living wage or minimum wage ?
 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20853767

I think the government should seriously look at this as a replacement for the totally meaningless and insulting minimum wage

Re: living wage or minimum wage ?
 

wouldn't it just drive up the cost of goods etc to pay for it ?

Re: living wage or minimum wage ?
 

Don't forget the living wage is exactly what it says ,a living wage as opposed to a minimum wage .If prices go up then so does the living wage keeping up with price rises meaning that if companies simply put up prices to pay for a wage rise then it is cancelled out by a rise in the living wage

Re: living wage or minimum wage ?
 

That would only happen in the real world.:rolleyes:

Also there is the old 'differential' issue. That is where those below or above any new minimum level would also want pay increases to restore the differential between them and other people currently on lower pay levels to them. A supervisor/foreman/manager would not want to be earning the same as those they are responsible for.

Re: living wage or minimum wage ?
 

Your right i feel, soon as the super markets think we have an extra 2p in our pockets they will put up the price of there goods to take it off us.

Re: living wage or minimum wage ?
 

A living wage would be the new minimum wage .There is a big difference between the two .

Re: living wage or minimum wage ?
 

I referred to it as the 'new minimum level'. Therefore there would be no difference at all, as they would be one and the same thing.

Re: living wage or minimum wage ?
 

A living wage is worked out to give workers a wage they can live off ,worked out to keep up with the cost of living ,rising with the cost of living and meaning less dependence on benefits .
The minimum wage is not even close to that .It is a legal minimum that employers must pay their workers that has no relation whatsoever with the cost of living ,it encourages low pay ,increases benefit dependency and costs the treasury billions of pounds annually in tax credits and benefits .
One thing they are not is the same

Re: living wage or minimum wage ?
 

it won't be an extra 2p in our well paid pockets it'll be funded by the higher earners ie those on more than the living wage ,i'm not sure i want to give up exploiting the benefits of a low paid workforce [bah humbug ];)

Re: living wage or minimum wage ?
 

My opinion is that although the introduction of the minimum wage put a stop to some employers exploiting workers, employees who have had their wages reduced to match the minimum wage are paying for it.

The minimum wage appears to be the target that employers want to pay at the lower end of the job market.

Re: living wage or minimum wage ?
 

Isn't the proposal that the so called living wage becomes the new minimum wage and therefore there would end up being no difference between the two.

How can any wage level cope with the huge range of differences of circumstances. You have at one end the teenage single childless person living at home with their parents, and at the other a couple with half a dozen(or more) kids. No wage level can deal with that wide a range of circumstances.

Re: living wage or minimum wage ?
 

I think you are mis understanding the idea of a living wage .A living wage is based on how much a person/family needs to live with a degree of independence free from state subsidies ,being able to afford basic amenities like housing ,heating and food and be able to save some money for retirement,either by means of a pension or simply saving for a rainy day.The minimum wage is no such thing .Most people on minimum wage cannot afford housing and heating and need their wage topped up by state benefits to live on the official poverty line .
The living wage outside london is £7.45p/h ,the minimum wage is £6.19p/h.
This is not about simply changing the name and the amount it is changing the way the figure is arrived at and will always ensure that no matter how much prices go up the living wage will rise to keep track of that unlike the NMW

---------- Post added at 11:50 ---------- Previous post was at 11:45 ----------

Which is why we need the living wage ,the NMW does not allow for the childless teenager to leave home ,the living wage will allow that person to afford rent and survive with little or no state subsidy .It is not designed to have different levels to suit a family with 10 kids ,what it means is that companies will not be allowed to pay below the living wage which they can at the moment

Re: living wage or minimum wage ?
 

People made the same arguments against the minimum wage and it didn't really inflate prices to any real degree. We don't really know what will happen, economics isn't an easy science. People always confidently tell you what will happen as the result of economic policy but it never quite works like that. We're told that too high taxes on the rich destroys growth because these peoples' wealth will 'trickle down' but to a large extent that doesn't happen. The rich became rich and the poor remained poor. We can put taxes up to 50% to get more income but that didn't really work either. I don't think anyone knows what will happen, even in this 'real world'.

But I think it's a good idea. If people are being paid so low that it's not worth them taking the job or they need benefits to top up their income just in order to live an 'acceptable' lifestyle then that doesn't help anyone. Yes, you could argue that you have to pay more the in store for an item (maybe) but more of your tax income in going out to these people anyway. So it isn't as simple as driving up costs for everything else.

Re: living wage or minimum wage ?
 

But wasn't that the aim of the last government, they encouraged single women with children to work 16 hrs minimum wage and married couples to work on minimum wage topped up with tax credits. This made the unemployment figures look good and the 16 hours was also a bit of a job share in many cases, their approach with single people was that they could just rot in hell.

Re: living wage or minimum wage ?
 

I think,with the last government they took the socialist dogma of cradle to the grave support from the state far too literal without looking to history for examples of failure of that system.

Re: living wage or minimum wage ?
 

It may all become academic anyway - what with all the latest legislation eroding workers' rights, I imagine the NMW will be next. :rolleyes:

The entire country would be better off. But they, i.e. the government & most employers, will never see that; they're still suffering from the Thatcher Syndrome, defined as the belief that maximum profit = minimum everything else (workers' numbers, pay and workforce rights).

Re: living wage or minimum wage ?
 

Well it also means that they won't be claiming as much benefit and they have some path back into work, it's much harder for the long term unemployed to find work than those whose spells in unemployment have been short. No policy is perfect but regardless of the perceived motivations of the last government the policy itself wasn't a bad idea and hasn't led, to my knowledge, to the problems people foresee with increasing it to be more in-line with the living wage. People being below what they need to live isn't a good system and will lead to people needing their benefits to be topped up with tax credits.

Re: living wage or minimum wage ?
 

pay more = charge more - thats why we buy everything made by child slave labour [made in china ];)

Re: living wage or minimum wage ?
 

They just want to take the responsibilty of making sure working people have enough to live on (through various benefits) and make employers pay a wage that that will negate the need for any in-work state handouts.

A lot will have to change for that to happen, but I actually believe it is the way to go in the future. Why should taxes pay to get some working people out of near poverty?

I have several friends who have been unable to move up from the minimum 16 hour working week, to the new 24 hour minimum working week which will entitle them to certain benefits. They are finding it tougher and tougher to live. A few who did manage to get the extra hours did so at the expense of other workers' jobs.

Re: living wage or minimum wage ?
 

But at the initial post points out it may reduce the benefits paid out and increases income tax. These people will have more money to spend also whilst stores that already pay near or above the living wage won't have to increase their changes and others will simply have to take the hit to compete.

Re: living wage or minimum wage ?
 

I have to disagree to a certain extent regarding the benefit of subsidised employment. We ended up in the situation where some people not exceeding 16 hours per week are better off than others in full time employment. Some who do not work at all are better off, with more disposable income than those in work, and that can't be right.

Re: living wage or minimum wage ?
 

Well it isn't right. It's better than not having a job at all but it's not right that people who work longer, for the same type of work, have less disposable income (although that depends on what is the disposable part, i.e it's perfectly right if that money is going to savings or a mortgage). A living wage would hopefully help to correct that by making work pay more than benefits, as a politician would put it :D.

Re: living wage or minimum wage ?
 

Exactly what happened, the arrival of millions of eastern Europeans delighted to be earning minimum money helped fill vacancies to.

---------- Post added at 20:51 ---------- Previous post was at 20:50 ----------

Yeah I got that feeling to by the way every budget they did targeted the "hard working families"

Re: living wage or minimum wage ?
 

And they say the Tories are the enemy of the working man:D