Ukip! Ukip! Ukip!

[eek]

Not everyone on the minimum wage works for a place that could afford an increase in the minimum wage.

To which I have to ask why? If a company cannot afford the minimum wage why should it survive.

[minestrone]

Then those businesses are perilously close to collapse anyway.

Many many small businesses are happy to exist covering employees wages and then a bit more for profit.

[SpontaneousOrder]

To which I have to ask why? If a company cannot afford the minimum wage why should it survive.

Surely the burden is on you to show that it shouldn't? Otherwise I might as well ask why a company that can't afford to pay minimum wage shouldn't have it's CEO be made to bathe daily in a bath tub of baked beans.

[tractor]

..

Many many small businesses are happy to exist covering employees wages and then a bit more for profit.

Especially when they can pay such low wages because the government will top it up with credits paid for by the rest of us. The whole framework is based on subsidies and serves only to dilute middle earners income.

[minestrone]

To which I have to ask why? If a company cannot afford the minimum wage why should it survive.

The companies that will survive will be the largest ones that are more efficient because of scale and can get better supply deals because of size.

Do we want to live in a world of costa coffee houses with everyone working on a higher minimum wage?

Minimum wage is counter productive to the communities it seeks to help, it channels profit away from people and into larger business.

[DodgyAgent]

Then those businesses are perilously close to collapse anyway.

That is the most unbelievably stupid remark I have seen on this site for ages. You clearly have no idea of the knife edge margins that many small companies work on. Yes they are perilously close to collapse yet they employ vast numbers of people. What they don't need is some some overpaid liberal like you who enjoys a nice fat lifestyle courtesy of the monopolistic high paying protected corporations to start pontificating about what other people should be paid. You have no idea of what it is like to have a payroll to meet at the end of the month.

Like the rest of your ilk you only care about justifying the morality of your own earnings. If that means making sweeping patronising gestures about raising the wages of the lowest paid then you will interfere regardless of the effect it has on businesses and the low paid themselves.

[minestrone]

I would love to see the spread of national hourly rates has changed over the last 20 years, I would suspect that many jobs have tended towards the minimum wage or slightly above, moving down over the years.

[SpontaneousOrder]

bollocks..... some more bollocks....


blah blah....

bollocks....

While some people might be against increasing the minimum wage on principle (as it "distorts the market") you have to be blind not to realise that the alternative is continued government subsidy of low paid jobs which distorts the market just as much.

The alternative is to remove minimum wage entirely. Doing so will improve the lot of the very poorest.

Ignoring that though, what makes you think that the wealth should be redistributed? Can I assume that you're currently donating the vast majority of your personal income to starving africans?

[tractor]

...

I would love to see the spread of national hourly rates has changed over the last 20 years, I would suspect that many jobs have tended towards the minimum wage or slightly above, moving down over the years.

Exactly!

Whilst the aims were laudable, for many the new National Minimum Wage became the newer National Maximum Wage overnight, sad but true. Why should any company pay more than they actually HAVE to?

[SpontaneousOrder]

Exactly!

Whilst the aims were laudable, for many the new National Minimum Wage became the newer National Maximum Wage overnight, sad but true. Why should any company pay more than they actually HAVE to?

Why not just make NMW £250 per hour?