fagin
New Member
Posts: 12
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Post by fagin on Oct 26, 2006 17:42:44 GMT
I vote we put the minimum wage up to at least £6 per hour!
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Post by God's Work Experience Student on Oct 26, 2006 18:17:04 GMT
The minimum wage? Well there's another brilliant idea pulled out of some policy wonk's arse but why stop at £6? Why not £60 or £600? If we can legislate prosperity why not make everyone a millionaire. Hell, we could cure poverty in the third world overnight just by forcing them to legislate Western wage levels.
Making people richer is simple. The more you produce the more you can consume. If we want to make people better off we should scrap all the regulations that make them less productive - starting with the minimum wage. If you take away a person's right to sell their own labour at the price they choose, it's harder for them to get a job with training that can help improve their productivity; so they end up in jobs with better pay now but no prospects.
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Post by Graham was disembowelled on Oct 26, 2006 21:45:05 GMT
but you can volunteer to get training...
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Post by Cowboys on Oct 27, 2006 13:20:41 GMT
getting rid of the minimum wage, seams to me to have the effect of turing someones productivity into a comodity, if you train and improve your productivity then the value of your skills increas to which you can then sell at a higher price (i.e. demand a better wage) this to me is a good thing in that, those who chose not to better them selfs are faced with the choice of either setling for the price which employers are willing to pay or seeking ways to improved their sale value... as long as this way of doing things dosent disavanteage those whio (for what ever reason) are unable to better them selfs then i tendn to agree with sparky...
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Post by God's Work Experience Student on Oct 27, 2006 17:21:31 GMT
Hang on. So if a young person decides to take an unpaid internship to gain valuable work experience, that's okay. But if the employer decides to offer a small stipend below the minimum wage, that's not okay. So only people from families who could afford to support them would be able to gain the benefit.
In any case, a person's labour is no-one's property but their own - unless they are a slave. So why should anyone be able to decide under what terms you can sell your own labour?
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Post by Graham was disembowelled on Oct 27, 2006 19:01:50 GMT
i do see your point in all this but then again i really think anyone who has had to work crappy jobs would understand. for example the gateway paid minimum wage and treated staff like sh.ite. and i'm quite sure that they would have paid substantially lower given the chance. and ok, you'd say 'well you aren't forced to stay there' and ok this is true - if you have some kind of reasonable self confidence, but then again there are alot of people out there who would let themselves get exploited. it's more difficult than you think to just walk out of a crap job when you are stuck in it, if that's what you are having to do just to get by.
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Post by God's Work Experience Student on Oct 28, 2006 13:28:30 GMT
I think the problem is in perception. You can see a positive impact of the minimum wage through your own experience, but the negative impact is unseen - i.e. the things that don't happen. You don't see the jobs that aren't created, or the lost opportunities for people trying to expand their prospects, or the businesses that never get off the ground, or the long-term impact on wages of the extra growth these things create. Anecdotal evidence has a usefulness but it must be seen in context.
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Post by pyromaniac on Nov 2, 2006 18:50:56 GMT
Oh, bollocks, Sparky. The CBI came out with all this when they introduced the minimum wage, they repeat it every time the rate goes up, and you know what? British industry *still* hasn't collapsed! Amazing, that.
Your argument about freedom doesn't hold up, because the minimum wage mostly applies to the young and the unskilled - people who have no leverage in the labour market, because there's more people wanting jobs than there are positions. You don't choose to sell your labour for £4.85/hour. Training isn't really relevant either, employment at this level is wage-slavery, leaving little or no possibility of improving your skills in your own time.
In the US, the national minimum wage is pathetic, and lots of jobs are paid beneath it anyway. Look how well that works - a huge gap between the richest and the poorest, massive poverty and deprivation. Woohoo.
One final point, you claim that the minimum wage has an adverse effect on innovation and business start-ups. Are you still a member of the party whose tax review last week suggested removing the tax relief on R&D in businesses?
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Post by God's Work Experience Student on Nov 3, 2006 18:41:58 GMT
The CBI came out with all this when they introduced the minimum wage, they repeat it every time the rate goes up, and you know what? British industry *still* hasn't collapsed! Amazing, that. As long as the minimum wage is at a low enough rate, the net benefits and costs will be slight. It is still a net negative, just not a big enough one to be catastrophic. ...the minimum wage mostly applies to the young and the unskilled - people who have no leverage in the labour market, because there's more people wanting jobs than there are positions. You don't choose to sell your labour for £4.85/hour. Training isn't really relevant either, employment at this level is wage-slavery, leaving little or no possibility of improving your skills in your own time. To rephrase: 1.Supply of labour outstrips demand when there is an artificial price floor. 2.When a minimum wage is imposed employers have stripped out non-wage benefits including training. In the US, the national minimum wage is pathetic, and lots of jobs are paid beneath it anyway. Look how well that works - a huge gap between the richest and the poorest, massive poverty and deprivation. Woohoo. 1. Why do people keep holding the US up as an example of capitalism when their system is mercantilist at best? 2. The federal government has no constitutional power to impose a national minimum wage - the federal minimum wage applies only to interstate commerce and most states have higher minimum wages. 3. US jobs have a much higher level of non-wage benefits. 4. You are talking about relative poverty. In absolute terms America's poorest citizens have a higher standard of living than ours. One final point, you claim that the minimum wage has an adverse effect on innovation and business start-ups. Are you still a member of the party whose tax review last week suggested removing the tax relief on R&D in businesses? 1. No. 2. Governments cannot improve productivity through tax incentives. What is needed are taxes that are low, simple and consistent.
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