Labour promise to increase minimum wage to £8 by 2020

[Cherrypi]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-29299230

Seems reasonable but 2020 is a long way off. Who knows what food prices will be by then. Greens are saying £10.

Oh HoneyBadger don't get me started on those MP's who use Tax payers money to buy a house then sell it and pocket the profit - how is that even legal?

I suspect the problem with Companys and their shareholders is that they do not exist to be an arm of government, socialist or not.

Companys are run by Directors who are paid to make the decisions on behalf of the shareholders e.g. pension funds, so who is government to set their pay scales, often affected by the remuneration levels offered, and tax rates, within a global market place?

Sure a Minimum Wage is a good thing, but depending on the industry, how many people can do the top jobs with a proven success on their CVs and how many people in this country could sweep the floor? If the UK set some arbitrary ratio between top and bottom pay, a UK company shackled by government either has to accept what it can get at the top due to some ratio, or leave the UK.

Companys/shareholders pay peoples salaries, not the government, they (in theory) get the tax receipts, so whether running a deficit economy or not, do we really want to REDUCE the taxes we receive by driving companies away or reducing salaries at the top.

What we need to do is SORT OUT THE LOWER PAID, by keeping their taxes consistently low and give them an education to compete with European migrants, or languages to have the option of working abroad, so the UK can offer more employee skills to companies looking for more semi and skilled people raising the average salaries through economic and personal growth.

I repeat a point I have made elsewhere, there is no god given right for the creation or retention of private sector jobs, our industrial history proves that, and while many of the jobs that went to the Far East over the past 35 years can start coming back (as their wages/costs go higher), a UK copying a socialist model that failed so abysmally in the 1970’s - when manufacturing fell from around 29% to 23% of our economy - is NOT the answer to bring those jobs here.

The HoneyBadger .... Re housing, thanks to the last governments policies, the Private Sector now rent more properties that the Public Sector, so re 'banning BTL', please get real, as you sound naive at best.

HeeHiles ... re the Daily Mail, the 'stuff' they were warning about, amongst other social matters, is WHY we had a honking great budget deficit of £157 bil in 2010 - so you close your mind, as the parliamentary Labour Party did back then, and Miliband is doing right now.

Re the Tory £50-£80k, was the Westminster Councillor not talking about buying homes in Westminster, re what salary was needed - as what salary do you think are those buying homes in Westminster on???

DoctorTwo …… Re the link of basic propaganda you provided, if you had chosen specific items, I would have (still will) answer each one as best I can, but let me tell you why it is misinformation from start to finish.

Firstly, I see no argument within that if one administration passes to another a £157 annual budget deficit, unless that new administration slashed £157 bil of government spending from day one, the National Debt which is an accumulation of each years spending deficits (or spending surpluses) HAS TO INCREASE.

And as this IMO fair assessment of Labour’s tax/spending link shows, the UK under Labour had massively increased our spending, mostly (but not all) matched by the huge increase in taxes based on an economy of government/bank lending/consumer spending and debt that was to, and did, fall away at the first recession – leaving the spending, without the tax receipts to cover it = a 2010 budget deficit of £157 billion
www.economicshelp.org/blog/5509/economics/government-spending-under-labour/

Secondly, what your link is doing, is taking Osbornes early economic assumptions and figures (as any chancellor worth their salt has to factor into every budget for the year(s) ahead, and not taking huge events into account, entirely not under Osbournes (or new 2010 Labour chancellors) control.

The Coalition inherited an economy doing more business with Ireland, than the 2.4 billion people in Brazil, Russia, India and China – and heavily relied on trade/exports with the EU to keep our economy going. Where does you link show that the fall in the European economies STILL in big trouble, the subsequent UK tax cuts to help businesses/stimulate new jobs, pension increases – which means the DEFICIT IS REDUCED LESS.

If Labour wanted more cuts to the deficit, why have their screamed and shouted at every cut the coalition made, you can’t have it both ways, OR fail to give the electorate FULL details of how they’d cut a £75 bil deficit from 2015 – as they have a history from 1997 alone, in sweeping tax rises they did not tell the voters about until AFTER an election.

Where in here were Labour’s detailed plan/assumptions to fix the economy, reduce the fat State, address the lack of homes, reduce the deficit, and detail the tax rises they planned? In fact they, the government in charge of the UK’s books for 13-years, REFUSED to tell us anything, other than vague non qualified soundbites then, and NOW.
Labour 2010 manifesto At-a-glance.
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/8615297.stm

So Osborne was left to trade/export the UK’s growth/revenues from a non service sector economy, where our manufacturing had been decimated in Labour’s first 7-years, and the share of our economy had fallen from around 22% in 1997, to 12% in 2010.
www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/million-factory-jobs-lost-under-labour-6150418.html

The AAA rating, or any credit agency rating, is not decided overnight, they follow the accumulation of domestic finances, policies and global events over years, so whether we would have lost one out of three credit rating agency AAA’s if Osbornes assumptions were correct, I don’t know – but what I do know, is that the Labour plan in 2010, as going into 2015, to follow the French fat State economic model – has already lower their credit rating TWICE, with no sign of growth/employment under 10%.

This is Miliband’s version of an anti business, social justice, high tax UK economy – and his ‘vision’ clearly doesn’t stretch pass the English Channel as the lessons to be learned are over there.

“How Francois Hollande changed but Ed Miliband stayed the same.”
www.trendingcentral.com/francois-hollande-changed-ed-miliband-stayed/

Jan 2014; “French unemployment at record high”
www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25922231

Oct 2013; “French Parliament passes law punishing plant closures”
www.cnbc.com/id/101079582

Sept 2013; “Francois Hollande admits French Taxes are too much”
www.cnbc.com/id/101046068

“France: the new sick man of Europe”
www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/14/france-sick-man-europe-economy

buy to let mortgages is what i said.

there were landlords before buy to let mortgages btw and there still would be after. also average people could afford to buy a home as the prices were not inflated by a) the buy to let market holding prices artificially high by being able to borrow on the basis of future rental income rather than actual earnings and using it as a home and b) artificially low interests rates bailing out those reckless borrowers at the expense of everyone else's savings and provision for the future (with the knock on effect of keeping house prices high and creating high inflation).

please do try to respond without being personally insulting.

France is a basket case due to attempting to mix neoliberal policies with faux socialism. If an election were to be held next week Marine LePen would become president. If that happens she has said her first act would be to get out of the Euro and default on the 'debt'. The Euro would be finished and the IMF and World Bank outraged. Tough, it's the right thing to do.

New Labour panicked in 2008 and listened to the market. They were told 'the markets won't like it' if they allowed the banks to fail. Instead they bailed them out and expected them to change the way they do business. The banks ramped up the fraud, knowing they'd face no real consequence. How to stop the banks fixing markets? Easy: stick a few bosses in jail. Fining the banks doesn't work, otherwise why are they still doing it?

Easy: stick a few bosses in jail. Fining the banks doesn't work, otherwise why are they still doing it?

This what happened in Iceland - wish we had done the same here!

Itsmebut where do you find the time?!

The problem with minimum wage is the following example
You start working at minimum wage and over several years get pay in creases say 50p more. Then minimum war gets increased but your wage doesn't increase so effectively new starters get the same as you and your earned pay rises.

DoctorTwo .... Post Northern Rock that should have been saved, far from new Labour "panicking", they left it too late if Darling said 'the cashpoints were going to run out the next day' - it was a global banking crisis, mainly due to western banks lending too much, I don't see how letting them go b**bs up would have helped anyone then, or the recovery, in fact quiet the opposite.

Maybe all banks should be run like the Coop?

BTW Re France .... nice fancy words, and if the National Party ran by Le Pen is causing Frances economic policy decline, can pre 2010 Labour blame Farage and Ukip?

France is anti free market, has a fat State sucking up around 57% of output, frightened off the wealthy and business investment, and is afraid to take tough decisions on employment e.g. if you hire someone, you can't let them go for nearly any reason. So little business confidence, no risks on employing.

there's some bollocks there because actually that public sector in france provides tons and tons of jobs - it's not a static thing that takes that much of the output but a massive employer running on a not for profit basis.

'the public sector' includes schools, hospitals, street cleaning, investment in infrastructure (and there's is a damn sight better than ours), etc etc etc. that's a lot of jobs and services not some off shore bank account like a corporation taking 10billion a year out of the system yearly.

theirs! sorry.

TheHoneyBadger … I don’t believe that home owners can let out a property on a bolt standard mortgage, it has to be BTL or something like that.

On page 6 of this thread I show on one of my posts how private renting has grown, via a Telegraph link – hence my comment, economics are full of ‘what ifs’, but always has to start as is.
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/in_the_news/2171696-The-scandal-of-the-state-of-private-renting-in-the-UK?pg=6

By the time it is 2020, the national minimum wage would probably have already made it to £8 an hour by then, considering it's raising to £6.50 next month.

Everything else will have gone up in price, too.

The benefits threshold will change, too, so actually, those who work and claim some benefits will be no better or worse off. The only difference is, more of their money will be coming from their employers rather than the government, but they will still have more or less the same money coming in to them so we will all still be in a big pickle, money-wise!

TheHoneyBadger …. Re the ‘tons of jobs in France bollocks’.lol

Of course there were always French public sector jobs and bureaucrats, rumour has it, they invented the word - any fool of a government can ‘manufacture’ Public Sector jobs, you may even spot some of these mentioned by your local authority near you – but they are 100% tax payer funded.
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1358144/Labours-3m-town-hall-jobs-bonanza-employed-deliver-frontline-services.html

And these are the Private Sector people paying for them and an unfunded Public Sector Final Salary etc Pension Liability around £1 trillion, on top of the National Debt of 1.4 trillion.
www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/pensions/10698432/Final-salary-pensions-10-times-more-common-in-public-sector.html

No one minds paying for front line worker final salary pensions, but the ‘non jobs’, please

Anyhoo ... enough fun, lets get back to the minimum wage.

it was a global banking crisis, mainly due to western banks lending too much

True, there was, and still is, a global banking crisis. It wasn't caused by 'lending too much.' It was caused by banks lending too much at high interest rates then fraudulently packaging those loans along with others and calling them Triple A rated. At the end Lehman Bros and Goldman Sachs were selling these 'investments' whilst simultaneously betting against them after they noticed a small hedge fund not doing the former but doing billions of the latter.

BTW Re France .... nice fancy words, and if the National Party ran by Le Pen is causing Frances economic policy decline, can pre 2010 Labour blame Farage and Ukip?

The situation in France is nothing to do with Ms LePen.

Anyhoo ... enough fun, lets get back to the minimum wage.

Major corporations can easily pay a living wage. They're sitting on billions of pounds busily investing in nothing other than creative ways to avoid tax, pay as much in bonuses and dividends and fleece their workforce/the government.

Look at HSBC, despite paying about $2Bn in fines they made a profit through various shady deals. LIBOR fixing, FOREX fixing, the precious metal fix etc etc.

The Torygraph is not optimistic about the future of neoliberalism. And he's right, soon the middle class will be slashed to nothing and will join the working class to chuck the over-privileged, including our beloved politicians overboard. Can't wait.

Doctortwo …… FYI while I tried to overly simplify the banking crisis, your view on the banking crisis is somewhat convoluted, as alluding to the main cause, the threat of default on $1.3 tril of repackaged and securitized U.S. mortgages (Sub Prime debt, a process safe since the 1930’s) triggering the closure of the hugely liquid international Interbank markets – but also little events that had nothing to do with the cause of the crisis e.g. Goldman Sachs, which had little Sub Prime exposure.

Also there is a clear functional/risk distinction between Investment Banks and High Street Banks, although many banks did both, but not the Northern Rock high street bank who unfortunately for them ran out of liquidity before the BoE began it’s rescue, or indeed the Co-op much later.

In the UK it was the massive growth of UK balance sheets from the late 1990’s e.g. mortgage lending £21 bil in 1997 to £115 bil in late 2007, and not being able to refinance that lending via the closed interbank market, as asset prices were crashing, was the main cause of the banks entering a liquidity crisis – and needing government/Bank of England liquidity help.

HSBC, is a Hong Kong based huge diverse cross all continent Investment Bank, involved in making markets and underwriting in most of the capital markets i.e. stocks, bonds, Forex, commodities and fund management – as well as High Street banking - they are two very separate businesses. A lot of fix shit happened, especially through the capital market crisis, sometimes because there wasn’t a market defined by buy/sell activity e.g. LIBOR.

Re France correct, le Pen was a smokescreen mentioned by you and I pooh poohed its reference as a factor to date, it’s the French county economic model that is screwed – that Labour thought was the answer in 2010, and Mr Miliband still wants to follow,

Re the many Corporations who can pay the Living wage, what percentage of the total UK workforce do they employ?????

Re your last comment, yes there is discontent across the world after the worst recession in 100-years, similar to the 1930’s Italy and Germany – but one article questioning neoliberalism versus the UK IMF bailout in 1976 economy, prior; what economy has proved to be the more sustainable?
www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2763047/From-Glasgow-Barcelona-historian-DOMINIC-SANDBROOK-fears-Europe-returning-crude-nationalism-caused-misery.html

P.S Re that link re Gideonomics you posted on the other page and I answered, are you now clear about the total misinformation it is spewing e.g. why the National Debt goes up annually, when running a deficit spending economy, that most complain on every cut?

Here is one corporation not doing too good.
“Monarch staff agree to pay cuts up to 30%”
www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-29353907

Re the Minimum Wage, I fully agree with the social concept, and that it should be set as high as affordably possible, but I found this in depth article (once click thru the advert) interesting, from a U.S. with a minimum wage around $7.50, mentioning both sides or the Minimum Wage debate, but heavily on the too high, jobs are lost. Not for everyone.
www.forbes.com/sites/jamesdorn/2013/05/07/the-minimum-wage-delusion-and-the-death-of-common-sense/

So in the absence this week of any clear beat the ‘cost of living’ pledges that I heard, from those who have criticised the coalition for NOT doing so for over 4-years (during a recession crisis not of the coalitions making) – what is the GOVERNMENT answer to low pay?

Is the The Low Pay Commission currently being fair to the workers, maybe low-balling the rate now being overly cautious to protect small-medium businesses, knowing the MW will rise faster in the years ahead with the economy as they indicate - or can we not trust them?

Personally I cannot see an alternative to a quango weighing up both sides and productivity levels (an indicator of job sustainability).

HSBC, is a Hong Kong based huge diverse cross all continent Investment Bank, involved in making markets and underwriting in most of the capital markets i.e. stocks, bonds, Forex, commodities and fund management – as well as High Street banking - they are two very separate businesses. A lot of fix shit happened, especially through the capital market crisis, sometimes because there wasn’t a market defined by buy/sell activity e.g. LIBOR.

I'm not going to spend ages finding links to support the following but it's all out there. HSBC boss calls for cash rewards for whistleblowers. Whistleblower calls him an 'extraordinary hypocrite'.

In just the last couple of years they've been caught fixing LIBOR, FOREX, gold and other metals, making illegal charges to accounts and money laundering for Mexican drug cartels and Hamas. Stick him in chokey, the bankers will stop their fraud.

It's a shame about Monarch, but it's inevitable under the current model. More and more people are paying for their rent, food and other daily essentials with credit cards or payday loans. For those people, and for other low paid people who either don't want or can't get credit air travel is a luxury we can do without. Austerity doesn't work, it just means those who are already poor, who already spend the highest percentage of their earnings, have less to spend so the economy contracts.

GDP went up slightly in the last quarter purely down to house prices going up. Pretty soon that Gidiot induced bubble will burst and us taxpayers will be liable for all the mortgages taken out under his ridiculous inflationary scheme.

this is what i mean about it eating itself - the more they take out at the top and the less they pay their workers the less, and less and less money there is in the system to pay for the bloody products and services they make their profits from selling.

it is an excess of greed draining money out at the top like vampires without any thought for the sustainability of the life of an economy and society.

DoctorTwo …. so, after reading my answers why that anti Osborne economic (Gideonomics) is complete misinformation, I now assume we are on the same page re Labour’s budget deficit would have increased the National Debt whoever was elected in 2010.

Re HSBC, I really not sure what you point is here. Let me just mention that Investment Banking, that through taxes help pay for so many public services since the 1970’s, has been responsible for much of the global economic growth/jobs since then.

Through the global capital markets, Governments fund deficits to keep services going, companies borrow then invest/create jobs and high street banks borrow to lend to us. Without those investment banks and capital markets, there would have been no ‘emerging markets’, so that industry has undisputedly help ed lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.

Re HSBC (and other s) unforgivable financial wrongdoing, hasn’t this coalition introduced jail sentencing for such people? Furthermore what is key, is if Regulatory Authorities keep a better eye on those they are meant to. Now I have no idea of the dates of those HSBC dodgy dealings, but let us remember that the Labour government from 1997, removed the Bank of England from supervising banks directly, forming a regulatory tripartite and a new organisation called the Financial Services Authority (FSA).

And that FSA that reported to Brown, was told to RELAX banking supervision, I’ll say no more than qualify that accusation and offer hope that the Bank of England BACK IN CHARGE, will do a better job in the UK than an FSA formed to be manipulated.

“Gordon Brown: I made ‘big mistake’ on banks before financial crisis”
metro.co.uk/2011/04/11/gordon-brown-i-made-big-mistake-on-banks-before-financial-crisis-650630/

“Gordon Brown has admitted making a ‘big mistake’ in regulating Britain’s banks before the country was plunged into recession by the 2008 financial crisis, as current chancellor George Osborne prepares to hand power back to the Bank of England.”

“Labour's lax regulation of the City contributed to RBS collapse – watchdog”
www.theguardian.com/business/2011/dec/12/labour-regulations-city-rbs-collapse
“FSA says Labour leadership had encouraged it to take a 'light touch' on banks and must take share of blame for financial crisis”

Re Monarch and ‘austerity’, I see no link between any company trying to compete in a market against both domestic and international competition, and any country trying to reduce a MASSIVE overspend in £££terms, far higher than virtually every other country, much of it due to fat inefficient government and fat inefficient spending, built up over 13-years and somehow thought to be sustainable economic growth.

Austerity, real austerity, would have been if the Coalition had inherited a lean, efficient and balanced economy in 2010, with the £30 bil annual budget deficits Mr Brown decided to run during the early boom years, and CUT that spending during the worst recession in 100-years. If as that economic/Labour spending link I provided mentioned, the above was the case, similar to other countrys, the UK could have cut taxes more than the Coalition has to help against flat wage growth, rather than Labour’s master plan, TO PUT TAXES UP to sustain their fat inefficient state.
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/7539343/Labours-planned-National-Insurance-increase-will-cost-jobs-Alistair-Darling-admits.html

Labour and others, either thinking companies work for the State, or are still 19th century enemies of the workers needing ‘social justice’, just cannot comprehend that most companies often hire people DESPITE of government , not DUE to government

And whether the top 100 large, or tens of thousands small to medium sized businesses including shops – there are times they need HELP to stay in business, never mind attract new ones, NOT new taxes e.g. the NI link above, which was a tax on jobs.
www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/10472446/EY-Cutting-UK-tax-draws-in-more-multinationals.html

And what happens when government spends more time TAXING businesses and spending ££billions growing a fat inefficient State, rather than helping them when they need it; they incompetently lose 1 million manufacturing jobs in their first 7-years, during a global consumption boom BEFORE the 2007 crash.
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-389284/The-80-tax-rises-Labour.html
www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/million-factory-jobs-lost-under-labour-6150418.html

And still a Labour Party has the electoral audacity to say that THEY WILL CREATE APPRENTICESHIPS when they get back in, when they can’t keep the jobs we have, never mind create new ones.

that is unreadable.

TheHoneyBadger …. I repeat an earlier point, domestic or international companies, are OWNED by the shareholders, small and large e.g. pension funds, the remuneration levels at the top are set by Directors, often Non Exec internally or sources externally, and are signed off/opposed, usually at annual shareholder meetings.

If saying all Company Directors are as talented and business educated as each other, is like saying all footballers kick a ball the same, and should be paid the same. Saying a reduction of the several directors ‘at the top’ salary and potential bonuses, will somehow ££equate to the sustainable paying hundreds or usually thousands of more employees a higher salary, is mathematically doubtful

So businesses do not exist as a social experiment on fairness, where a government can set a top salary rate and a company HOPES they can hire top people to grow the company for that cap - and increase the salary of all the low paid ABOVE the market rate, many of whom didn’t give a shit at school thereby taking little responsibility for their OWN life/career choices.

You see in the real world, companies, needing to price their goods/services are globally competing with the likes of China, still competitive, who 20-years ago had salaries a fraction of ours, and don’t have most of these extra costs of business to worry about ON TOP of a MINIMUM WAGE - that might be set by government socially, without any commercial considerations.

Higher Corporation Tax.

Higher Income Tax compensation (salary) for senior staff, using international remuneration scales.

Higher regulatory/red tape costs.

Higher National Insurance costs.

Higher Fuel Escalator costs,

Higher costs of government intervention e.g. Energy Company ‘price freezes’.

Higher Interest Rate/Borrowing Costs as they ‘normalize’ to historic averages, with or without a Labour Government policy threat rate premium.

If governments either don’t care about business conditions, or continually INCREASE the COST of a company existing, doing business reducing Research and Development and other new investment budgets - just like in the 1970’s and the manufacturing jobs lost in the years BEFORE the late 2007 crash – those companies/jobs will no longer exist.

In Conclusion; if lean, efficient, governments kept THEIR costs/taxes down, there will be more businesses and jobs, and the Low Pay Commission could judge the Minimum Wage should be a lot higher for workers, also benefiting from keeping more of their own money, via lower taxes.

If the alternative country model is where the ‘greed’ is fat government and their apparatchiks continually raising business and personal taxes, as in France, still with near record unemployment and no growth, where is our future in that.