New Living Wage Criticised

[whiskeryron]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34090038

I wonder how much per hour he gets.

[Zacs-Master]

Probable commensurate with his rivals in other supermarkets.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34068658

[Maydup]

I think there is an issue with the NLW - it is not affordable for small to medium size businesses and will simply encourage them to employ young ones. Or was that the idea?

[mikey4444]

These people would pay their worker far below the minimum wage, if they could get away with it.

Labour comes in for a lot of stick on AB, but the Minimum Wage is something the Party should be proud of. The difficulty with this new "Living Wage" that Osborne has invented is that it is neither fish nor fowl. He hasn't explained why it only affects people 25 and older.

What about the workers aged 23, or perhaps 22 ? They are not children or "young people" Why can't they have better wages.

I don't agree with ths Sainsburys man at all. What Osborne should have done is to raise the minimum wage, not invent more confusion.

[ummmm]

I don't get that either, Mikey. Many women chose to have children below the age of 25 and they aren't entitled to living wage?

And before anyone harps on about benefits I was a young mother with a job...

[mikey4444]

Ummm...nobody has explained why Osborne made an arbitrary age of 25.

[ummmm]

It needs explaining. Why should someone of 24 get paid less than someone of 26 for doing the same job?

[mikey4444]

I can't help here I'm afraid Umm, as I didn't vote Tory in May.

Perhaps some of our Tory supporters can help out ?

[Noe-schitt]

Lets get back to the 1800s when plebs knew their place and business men were able to reap bountiful rewards for their efforts and make Great Britain Great again

[ummmm]

I don't know what to say, Mikey, our youngsters just can't afford to live.

House prices are so ridiculous they can't afford to move out.

[Sqad]

ummmm/mikey

\\\\.nobody has explained why Osborne made an arbitrary age of 25\\\

An arbitrary rate or level, doesn't need explaining because it is arbitrary, someone has to make a decision and always somebody loses out ( the ones just above the level)

If it was raised, then ummmm would be saying " Why should someone of 28 get paid less than someone of 26 for doing the same job?...and so on and so forth. Nothing to do with Labour v. Tory.

[vetuste_ennemi]

I read Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics a few months ago. Here he is on the minimum wage (briefly) followed by an elegant criticism of the thinking which conflates good intentions with happy outcomes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzT21b-BMQk

[Svejk]

Can't see your link, ve. But I've said before, the living wage is a crock. So is the minimum wage.
Both will be abolished in time. But before that can happen, we have to stop importing the peasantry of the world who compress wages down.
Astonishingly, the last time I dared to criticize it and said no-one could live on it, Mikey claimed that he did. Although since that night, when he refused to speak to me again, I've noticed him agreeing that global corporations are having their wage bills subsidised by the state.
These schemes have been tried, and failed, before. Result, the rich get richer, the poor get poorer.
http://www.victorianweb.org/history/poorlaw/speen.html

[hc4361]

Minimum wage goes up, so does everyones. Cost of living goes up, people on minimum wage can't survive so minimum wage goes up, and everyones. Cost of living goes up......

[vetuste_ennemi]

Sorry You can't see my link, Svejk; I can see it OK. Try it on Youtube directly. I love Sowell for all the reasons you will understand if you watch any of his videos. Since I discovered Sowell (by accident and through the economics book I mentioned) I've read several of his books on the liberal fallacy its destructive consequences.
I've read your link. The Swing Riots (under that name) are new to me.

[mikey4444]

Sqad...just noticed your earlier reply !

Osborne has made a huge error here by introducing another minimum wage.

Instead, he should have raised the existing Minimum Wage but by more than inflation, and put into effect a system where it would continue to rise by an above inflation amount every year, at least until 2020.

By introducing a second minimum wage and then having the cheek to call it a "living wage" has just complicated the issue.

I will repeat what I have already said many times before. Whatever people now think about Mr Blair and Labour, if they had not won the 1997 Election, then it is arguable that we would still not have a minimum wage at all, as the Tories showed no enthusiasm for introducing the necessary legislation from 1979 until 1997. In fact, the policies of the early years of the Thatcher years saw an onslaught on the wages of already poorly paid people, as the various Wages Councils that had been around for many years were abolished.

Nobody, not even the Tories, now consider the Minimum Wage to be a bad thing.

The current minimum wage is now £6.70 an hour. In the 21st century, is it really such a big ask that people should be paid a bit more than that ?

[Svejk]

God Almighty. What can you say.