But then not all employers can keep affording to pay employees those amounts along with the ER N/I increases, you have small businesses who have to continually put up their prices and ultimately it’s the consumer who has to pay extra and then looks to go elsewhere.
It has started already from looking and speaking to my clients, small businesses will not take on employees as it is too expensive and a cost that cannot be passed on, so it will come down to that they either carry on as they are with no growth or they just have self employed workers!
I agree, but that's not down to lack of regulation, nor is hollowing out public services, removing employee safeguards or the minimum wage, they are symptoms not answers.
We have a structural issue, one that didn't really exist in the 1980s, as Thatcher and Reagan had just started their deregulate and sell off everything mission. This reversed or eroded a lot of the post depression/WW2 New Deal/NHS type policies, that made life for everyday citizens better.
40 years later, the market first and wealth will trickle down political movement has left the UK state/public owning virtually nothing. Multi national corporations make a fortune and usually pay very little or no UK tax, filtering funds through other countries via fees, and profiteering when they can.
Since the start of the 1980s we have had huge changes in CEO and company board earnings. Compared to average employees wage, CEOs are somewhere around 300 to 1 now, up from around 30 to 1 back then, essentially paying rubbish real world wages, while earning many millions themselves.
Then there's the huge surge in multi millionaires and billionaires, who can move country to avoid paying personal and property taxes. We have the double whammy of companies moving their workforce out of the UK since Brexit, with many of these people being strong advocates for leaving the EU!
There's money sloshing around everywhere, more of it than ever before, with quantitative easing having pumped out money, lowered interest rates and made it easier to borrow, yet we are poorer individually and as a nation.
It's largely because this money makes money, with a big increase in share buy backs inflating stock market values and making investors more money. Venture capitalist companies back disruptors, Ai startups etc, who often strip margin and jobs out of entire sectors. There's a famous giant online retailer who took 15 years to start making a consistent (and now huge) profit, yet it grew and grew selling at wafer thin margins. Margins in entire sectors collapsing put large and small profitable retailers, that employed thousands, out of business.
The biggest con job of the entire project is that the mainstream media and right of centre governments, backed by the wealthy, have convinced the likes of Justin, that there's too much regulation and the little guy earns too much money! There's another deregulate and slash services party that appeals to a certain demographic. They, along with the same media giants, blame immigrants, or people of a different colour. While the same companies heat the planet, reduce their worforces and wages, all to make ever larger profits...
We have a real problem, and it's not going to be solved by tinkering around the edges, certainly not in the UK. Adding cost at the lowest end for employees is simply making it worse, as are things like sales taxes. There is virtually no trickle down economy, with the richest individuals and biggest companies hoarding their money and effectively taking it out circulation.
We need to wake up and stop falling for divide and conquer tactics. Something drastic needs to change to reverse this process, or healthcare and public services will continue to get worse as the population ages and they become ever more costly.
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