After yesterdays economic data the one thing that is now very obvious is that the UK needs a pay rise.
Low pay is unsustainable.
Poor quality jobs are only encouraged by low pay.
Inequality is fostered.
Investment in people and infrastructure is discouraged.
A cycle of negativity is created.
We need people to be paid enough to sustain themselves.
We need to stop subsidising big business to create poverty.
We need to increase the minimum wage, significantly.
We need to do it now.
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who’s going to pay for the pay rise?
perhaps employers could employ fewer people but on higher wages
It would pay for itself In terms of business recovery
For smaller employers I would suggest an employer’s NIC rebate, temporarily
But this question is always asked and it always turns out to be irrelevant
Extra spending pays for it. Money goes round. It does not stick, except with the wealthy
Yes, money circulates and passes from hand to hand, it doesn’t sit there. This circulation, in the right conditions, will produce more value than was put in. For example, someone might use a £20 note for shopping, another person uses it to pay their rent, another uses it to pay towards a bill, someone else get’s it in their change and buys a round of drinks and the landlord may use it to pay towards his stock. In effect, £100 of value has come from one £20 note.
that kind of nonsense scaremongering was put to bed when the minimum wage was introduced.
like Richard says, if ordinary people have more money they’ll spend it and that will drive growth. the working class have a long way to go before they can contemplate piling it up to gather dust in an offshore bank account.
I agree – it is just nonsense
It belongs to the same school that all money paid in tax is forever lost
Employers could stop paying themselves massive salaries and profits to shareholders.
Richard, how many people do you employ?
Right now, a few
In my career, thousands
And I have always had a policy of paying over the odds whenever I can
It’s always paid back, handsomely
The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) also identified the need for wage rises.
We have a sovereign currency-there is no money shortage. How we use it is another matter but the banks renting it out to us as debt laden money is the worst option of all. We need monetary democracy to replace the peonage the banking system has created -English greenbacks!
Sorry- there hasn’t been a scottish/welsh/Northern ireland secession as yet-I meant let’s have British Green backs!
Simon – us Welsh are pretty relaxed. On occasion I’m in the US, I say I’m English or from England, it gets over difficult conversations. Unless I’m in conversation with a Canadian, or a ……, or a ……. etc.
A pay increase is an obvious means to boost the recovery and very necessary for the lower paid.
Talking about things Canadian, I’m not keen on Dr Mark Carney’s jolly arrogance. He enjoys the knowledge that he can string out the general public with regular economic puzzles, only the Elite know how to solve [1]. Carney’s latest utterance [forward guidance] “Bank Of England May Only Hike Interest Rates Once Wages Rise Enough” can be interpreted as keep wages down otherwise I’ll raise rates.
[1] Proof of this assertion is given by Gilens and Page who state in their abstract “The results [of our analytical research] provide substantial support for theories of Economic Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism.” http://scholar.princeton.edu/mgilens/home
Hwyl.
@Tony_B
cheers for link, just downloaded the paper will read later.
and of course, the increasing growth rate in GDP will make this possible – more so than the stagnant economies on the continent!
Except it has not so far
So there is no reason to think it will
That’s because you have the causation wrong
The pay rise will increase GDP
Not the other way round
Doh. A simple analysis of cause and effect! Pay is in the main a result of supply and demand. A growing economy as measured perhaps by GDP will increase demand for headcount. Given that the birth rate trend has been downwards then the only reason this does not feed through to higher pay is immigration. But it is the balance of demand and supply that gives rise to the growth. What you describe is only going to lead to inflation.
Perhaps you should have attended some of those lectures you deride so much?
Oh dear
Supply and demand
Next you’ll have us believe markets are efficient
Open your eyes and look at the real world and exploitation and abuse
And as for inflation – oh yes, where?
Candidly, this economics is your fantasy and a not every attractive one at that – just as it wasn’t when I rumbled it at 19
Alistair Harris
If pay is a simple equation of supply & demand, why is the Square Mile so full of people deriving enormous earnings from damaging our economy & decimating peoples’ savings? Do we, the public, want them to do that?
i’m sorry but its a farcical idea & could only be held by those who spend far too much time in lecture theatres & far too little time in the real world.
The amount people get paid is, usually, far more a product of power relationships than supply & demand, You CAN see a free market working in, particularly, sport (especially football) but I think that’s more the exception than the rule. Even then, there is absolutely no link between ‘demand’ & ‘value’.
You know that the reason that pay is remaining low is the reserve army of (cheap migrant) labour. Increasing the minimum wage will not address the situation whereby the minimum wage is becoming the normal wage, as a result of the reality that skilled labour is cheaply available.
No government will force higher wages – so it is a supply and demand issue. An increased minimum wage will be subverted.
The Migration Advisory Committee, set up to advise government that can government can then ignore its advice, recently found that the ready availability of cheap skilled migrant labour is damaging the training of young people here – ensuring that the ‘skills shortages’ that The City cries about, become self-fulfilling.
A very sad prospect for young people here, including those who have a degree debt.
Those with any sort of public voice should be speaking up for them – addressing the issues.
Eh?
Linda-it’s not just a question of ‘jobs’ but the quality of them. A Green agenda (Green Deal as Richard puts it) could generate new jobs requiring real skills training. We are a million light years from this with the present neanderthal (with apologies to the Neanderthals of yesteryear)in power and similar waiting in the wings.
If the political will is there, then anything, but anything, can be changed. It may take a general strike or riots or anything else that ordinary people will have to do in order to change the paradigm, but if enough people demand change, then change will eventually come.
As Joe Gormley evidently said: “If you’ve got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.”
Has anyone read this load of old rubbish from the Chicago boys: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3bd8f544-2466-11e4-ae78-00144feabdc0.html?siteedition=uk#axzz3AC16RHm3?
That’s got Chicago written all over it
Friedmanites still exist
Friedmanites still exist–That’s the world we have been living in for the past 40 years! (Smiley emoticon).
The folk in Seattle have said it ain’t necessarily so!
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/06/11/seattle-minimum-wage-15-challenge/10344443/