[The Economy] 6.2% living wage increase

sevenhills

Malthusian wrote: »

Yes, of course it is. Home ownership is a luxury that has never been affordable to the majority of unskilled labourers on minimum wage. That's why we have council housing.

My dad owned his own house, he was born in 1939, unskilled and devorced when I was 2, he didnt lose his house that he moved into 3 year earlier.
Home ownership has gone down in recent years, despite the minimum wage increasing, houses are still unaffordable for many.

sevenhills

Mel_Low1 wrote: »

Yet both our eldest (29 & 26) have bought a house with their partners.
Both work FT and have partners who have also been willing to work hard to achieve their goals although none are what you would call wealthy, and both have in recent years also been able to start a family.

My dad was a single parent with only the child benefit to help him, always enjoyed a drink too, I dont know how long he took to pay for his house, I would guess a couple of years.
Now it takes 25 years and 2 wage earners.

Arklight

Malthusian wrote: »

Yes, of course it is. Home ownership is a luxury that has never been affordable to the majority of unskilled labourers on minimum wage. That's why we have council housing.

Do we; where is that then? Do you have some going spare?

yksi

Malthusian wrote: »

I know plenty of disabled people who aren't on minimum wage, and plenty of people with stutters or foreign accents who aren't on minimum wage either, so my suggestion would be to take your anti-disabled bigotry to the Grauniad.

I really don't know how you invented such a tangent. Disabled people are overrepresented in unemployment and underemployment figures, and paid on average less than their able-bodied counterparts for the same work. It's not propaganda, but fact.

Even without disability, discrimination is rampant and happens all the time. All you need is a birthmark or an odd laugh or a lisp, and it'll screw up a job interview for you. Or the inability to work during school run hours. No amount of upskilling will undo the attitudes of others. Fact of the matter is that not everyone can work themselves out of minimum wage and nor should they have to in order to have the basic respect of society.

Instead, they get rich people sneering down their noses and telling them to improve themselves or else they're not entitled to live a normal life like everyone else. Empty my bins, peasant, and go put your name down on a council house list - it's only a fifteen-year wait after all. And if you don't like it, that's your fault for not being Einstein. Don't expect me to pay you a fair rate for your hard work.

GreatApe

yksi wrote: »

I think it's a common misconception that people can generally skill themselves to better pay by choice, or that anyone who doesn't, it's their own fault. I work with cleaners. Almost all of them are disabled, or have a social or mental or other similar reason for being in that job a long time, such as lack of childcare, a stutter, they're foreign with an accent, you get the idea, etc etc. It almost NEVER affects job performance. These people earn their money fair and square. They work dang hard.

Not everyone can, or should, need to skill themselves up to something "better". We need cleaners. We all depend on these jobs being done (who's cleaning the hospital, who's making up your hotel room, who's emptying your wheelie bins?)

Is it acceptable that someone can work fulltime on a minimum wage, doing well at that job, and still struggle to do things like raise two children, buy a modest home well outside the M25, drive a second-hand car and shop at LIDL? Does anyone look at those four modest ideals and think those are unreasonable things for someone to want out of life? Do we declare that someone with a disability should just be grateful to clean a loo and shut up about wanting normal things for their hard work?

I'm not suggesting that we have any easy solutions here, but we could certainly start by losing this idea that nobody is actually rich - you know, the great swathes of the country earning more than double the minimum and yet swanning about saying, I'm not rich, I'm middle class, I struggle on this income. Those of us living on four figures hear what the salary is and just think it's deluded.

What do you feel is a fair wage for someone doing a lower end job?

Already a couple on min wage working 2000h a year each would have a £34,880 income post April

That's a take home of £2,566 monthly before any benefits and children's benefits
School is free healthcare is free. £2,566 post tax is fine to live off. Most the country rents are £600-800 and in fact with just a 5% deposit this couple could bid for a house alsub £145,000 and much of the country had homes in that price range

So they can buy their own home and buy food cloths and necessities
What more do you want?

I've spent half my adult life without owning a car
It's not the metric of something that is a necessity or something to aim for
Better to get a min whose job close by so you don't need the cost and burden of traveling

Things are good in the UK for anyone who doesn't have dysfunctional lives and habits.
Also these poor disabled people are also sharing in the £200 billion a year that flows from older to younger

GreatApe

sevenhills wrote: »

My dad owned his own house, he was born in 1939, unskilled and devorced when I was 2, he didnt lose his house that he moved into 3 year earlier.
Home ownership has gone down in recent years, despite the minimum wage increasing, houses are still unaffordable for many.

This is not true

House ownership for UK born nationals are are historical highs and much higher than your dad's time in the 1960s

The reason ownership fell a little bit post about 2005 was mass migration from the EU
They mostly came here with nothing so had to rent and renting increased

This is obvious when you look at ownership data for different groups and by how long they have been in the UK. This has and is changing as the longer migrants are in the UK the more likely they are to buy

GreatApe

sevenhills wrote: »

My dad was a single parent with only the child benefit to help him, always enjoyed a drink too, I dont know how long he took to pay for his house, I would guess a couple of years.
Now it takes 25 years and 2 wage earners.

My imaginary father bought his house at 14 he had 15 kids by that age and he managed.to look after the lot with his part time job robbing leprechauns. Those were the days, things are so hard now

Never mind the actual census data which shows ownership rates are better now than any other time in history (for UK born citizens)
Never mind the data that shows health and life expectancy is much higher

No ignore the data it's all fake news, believe my imagination instead


Go speak to your grandparents let them tell you how easy life was for them :rotfl:

GreatApe

Arklight wrote: »

Do we; where is that then? Do you have some going spare?

17% of the housing stock is social it should actually be less

In your imagination this is a poor country with !!!! conditions for the majority
You've still to wake up and realize the majority have it good in the UK
That's why the free money Marxists failed to win the GE
If things were remotely how you feel they are he would have won a landslide but he didn't

This is a rich country and the majority have decent livea
Even those who come here with nothing can make a good life for themselves in one single generation

snowqueen555

GreatApe wrote: »

Tesco already does everything it can given market considering to squeeze their costs

There isn't a magic thing they will just wake up to and say oh guys why don't we do x it will offset the higher wages

More likely is they will figure out ways to have higher sales per worker
Your not going to convince the country to eat more bit you can sell more per worker

This is the business world, it is competitive. I am not sure what you are implying, running a business has always been like this.

Growing sales has always been the number one target for businesses. Even in a static growth market, they can take market share away from their competitors.

Thrugelmir

GreatApe wrote: »

Typically the few min wage people I know work more hours but travel less so it kinda balances out somewhat. Also they often don't have a car because the min wage jobs are within easy walking distance

These two factors help make things work for them

I knew two min wage workers in Telford it's in the Midlands
They were able to buy a 3 bedroom house near the town centre on their min wage work and got married.

An decent life is possible in the UK even if you don't have huge skills or experience

The primary factor seems to be to avoid becoming dysfunctional often due to addictions
In the same town I knew a couple a good deal older and more wealthy had three houses
Very dysfunctional as the husband was a heavy alcoholic. Their money certainly didn't bring them any peace or comfort

Also if you are half decent and stable people will give you opportunity or you will figure out opportunity. Like I keep saying... 3 million companies in the UK that's three million company owners and their families. Another 5 million or so self employed. Another 5 million or so public sector.

The picture of one big boss in town abusing his workers with unsafe low paid work simply doesn't exist. Capatilism in its modern form saved us from the real !!!! that was the local lord or king who owned all the land and your whole being was subject to their whims no land no food no nothing. Life is better today than at any other point in human history. Let's risk this for another experiment at communist ideology..... No thanks

Alternative far simply view is that employers will simply adapt their working practices to minimise the overall cost to the business. The proposed increase in the Living Wage has been well flagged. There's been plenty of time to come up with creative solutions.