little extra return for being a graduate. And of course, the other impact of more supply was downward pressure on pay rises for promotions as well, as there were more people chasing each one.

The second big disrupter of salary growth was the enormous transfer of wealth from the public to the private sector under the Blair / Brown government from tax credits. These have now morphed beyond all expectation to put further downward pressure on wages / salaries and distorting the jobs market massively. Some roles apear shockingly paid, and as a single person, or a couple without children, they are. But after you roll in the government subsidy they become much better, or even very well, paid and companies can fill the jobs without spending the market rate. But, a large number of people can’t access the subsidy, and therefore the job.

The impact of both depresses salaries and career progression in much of the public and private sector. Subsequently government have tried, with varying enthusiasm, to address the investment in growth (though, not this one…) to address the first. No one has the appetite to unpick the second.

Consumer society meaning pressure to buy stuff. Subscriptions, bills, cars and transport, products for every problem. Nails and lashes etc etc

It was possible for us 13 years ago, but I understand it isn't any more on one income. It's such a massive worry for future generations.

Our economic system has been turned from capitalism to neoliberalism by a small, opaque, influential group of extremely rich business leaders who extract wealth from everyone else while pretending that "there is no alternative".

The share of income going to labour has fallen in recent years compared to the share going to capital, partly because of an incredibly successful smear campaign against trade unions which began in the 1970s.

Technology has also made it easier for wealth to travel across borders to tax havens, even while individual workers cannot, with this inequality translating into the power of business leaders to threaten to leave town if employees don't accept worsening pay and conditions.

Formerly left wing parties like the labour party stopped fighting for workers' interests and started pretending that they would magically benefit from "trickle down economics" whereby the rich getting richer somehow made everyone else's lives better too.

And all of this was made even worse by the way central banks dealt with the financial crisis - creating new money at a time there was no appetite by businesses to use it for productive investments, which meant the funds simply accrued to the already-rich by pushing up asset prices, especially the price of land, which makes housing unaffordable and productive small businesses less productive because of the amount of money they have to spend on renting a premises.

In other words, they made a return of about 10% on investment. Which is good (double a savings account) but not quite as astronomical as it might first appear.

Because we have too many people in this country sat around fleecing the working taxpayer including business. At the same time we import a million people a year, many who are also low paid and net takers to make up for the lazy scroungers. All in all this puts so much stress on businesses who are paying more tax than ever and suppressing wages through low paid immigration.

It’s beyond a disaster.

Housing is a question of supply and demand and immigration is hugely increasing demand. We could do what Labour propose and build on farm land and nature areas but that would increase our reliance on imported food even more (at higher cost, risk and food miles) and decrease amenity.

Housing is now treated as a financialised asset, so a supply and demand doesn't really capture the price dynamics. It's more about the fact that people that don't need a house to live in can buy them on the basis of achieving a future revenue stream by letting them out (either long or short term), which pushes up prices so that people who actually need housing to live in can't afford it. We don't need to build on farmland - we have enough housing, but we need to decrease prices by preventing homes being used as pensions/investments.

If we have enough housing, why are labour wanting to build hundreds of thousands more? Where is all the empty housing?

You are incredibly naive but I can’t blame you. This is the message being passed around.