epeesarepointythings
flatpackhamster I am old enough to remember the days before Labour reintroduced the NMW. People working for £1 - £2 per hour, knowing that if they objected, they would be booted out to be replaced by some other desperate soul. Is that what you want to go back to? Really?
Oh yes, in the good old days before Labour fucked the economy.
FWIW I do not mind some of my taxes going to subsidise wages for people starting out - as long as it is the NMW and not less.
Good for you. That's your money, you can do what you like with it.
It isn't as if the NMW is a living wage in any case.
Depends where you live - which is another reason why the NMW is such a dumb idea.
I am not a higher rate tax payer, my DH and I are not rich, but if we are willing to support those worse off than we are, why can't others? Your argument seems to be all about the 'haves' going 'me, me, me'.
Only if you can't read.
Call me a socialist, I'll take it as a compliment.
Bless.
To my mind the NMW is the hallmark of a civilised society. The choice as I see it is stark - do we want to engage in a race to the bottom with the sweatshop countries, or do we want to draw a line? Of course that leads to wider questions about what we want the world economy to be - a constant striving for that mythical thing called 'growth' which means in the end that someone at the bottom always pays for it, or a striving for a world in which everyone can live and afford to live? Unfortunately we'll probably get the former.
You also have not addressed my question as to why it is OK for our taxes to subsidise employers - many of whom are making nice profits for shareholders - but it is not OK for our taxes to subsidise young people's wages.
Well what you've done here is not address the issues I raised about the NMW, but basically told me "I am a lovely person because I think this. You are a bad person because you think that."
You haven't addressed:
The permanent underclass you create when you have a minimum wage;
The issue of taking money off people who already have high living costs to give it to those with low living costs;
My issue with your claim that there's a "going rate" for unskilled labour which the government somehow magically knows.
You're incapable of looking at the issue rationally, because all you're interested in is what 'kind of society' you want to live in and applying your rules for 'making things lovely' to the people that live in it.
What you should be doing is looking at the people that live in it and seeing how they live and building the system around them.
But true socialists like you aren't interested in the world as it is, you always want to change it to how you think it should be. And that's why socialism always fails and leaves a trail of corpses in its wake.