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.

Remove anyone who has arrived in the last 30 years and the nhs would collapse.
My NHS team of 15 is 2 thirds people from abroad who have arrived here in last 10-15 years. Every time we advertise, thete is no UK applicant with the right skills, so we depend on skilled immigrants.

What we need to do is reduce non skilled immigration.

30 years ago the population of the UK was 57 million. Today we are closer to 70 million....it's not surprising we need more people working in a NHS when the population has increased by nearly 13 million.

My husband owns a cleaning company - any rise in NWM is based on to the consumer.

People scream for a wise in NWM - until their morning cup of coffee is costing them 7 quid.

Marx provides an explanation for this in the communist manifesto. Whilst there are issues with some of his thinking, this part of his analysis seems depressingly accurate at times!

Even if it were easy (and not environmentally destructive), it wouldn't solve the problem, as lots of people more knowledgeable and eloquent than me have argued convincingly:

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/public-purpose/news/2024/oct/reducing-investment-demand-key-solving-uks-housing-affordability-crisis

https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/opinion/will-more-homes-really-solve-the-housing-crisis#:~:text=To%20build%20our%20way%20out,inflated%20the%20private%20rental%20market.

OP, you raise a good point, but I'm afraid what you get paid isn't related to what you actually do, it's more related to whether there's someone behind you who's prepared to do your job for for less, especially at the lower skilled end of the job market.

Strikes and legislation may raise pay in the short term, but ultimately only encourages more automation / AI / off-shoring etc, as it become unviable to invest in the UK (see cars, shipbuilding, mining, steel, manufacturing)

Our population is growing at around 1% -1.5%, and currently the supply of workers is greater than demand. Controversial it may be, but uk, population growth is largely driven by immigration, which proving hard to reduce let alone reverse, so very unlikely to change in our lifetimes

To get paid more, you have to do something that's in demand and less people know how to do. I've spent my entire career moving to the "next big thing" eight times, which has served me well.

Because then the billionaires would have less money.

That report is quite insightful
The tax on property value would be challenging though. My parents bought their home 40 years ago for 50k. Is now worth over 800k, they are pensioners and would struggle to pay an annual tax even if was 1% of property value.

We bought our house 4 years ago for 700k, both of us are public sector workers. It's now worth nearly 1 million, primarily due to both local primaries having been re graded as outstanding, and people moving out of London post covid - at least half of our local friends have been here 5 years or less. We didn't have control over the value going up, and the increased value doesn't mean we have more money each month to pay tax on it. But the tax should definitely apply to rental properties and be paid by the landlord. Although that woyod probably just result in rents going up which isn't great.

Why does it always have to be about billionaires or The CEO of Tesco's?

Raising wages hurts the local cafe owner, the bloke who runs the burger van, the woman who has a coffee hut.

But to be able to buy a house even for £700k you must have a large household income, probably in the top 1 per cent of UK households. If your house is now worth a million the tax would be £10k a year which might be annoying or even feel unfair but would presumably not bankrupt you.

I imagine your parents could downsize or take on a lodger using the tax free rent a room scheme to pay an 8k annual tax.

I get that these things might feel unfair, but at the moment, not even being able to afford a one bed flat feels unfair for lots of averagely earning people, and not having anywhere secure to live probably has a bigger negative impact on someone's life than having to pay an unfair tax does, even if it feels like a burden.

This!!!

An annual property tax based on value could be funded by a charge on the property if the occupiers can't afford to pay it, so the amounts unpaid over the years would just be taken from the eventual value when sold or from the estate upon the death of the final occupier.

I'd prefer capital gains tax, but again, only payable upon eventual sale/death, so that there'd be a "rollover" relief when you move from one house to another of similar or higher value, the charge would only apply when you downsize (proportional to the amount realised and not re-spent), or upon eventual sale/death out of the estate.

Plenty of ways to skin a cat without causing short term damage either to the economy or the owner/occupier.

Exactly this. And that's what people don't understand.

As per the other thread about tax evasion on a "small" scale, I sometimes think people don't realise the sheer scale of tax generated and employment from "small" businesses, sole traders, etc. On the other thread, there was a definite trend of people thinking "small" people should be left alone and maybe not even have to pay tax at all!

Bonkers. They need to examine the numbers to realise that the tax revenue (and tax gap due to evasion) is mostly from the vast majority of "normal" people, due to the sheer number of them compared to a tiny number of huge firms/billionaires etc.

As others have pointed out, it shouldn't be why isn't work paid better.

It should be why isn't the cost of living cheaper.

Housing is key to this. Housing should be low cost and available. It's what we have governments for - in order to make sure everyone is appropriately housed, educated, fed etc.

If the government can't provide these basic things easily to the citizens, what is the point in having it.

The country has never been wealthier.

But not per capita.

they need to tax big businesses properly and close tax avoidance loopholes. The amount of tax that could be raised for public services! Think of all the big businesses that pay next to no tax (Amazon, Apple, Ebay).

Or they could do what Luxembourg did, and tax them less. Think of the amount of tax that could be raised for public services if we attracted a lot more big businesses and their jobs to the UK!

There are two reasons.

Lack of investment. You can't be paid more if your work isn't earning more. So your employer needs to invest in better technology so that you can produce more in the time that you work. It's not about how hard you work, it's about how smart you work.

British businesses have been encouraged to employ more people on low wages, rather than invest in order to employ fewer people on higher wages.

High cost of living. There are lots of rent-seeking gobshites in the British economy who increase the cost of living to extract money for themselves for not doing anything of any use. See, for example, high ground rent for leaseholders, or the scam of always increasing various contracts by x% above inflation, all the money paid out in dividends by the water companies.

Plus, there's not enough housing and so the cost of housing has skyrocketed. This means the cost of living is too high, much higher than it ought to be. The result being pay is too low, living costs are too high, no money left.

So there are three things to be done to fix it. Build more houses. Reduce living costs by increasing competition and changing the law to stop rent-seeking behaviour. Encourage British businesses to invest to increase productivity so that they can pay people more.

The term “hard work” is so subjective. I’m not diminishing any type of work, but what’s considered hard work depends on the context. For example, a physically demanding factory job is undeniably tough on the body. Working in customer service is exhausting in a different way—it’s mentally draining to deal with rude or difficult customers all day. And so on...

One key point that is often overlooked I think, when discussing public service salaries is the funding structure that governs them. Public service roles are funded by taxpayer money, and the primary focus is on delivering essential services like healthcare, education, and public safety, not generating profit. Whether or not we agree with how budgets and salaries for public services are allocated is another matter, but the reality is that this is how the system works.

This is also why public service roles are often lower paid compared to their private sector counterparts. Public sector budgets are finite and must be spread across a broad range of services. Unlike in the private sector, where higher profits can justify salary increases, public service salaries rely on government funding, which is often constrained by competing priorities.

That’a why in privatised healthcare systems like in the US, doctors can earn significantly more because their work contributes directly to generating revenue. In contrast, healthcare workers in public systems like the NHS are bound by a fixed budget, which limits their earning potential. Now, I’m not saying privatisation of NHS is a way forward BUT that’s the reason why salaries in UK are where they are.

100%

People always want to reference the CEO of Amazon, Tesco’s, Starbucks etc. They aren’t the norm.

The NMW is going up in April. That’s fine - it should increase - but I read on here about a NWM of £20 quid an hour. Most small business's couldn’t stomach that.

Thats an increase of £8 per week.

My husband employs about 40 cleaners averaging 37 hour weeks. 8 x 37 = £296 per week pay rise. X that by the 40 cleaners is 11,840 per week. x that by 52 and we have an extra £615,680 pounds a year on wages.

Quite simply the business would fold - and with cleaners, drivers, office staff and management leave about 65 people out of a job.

Because modern business need cheap labour to function, if all modern business paid the proper values for a good living wage, the majority of small businesses would fold, and basically only have the big giants left,

Morning cup of coffee £7! Where do you purchase that? Mine is made at home for a few pence!

It is both. Productivity in Britain has fallen badly behind similar countries like France or Germany. This means the country is relatively a lot poorer compared to those countries than it used to be, and so its people are poorer and paid less too.

Cost of housing is the issue in the UK, as well as multinationals being used to the UK government topping up low wages with UC etc and knowing they can get away with paying less.

But when a couple on reasonable jobs (nurse, teacher etc) cannot afford to buy a house the UK economy is broken.

It's not going up to £20 an hour though is it. Just because someone calls for it, doesn't mean it will happen.