Does a minimum wage hurt unskilled & unexperienced workers?

[Guy Fawkes]

I agree Labour do create more public sector jobs. But only because they need to employ more staff as the Tories usually run public services into the ground and strip them down. Well this, or flog them cheaply.

If you think wasting millions upon millions in unnecessary staff and equipment is a good use of public money and shouldn't be used wisely then lets put Labour into power again.

Labour signed us up to a lot of really poor value PFI deals and we, the taxpayer, will end up spending multiples of what it should have cost us to egt the same thing as a result, however it allowed then top present an image to the public by allowing new headline grabbing opportunities but are a waste of tax payers money.

Why would it be beneficial to build a hospital through thi method if the tax payer ends up spending 6 times (or more) paying for it over 25 years (limiting investment opportunities and the ability to spend it elsewhere where it may be needed)

Why is having a monopoly and a supply that carries unnecessary costs which is passed onto our services a good thing when competition forces these suppliers to keep their costs down and therefore potentially deliver the same service to the public sector at a lower cost and the company supplying it still gets their profit (eg. £10 state to state cost vs £8 cost, £1 profit and £1 saving to the state) - Competition is seen as an enemy when often its not and actually could be far more beneficial to the tax payer than the current system. Better use oif whats there could result in better services without the need to throw money which may also be used wastefully.

The state system has a budget system which, if not spent, is lost and affects the following years budget meaning they are liekly to get less if they don't use it. Why punish them for working effficiently and for our benefit. There is normally a mad period towards the end of the financiall year where they spend on all sorts of things that arn't really that needed just to spend it all only for them to then get an increase from the council / Government (which may generate positive headlines and get voters onto their side but that extra money may not actually be needed, go on too long and the amount left over grows and this is the fat that can be cut without damaging services) - there should be a way that they can carry money over without being penalised but incentivises them to save and deliver true value for money and still keep our services at their best (ie money will be available if they can show the need for it to be spent and not the usual buying of equipment that goes into storage and remains unused until sold at a loss later when having a clear out or just throwning away perfectly good equipment to replace it with new equipment that wasn't needed just because they had the money to use)

 

[Guy Fawkes]

heres a question, are benefits propping up low-wage business, or are businesses propping up benefits with low-paid jobs?


thinking about the apparent conflict between minimum wage and benefits, i wonder how many would support a natural conclusion: state funded minimum income, provided to all set at the living wage rate. people would be able to chose whether they go to work or not, and apparently those chosing not would be able to live pleasantly. wages would be pushed up for those that wish to work as the labour market would drastically shrink. productivity in theory would go up as only those keen and interested in work would do so, so business and industry would benefit. interesting proposition i read recently which is essentially a take on Green's minimum income. would it work or would everyone still want more and therefore just create a massive raise in state liability?

There are those who don't want to work in this country because they have a comfortable life paid for by the state in benefits and there are plenty of job vacanies around the country but people don't want to move to find them.

Foriegn labour, currently being stigmatised by the press and in politics help to fill this labour shortfall whilst paying into state coffers because they are prepared to work and to travel to where there are jobs. - When Labour were in power, if you earnt under £15k, you were better off on benefits so this meant that many full time shop workers or cleaners were, for example, better off unemployed and people lost their benefits too quickly to be able to jump back into work (lose benefits straight away but don't get paid for a month, how do you eat, pay rent, travel to work? - better off staying unemployed)

We have an aging population, so how do we expect to keep these people as they reach retirement age if we don't replace them with workers who pay taxes which are then used to pay out benefits to our eldery?

 

[Hampster Gull]

Can you provide some specifics to back up your sweeping generalisation? I should imagine that income and expenditure under Tory and Labour governments would be comparable (even though the national debt has climbed to dizzying heights under the current administration), it's just that they have differing priorities; Labour administrations seek to redistribute wealth more evenly across the population, the Tories don't.

The current dizzying height of debt is due to the financial crisis when Labour were in government. It takes a while to wash through the worst economic crisis in 100 years. We have a way to go still to sort this out. You cannot compare this to a period when Labour went on running up deficits when we were benefiting from importing low inflation from the china effect etc. although i understand from some posters on here that it wasnt a Labour government btw 1997 and 2010. Apparently it was some other party so i am not sure what comparisons work anymore. Anyway, Labour have admitted that they expect to run up further debts of £30bn by 2020.

 

[Hampster Gull]

If you think wasting millions upon millions in unnecessary staff and equipment is a good use of public money and shouldn't be used wisely then lets put Labour into power again.

Labour signed us up to a lot of really poor value PFI deals and we, the taxpayer, will end up spending multiples of what it should have cost us to egt the same thing as a result, however it allowed then top present an image to the public by allowing new headline grabbing opportunities but are a waste of tax payers money.

Why would it be beneficial to build a hospital through thi method if the tax payer ends up spending 6 times (or more) paying for it over 25 years (limiting investment opportunities and the ability to spend it elsewhere where it may be needed)

Why is having a monopoly and a supply that carries unnecessary costs which is passed onto our services a good thing when competition forces these suppliers to keep their costs down and therefore potentially deliver the same service to the public sector at a lower cost and the company supplying it still gets their profit (eg. £10 state to state cost vs £8 cost, £1 profit and £1 saving to the state) - Competition is seen as an enemy when often its not and actually could be far more beneficial to the tax payer than the current system. Better use oif whats there could result in better services without the need to throw money which may also be used wastefully.

The state system has a budget system which, if not spent, is lost and affects the following years budget meaning they are liekly to get less if they don't use it. Why punish them for working effficiently and for our benefit. There is normally a mad period towards the end of the financiall year where they spend on all sorts of things that arn't really that needed just to spend it all only for them to then get an increase from the council / Government (which may generate positive headlines and get voters onto their side but that extra money may not actually be needed, go on too long and the amount left over grows and this is the fat that can be cut without damaging services) - there should be a way that they can carry money over without being penalised but incentivises them to save and deliver true value for money and still keep our services at their best (ie money will be available if they can show the need for it to be spent and not the usual buying of equipment that goes into storage and remains unused until sold at a loss later when having a clear out or just throwning away perfectly good equipment to replace it with new equipment that wasn't needed just because they had the money to use)

An impressive post. I have personal experiences of some of the points you make

 

[RexCathedra]

The current dizzying height of debt...

The US and the UK have virtually identical levels of central government debt -- at levels twice that of that paragon of laissez-faire, Sweden.

Which is how we know how just important government debt is.
Clearly, from this one factor, we can successfully infer how a country's doing.

 

[W.C.]

inexperienced

 

[Diego Napier]

The current dizzying height of debt is due to the financial crisis when Labour were in government. It takes a while to wash through the worst economic crisis in 100 years. We have a way to go still to sort this out. You cannot compare this to a period when Labour went on running up deficits when we were benefiting from importing low inflation from the china effect etc. although i understand from some posters on here that it wasnt a Labour government btw 1997 and 2010. Apparently it was some other party so i am not sure what comparisons work anymore. Anyway, Labour have admitted that they expect to run up further debts of £30bn by 2020.

Firstly, the financial crisis hit every western government of all shades of political colour through unregulated global banking activities. The UK government under Labour were complicit in this through their deregulatory moves but so too were the Tories who supported them. Secondly, the Tories came to power promising to reduce the deficit but instead, either through ineptitude or duplicity, have increased it hugely.

 

[Kevlar]

we can test theory against reality
there has never been any evidence that introducing minimum wages has increased unemployment
In mainstream economic theory without minimum wages or welfare
unemployment can only be voluntary as the (divine?) force of the market
supply and demand would clear the labour market
The reality of course was trade cycles and periodic mass unemployment
as if the Wall Street crash of 1929 triggered millions of workers around the
world into a mass epidemic of idleness.The facts are unsurprisingly that
when unemployment is high less people quit their job.
Mainstream economics often labelled neo liberal economics is a BLIND FAITH
illogical and completely at odds with reality
Of course it is a very convenient faith for the very wealthy who seek to increase
their wealth and power.
It's the politics stupid.

 

[Kevlar]

by the way the very obvious reason why low wages cannot solve unemployment
is that wages are one firms cost but other firms income
As Mr Ford the old car magnate put it he wanted to pay his workers enough
so they could buy his cars

 

[Kevlar]

The US and the UK have virtually identical levels of central government debt -- at levels twice that of that paragon of laissez-faire, Sweden.

Which is how we know how just important government debt is.
Clearly, from this one factor, we can successfully infer how a country's doing.

so during the early part of the 19 th century when Britain was winning the napoleonic wars
was the largest trading nation in the world and had its highest ever debt to GDP ratio
what do you infer about britains success at the time ?

 

[BLOCK F]

So all the massive High st stores and Supermarkets shouldn't be in business?

Pubs and many restaurants, as well !

 

[Diego Napier]

I don't believe that, they seek to put into place policies that suit the sort of people that vote for them and there are a lot fo people who struggle to get by and don't benefit from their policies.

What?! Every political party seeks to put into place policies that suit the people that vote for them! Labour policies obviously appeal to people on the lower level of the social scale because those are the ones they are trying the most to help, just as the Tories appeal more to those at the higher end. However, that doesn't preclude either of them them from appealing to people across the spectrum. There are some people who struggle to get by and don't benefit from their policies (because no systems that are put into place will be 100% successful) although there are far fewer who suffer than under a Tory administration.

They tend to create employment in public sectors (whether the roles are actually needed or not and just make good headlines - extra cash for the Police or the NHS or whatever sounds great, but if most of it went on unnessessary bureaucracy and pencil pushers just to give them employment or it gets spent on unnessessary equipment to use up their annual budgets at the end of the financial year rather than where the public tends to think the extra will go, ie. front line services so extra nurses, drs, police officers on the street, etc)

These roles have to be funded by the tax payer, and paid for through tax revenues, the more people in the public sector, the higher it costs the country and the less people there are whose earnings originate from outside the state and therefore its surely better to have businesses that make themselves money to pay for employees and then also pay taxes to the state which can fund the public services we all want.

These two paragraphs are full of rambling sound-bites and political jingoism. By what criteria do you judge whether a role is needed or not? You've picked on the Police and NHS and then launched into some kind of stream of consciousness spiel that postulates nothing and concludes up it's own etc. Why not think instead about the current lack of emphasis placed on Social Services or care for the elderly or support for mental health? People in those professions are thin on the ground, poorly paid and supported and yet bear the brunt of public indignation and outrage when something goes wrong.

I'm struggling with your second paragraph, you state the obvious but conclude with a question that poses another. What is the public service that we all want?

How do you get private business to thrive? - it's certainly not to tax it to death or complain that any tax cuts the Tories give are just tax breaks to the rich.

A strong private economy should help you have a strong public sector by helping to fund it, but overspend on the public sector whilst strangling the private sector just causes major financial issues and can crash an economy, especially whent he Government coffers run dry (like the struggling European economies that needed bail outs, and even the US who had issues funding their public services and Congress nearly didn't pass the bill that let them pass a spending cap and if they hadn't, then public services would have been shut down to save that money (3 day weeks, etc))

"Tax it to death" Really? Do you really think that's what Labour want to do? Do you really believe that's what they did in previous administrations? You do live in a binary world don't you?

Your final paragraph is tangled with trite truisms, party political posturing, hints of haphazard thoughts and snatches of skewed foreign news reporting. I don't know what are you trying to say.

 

[BLOCK F]

I agree Labour do create more public sector jobs. But only because they need to employ more staff as the Tories usually run public services into the ground and strip them down. Well this, or flog them cheaply.

I really miss the 5 A Day Fruit and Veg Outreach Workers,the Real Nappy Outreach Workers and all the other 'essential jobs' that used to be advertised in The Guardian.How will we all manage, I wonder.
Do ads like this still appear in that newspaper? I have no idea; perhaps a reader can let me know.

 

[Hampster Gull]

The US and the UK have virtually identical levels of central government debt -- at levels twice that of that paragon of laissez-faire, Sweden.

Which is how we know how just important government debt is.
Clearly, from this one factor, we can successfully infer how a country's doing.

The implication is that the UK and US are laissez-faire!! Btw I have no problem with debt, it is often a good thing. Continuously living beyond your means is not, is continuously growinght the debt is not. Unless you are fine either to devalue the debt and make the lender suffer or pass on to the next generation.

 

[Hampster Gull]

Firstly, the financial crisis hit every western government of all shades of political colour through unregulated global banking activities. The UK government under Labour were complicit in this through their deregulatory moves but so too were the Tories who supported them. Secondly, the Tories came to power promising to reduce the deficit but instead, either through ineptitude or duplicity, have increased it hugely.

Land NY and London are the two leading financial centres, which is why regulation in the uk and is really matters. Everyone grts impacted from these two power houses.

yes, the deficit is taking longer to sort as this was the worst economic crisis in 100 years but it will be sorted if we don't go on a spending spree.

 

[HastingsSeagull]

It's for many only a couple of hours on a Sunday and mostly college students........ but if this happened the 14 people I employ would have to be cut to about 8 and instead of only 4 being highly qualified and the rest 'eager young people' I would juggle things and have 6 older people with a grand plus spent by each of them doing their own qualifications and only 2 assistants learning skills etc. for future careers in (most of the time) different fields.

The wages just wouldn't be justified from a business perspective (it's touch and go now but I prefer the first model).

And hey I could put the other 8 of current 10 'assistants' on zero hour contracts and call them up with an hour's notice if one of the 2 lucky staff were ever off *facepalm*