If the jobs only exist because the government is subsidising them, then should they exist at all? And should people whinge about socialism when this is the same thing in a silly hat?
McDonalds workers due to strike for £10 an hour...
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Basically, if you raise the minimum wage to £10 an hour, then everyone not on minimum wage will demand a raise too, because that makes sense as they are still doing higher skilled work but not getting as much additional pay for it. so that trickles up and everyone gets more. That money has to come from somewhere and so prices of goods and services increase, which means most people are no better/worse off than they were before however due to the percentages involved it hurts the unskilled workers on minimum wage as the cost of living has gone up by more than their wages.
Now by comparison, if instead of raising the minimum wage by a large amount you simply increase the tax credits that lower paid workers get, it just results in lower paid workers having more money, no negative knock on effects.
Method 1 is what the Tories have been pushing since 2010, method 2 is what we had before (and it was better).
Its much the same as the gov covering or partially covering apprentice costs with business, or the new back to work scheme which does much the same. The MW will increase over time to match the LW, they just know its not something they can click their fingers and not to expect the business backlash to put a load of people out of work. Is this socialism - nah
And that - from @ubersonic - is a good explanation of why the minimum wage makes bad economic sense. Negative income tax makes much more sense. Tax credits are not a negative income tax, they are a farce.
Does earning £50k+ stop you being a moron then?
Not if some of the people I've worked with in the past are anything to go by...
Yes because subsidising peoples wages is cheaper than paying their dole. In addition it means those employees and their company will pay more tax which is good for the government, and supply more products/services which is good for the economy. It also allows companies to be more competitive.
To give some perspective, in China there are many nationalised companies that exist just to provide jobs, they don't need to make a profit just break even. Because of this their state owned air conditioning company managed to surpass the big US and Japanese manufacturers to become the worlds #1 producer less than 30 years after it first came into existence (quite a feat).
It would be worth investigating how much more tax these companies are supposedly paying compared to how much they're saving by not paying enough such that the government has to pay benefits to their workers.
And it's not an alternative to paying the dole, it is the dole by another name.
Well no because it costs a lot less and the benefits to the economy and workers are much higher.
Tax credits costs a fortune to administer, so maybe it does cost less than the dole per se but it still needs to be abolished and replaced with something more sensible.
We have plenty of people on here who argue against the 'spill over' effect - saying, if your job is worth x per hour, why should you get paid more just because someone below you has had a pay rise
You would have to show that the total rise in their expenses outweighed the pay rise
The very real issue of the benefit trap is a negative effect to higher benefit payments
Anyone can do any job once trained how to do it.
It's like you say you're working hard or had a difficult days work, if it's a job that you know how to do then how can it be hard or difficult.
Caporegime
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it will be in the future.
everyone will have a digital tax account (government gateway) where everything is linked to your NI number. it should be 100% automated too with little intervention needed for the majority of the public. only in special cases. main issue is the public sector isn't getting the funding needed for it to be done quickly, efficiently and properly. No doubt it will be too little too late and fail. Rather than spending billions on trident, etc that could have went to a much more useful purpose in improving UK infrastructure.
people say education is bad in foreign countries but you should see how stupid some of the people are that use and clog up the tax credits system which is why it costs so much to administer.
Tax credits claims are ridiculously complicated. I know, because I've claimed them. I'm a chartered tax adviser and I thought it was hard work. And they're implicitly going to be used more by people at the lower end of the educational spectrum, so why they are so complex is beyond me. I don't think it's fair to blame "stupid" claimants, the system itself is what is stupid. It's an absolute disgrace.
What 'snobbery' are you talking about then, most of the thread is people either arguing for or against paying min wage?
not everyone does need £10 an hour though, some people have partners in work, some people have pensions and are semi retired, some people are students/still live at home with parents/live in a flat share
if people find themselves in a situation where they want to rent an entire flat to themselves and/or start a family then perhaps they ought to be aiming a bit higher than a min wage entry level role... sadly some people aren't particularly responsible (others end up being very unlucky) and these things don't get planned out, they'll have kids etc.. in situations where others would wait/plan for such events and the government will end up topping up incomes with benefits. However just because some people require in work benefits doesn't necessarily mean the min wage is unsuitable for everyone.
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Speaking from experience the amount of people we had on the books that were tax credit eligible was minimal at best. Most of the workers were young (less than 25), didn't have families, or live on their own. We had 3 or 4 single parents at the most.
Those that did have families were mainly managers (NMW+£1.50-£2 or salaried) so right on the edge of tax credits if they had no other income in the family or the worker had a partner in a much better job and this was the 'beer' money job.
The government is not topping up significant amounts of McJob wages.
The biggest issue is cost of housing not goods and services.
Those that did have families were mainly managers (NMW+£1.50-£2 or salaried) so right on the edge of tax credits if they had no other income in the family or the worker had a partner in a much better job and this was the 'beer' money job.
The government is not topping up significant amounts of McJob wages.
The biggest issue is cost of housing not goods and services.
The crisis is made up by the NHS, if you look at americans, they would all be classed as obese by the NHS
The NHS is even claiming its impossible to be healthy and overweight at same time and they have an obsession with weight now.
I think they are only putting emphasis on it as an excuse to not treat people, my GP is obsessed by my weight and ignores all my other problems because of it.
Back on topic tho, to all those looking down at mcd workers saying they should be happy, why dont you do the job all year, and I expect you wouldnt enjoy it, repetitive jobs are harder than skilled in my view, as you have to drag yourself through the boredom.
I agree on housing.
The only way to solve the housing costs is to go on a mass council house building program which no government is willing to do, it would upset all the baby boomers who own 2+ homes as it would trash the buy to let market and trigger a house price crash. In reality a crash is needed in house prices to correct the situation but too many people invested in the property market wont let it happen.
If housing was much more affordable "and" more secure, than I expect people could get by on £7 an hour much easier.
Engage the cynical part of your brain for a bit and it becomes clear
Well, yeah, there's always that.