Take home pay from Minimum Wage

It never fails to amaze me that people would prefer to do nothing rather than earn the minimum wage.

Um, yes, totally paid for.

Hence no mortgage.

not everyone claims either or both of those

and most don't earn anything on the side either

tax credits are a subsidy to business too

Of course not all starter jobs will lead to better things but some certainly will - depends on the individual and on the employer.

But is that a reason not to have any starter jobs?

I do not have rent or mortgage payments and, trust me on this, I do not live the life of a homeless person.

If I were to become unemployed tomorrow I do not believe I would be entitled to any benefits whatsoever over the basic unemployment benefit.

That's an interesting attitude and is unfortunately one that many seem to share - I assume due to a sense of entitlement? I dunno as it is an attitude I cannot relate to.

Where do you think your benefits come from, if not through the taxes of people whose livelihoods you're intent on destroying?

You are correct - if you have savings less than £16k then you *may* qualify for some reduction in your council tax payment.

I am ***the*** expert in this matter having been through it in October/ November...........I was expected to "live" on a (subsequently taxed) "income" of £65.45 a week.

Apparently, the trick is to have children..........lots of them.........and tell the authorities you don't know who the various fathers are.

Hence my hatred of this country. It's screwing the actual people who keep it going.

It's simply not a choice for a *lot* of people. And in fairness (Old-New) Labour paid a range of credits on top to older people and families for example. Not sure if these will continue.

The need to work for this amount is pretty dependent on the housing situation. if housing costs are low, the need to accept MW rises.

Rob

I don't think that it's the fault of the minimum wage at all.

The fact is that the "going rate" for these jobs is not one that can sustain a family if the job is taken by a sole wage earner. They are always going to be jobs for a second wage earner or an entry level job for a new worker (still living at home).

NMW did not create the problem whereby these jobs have to be taken by main wage earners, that was created by the decimation of good paying jobs for people with good skills but limited academic achievement and IMHO the solution to the problem is to fix the "all mush have degrees" culture that has been (unnecessarily) invented" not increase the NMW until "no skill" jobs pay a wage that supports a family (because that will just decimate the availably of no skill jobs).

tim

If you own your home outright, then you already have a significant endowment of wealth.

Hardly, unless we stretch the English language beyond any recognisable meaning.

The question I still have is why people seem to think that small businesses in particular should be entitled to cheap labour.

I've had these arguments before with other people, including my own relatives. When everything from foreign holidays, nights out, beer and wine, regular savings, Sky TV, are counted as "essentials", it's easy to reach a position where so little is left "for one's self". Effectively what you're saying is that, on a wage that was surely higher than average 20 years ago, you had but £20 a week "to spend on yourself". Frankly this doesn't wash with me.

I don't really understand your train of logic. The cost of CDs has come down (not to mention the quality of the content!), and inflation has eroded the cash amounts to which you refer. Even on cash terms, the "kid with a Saturday job" is earning a quarter of what you were earning for skilled labour 20 years ago; and in real terms, he's probably earning half as much again, in other words, he's earning about a tenth of what you were earning. Fair enough, you may say, for some schoolchild earning pocket money, but you can't seriously be suggesting that a man ought to be able to keep a wife, children, and home on such a wage. Indeed, CDs may be purchased for only a pittance these days, but the same cannot be said about keeping cars, houses, women and children.

How are you defining "endowment"?

If you mean two people working hard (I worked seven days a week for five years in my younger days) to obtain enough wealth to be able to tell their mortgage company to shove it, then I qualify on that score.

If you're suggesting the State, in ***any*** way, has helped put me in the position I'm in or that I've been the benefactor of a legacy from a rich relative, then you're wide of the mark.

You still don't seem to have fully absorbed the point that I made. Statistically, not only will these starter jobs *not* routinely lead to some better position with the same employer, but in fact they will routinely lead back to unemployment. In other words, it is not that "not all starter jobs will lead to better things", but that "virtually no 'starter jobs' will lead to better things". Moreover, of those who do move on to something better, it will almost invariably be with a different employer who are recognised to be of a higher quality, and it is highly unlikely that the stint in the "starter job" was a necessary prerequisite for a competent performance in the decent job.

There are incredibly few real "starter jobs" anyway. Insofar as you're describing some kind of real employment available in the market, as opposed to imaginary or supposed, describing them as "starter jobs" is extremely misleading.

Everyone, or at least almost everyone, has a point at which they'll stand up and say "I'm not going to take this anymore". I suspect what you call "a sense of entitlement" is what I'd probably call "a sense of fairness".

I'm sensitive to how you've phrased this question. I'm not claiming any benefits, and I'm both a businessman and an employed worker, so I presume by "your benefits" you were not labouring under the misapprehension that I'm currently claiming any?

I'm only intent on destroying it if they won't be reasonable and share. Bankers for example have a cracking livelihood, but that is because they have a disproportionate slice of the wealth that is created by everyone who works.

In the OED way.

What exactly did you do on those 7 days? I've met plenty of people who "have worked 7 days a week", but there is no question of them working on a production line or anything else so intensive. Offshore work is what most people would recognise as particularly difficult, that only a relative minority of people are capable of sustaining, and yet even they have compensatory rest, and do not work "7 days a week for 5 years".

No I wasn't suggesting that at all. I assumed you had simply paid your house off.

Endowment? That's an interesting choice of a word. It is almost as if you are suggesting that people who have paid for their homes have had a gift settled upon them.

Out of interest, why did you choose it?

I worked in the national newspaper industry. Up at 3a.m, into a freezing cold van, drive to the local wholesaler, load the 3500cwt van with newspapers and magazines (quite frequently in pouring rain and always in cold weather), drive a 129 mile route delivering said goods and picking up unsolds from the previous day, return said unsolds to the warehouse, scan them, complete all paperwork and then prepare the following day's magazine deliveries.

So, fairly intensive. I often joked how much exercise I did before most people had even considered getting out of bed.

Saturday and Sunday a.m's were best - at 3a.m, you frequently encountered pissed up Brits coming out of clubs who, for reasons best known to themselves, seemed to possess an overwhelming urge to wander in front of my van.