Would anyone like a sensible discussion about low pay?
- Thread starter UKSBD
- Start date
The whole point is household income. Which is a mixture of rate of pay and hours of work. If an employer (like Tesco) deliberately limits the number of hours that are contracted and then frequently 'rewards' soe by allowing them additional hours, household income is uncertain. So state benefits have to kick in.
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- Original Poster
- #84
Are you saying
Because some people are only offered 18 hour contracts pay rates should be increased because people don't earn enough when only working 18 hours?
Lets say they offered £15 an hour to those working 18 hours but £12 an hour to those working 40, do you think the people working 40 hours would like that?
like I said, hours of work provided and hourly rates should be 2 completely separate topics.
Because some people are only offered 18 hour contracts pay rates should be increased because people don't earn enough when only working 18 hours?
Lets say they offered £15 an hour to those working 18 hours but £12 an hour to those working 40, do you think the people working 40 hours would like that?
like I said, hours of work provided and hourly rates should be 2 completely separate topics.
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Do you think it is reasonable for a large employer to leave their employees with uncertain hours and insufficient income to live on, so that they can ensure they never pay for a single hour's work that could be avoided, when they are making huge profits?
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We're a low productivity, low growth country now with an entitlement (that little of the rest of the world has) that we ought to be richer than we are which is part of the problem. I was reading a piece recently on Poland's rather impressive catching up of our GDP/capita over the last few years and with their recent further cutting of income taxes (opposite policy to us) coupled with their moderate time dependent welfare net (not lifetime) it is not hard to predict Poland will likely be wealthier than the UK per person in 10-15 years time. Quite a turn up for the books? Hence why 300k or so Poles have gone back already and continue to leave in greater numbers than they arrive, put simply, there is more opportunity in Poland now and fair play to them, really hard working, industrious people - Brits could learn a thing or two in our forgotten work ethic. We have a tax system and welfare system which doesn't promote a similar self-sufficiency or striving to succeed IME (lots of crazy disincentives for all manner of folk on all manner of income scales, like the 16 hour cliff or 62% tax rate above £100k). It is no surprise we have to create more and more "support" mechanisms each year (which futher exacerbates the UK's appalling GDP/capita growth) as the whole system doesn't work and actively makes us collectively poorer. Once you start down the road of killing any engine of productivity growth we end up here. We don't have any growth in this country, it is that simple, and that is what drives wages up (like in Poland), and I can absolutely guarantee you increasing my taxes as the government has consistently been doing for years and will do so again next year, will not improve that growth number, it will worsen it as we create ever more disincentives to taking risk and working hard.
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- Original Poster
- #89
No,
But I would like to know what the answer is to the problem
Are you suggesting (some) employers should only have 35 hour minimum contracts?
Note: I'm not asking theses questions because i agree or disagree with what I am asking, also not assuming your answer when asking the question, just trying to have a genuine discussion.
Edit to add: Do you think an annual salary (based on 37.5 hours) should be paid rather than an hourly rate?
But I would like to know what the answer is to the problem
Are you suggesting (some) employers should only have 35 hour minimum contracts?
Note: I'm not asking theses questions because i agree or disagree with what I am asking, also not assuming your answer when asking the question, just trying to have a genuine discussion.
Edit to add: Do you think an annual salary (based on 37.5 hours) should be paid rather than an hourly rate?
Last edited:
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- Original Poster
- #91
Thinking about this more.
Do you think the best option is annual salary based on 37.5 hours a week, but the employee can choose to work less hours if they want to (not paid if they choose not to work some hours).
Basically the employee having more say on hours worked rather than the employer
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There is no one size fits all.
You could have an expectation that employers will give 35 hour contracts whenever appropriate, but that becomes a problem for those who, for whatever reason, need to work part time.
Many supermarkets used to offer only zero hours contracts despite knowing, to within 15 minutes, how many person hours each store required each day. They did that because it gave them conttrol over the workers who had to be available whenever the employer told them to work as a refusal 'often offends' and often led to them not getting any hours. This practice generated a lot of anger from a lot of people (not just unions and employees) and was dropped as bad PR.
What I would like to see, and what I think should happen, is that employees are seen and treated as an important part of an organisations resources. That pay should be based on what the employer can reasonablt afford, not, as now, on the absolute minimum that can be got away with. Similarly with hours of work.
I remember having a temporary job at ASDA during the run up to Christmas. One day, for some reason, there weren't many shoppers in and the supervisors started asking if any staff wanted to leave early. I thought that seemed like a good idea and trotted off home 90 minutes early. No one mentioned I would not be paid. Despite having a contract for specific hours I discovered that I was paid to the exact minute of the hours I was clocked in for.
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- Original Poster
- #93
That's basically the point I am making.
Employers are getting chastised because benefits are used to increase income, where as in theory it is a good solution.
Edit to add: if it was a case that an average person working 37.5 hours a week still wasn't earning enough to take them of benefits I could understand why the employer gets chastised.
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But it's not a good solution, as it disincentivises work, after a certain point. That's not a blanket statement, of course, but it does have some truth in it.
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- Original Poster
- #98
That's why I said in theory.
Whatever system is in place you will find people abuse or manipulate it.
Just because a low % abuse or manipulate a system it doesn't necessarily mean the system is bad.
99% people play things fair, 1% abuses manipulates it's always the 1% you hear about.
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This link might make your eyes water - Share of households receiving benefits in the United Kingdom in 2020/21, by region:
www.statista.com
Also quite depressing when looking at the stats for UK workers who are receiving benefits the figures for 2020/21 show 54% of people were receiving some type of state benefit.
Last figures I saw for UK employment covered October and was just shy of 30m which perhaps leads one to suggest this country needs a major rethink
UK state benefits by region 2024| Statista
In 2023/24, 57 percent of households in Northern Ireland were receiving a type of state benefit, the highest in the United Kingdom in that reporting year.
www.statista.com
Also quite depressing when looking at the stats for UK workers who are receiving benefits the figures for 2020/21 show 54% of people were receiving some type of state benefit.
Last figures I saw for UK employment covered October and was just shy of 30m which perhaps leads one to suggest this country needs a major rethink
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It depends what they mean by state benefits. If it includes child benefit it looks very reasonable. If it means, primarily, means tested benefits, it is terrifying.This link might make your eyes water - Share of households receiving benefits in the United Kingdom in 2020/21, by region:
UK state benefits by region 2024| Statista
In 2023/24, 57 percent of households in Northern Ireland were receiving a type of state benefit, the highest in the United Kingdom in that reporting year.
Also quite depressing when looking at the stats for UK workers who are receiving benefits the figures for 2020/21 show 54% of people were receiving some type of state benefit.
Last figures I saw for UK employment covered October and was just shy of 30m which perhaps leads one to suggest this country needs a major rethink
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T
The Byre
The OBR issued the following statement this year -
Oh, but there's more!
Historically, the UK government cannot raise more than about 35% of GDP via taxes. As it goes above that figure, tax revenues start to fall and stop dead at 40%. Above 40%, the economy begins to shrink fairly rapidly - negative growth is the euphemism used. A recession.
And within the same report, the following chart was produced -
This is a wonderful example of chickens coming home to roost - that grey line that is shooting up to the point where it today accounts for more than education, defense and public services combined, is labeled 'Economic Affairs' i.e. the cost of borrowing, over half of which is interest payments. The cost of borrowing.
The UK economy has been very badly managed by people who bought into every idiotic economic fallacy known to mankind. It began under Brown and the BoE believing that artificially low interest rates are good for the economy and continued with the issuance of QE in the vainglorious belief that printing money does not lead to inflation. The result was an asset price bubble both here and in the US that resulted in the average house costing roughly double what it should normally cost. When that bubble burst, house prices tanked.
The madness continued with Osbourn's unwillingness to accept that the austerity anomaly is a real thing - if you cut back on spending, you have to restructure the economy and not just slice everything.
Simultaneously, that hapless government believed in 'Trickle Down' theory - cut taxes for the wealthy and the poor will magically somehow benefit. That is a real chestnut of a fallacy! First-semester stuff!
All this talk of income support presupposes that we have an economy that is actually capable of supporting low incomes - we do not! It, along with many other well-meaning schemes, is something we cannot afford. Busta!
That is the nasty and unpalatable fact that comes with having an economy that is based upon consumerism - what Thatcher called a service-based economy. This forum is witness to that - online this and online that and sellers of cheap Chinese tat abound here! Or as Napoleon put it - a nation of shopkeepers!
Every aspirant business-person seems to be trying to create a business that does nothing, creates nothing.
If you want to have social luxuries like income support, you must (as a nation) have an income. That means you have to build things that other nations want - we call those things EXPORTS. You must build stuff and then sell stuff. That means in today's world, being a member of a trading alliance.
If you want German- or Scandinavian-style social welfare, you must earn it. You can only do that with a healthy economy that earns by exporting things others want to buy.
Britain used to be one of the wealthiest nations on Earth. Thanks to the gold standard, it had a stable currency. It imported raw materials and exported finished goods across Planet Earth. What it did not have was a welfare state, so the inner-city poor were very poor and could expect to live much past 50 or 60. This became a major drag on the economy and it took until the 1940s for the UK to copy other European states and introduce basic things like universal healthcare, education, pensions and disability payments.
Inflation is a tax on the poor and the middle classes. The sheer absurdity of giving people free money by creating that money through borrowing and thereby making the money worth less and less does not seem to have occurred to our head schoolboy Prime Minister.
If he does not force a rethink through, the coming economic maelstrom will force one upon us all! He could start by realising the dire seriousness of the situation and form a coalition government - and appoint a real economist as Chancellor instead of yet another PPE numpty.
It continued -
So by their own admission, this crazy government is spending the equivalent of 7% of GDP that it just does not have! In simple terms - it is borrowing all that money!
Oh, but there's more!
Historically, the UK government cannot raise more than about 35% of GDP via taxes. As it goes above that figure, tax revenues start to fall and stop dead at 40%. Above 40%, the economy begins to shrink fairly rapidly - negative growth is the euphemism used. A recession.
And within the same report, the following chart was produced -
Real terms trends in Public Spending
This is a wonderful example of chickens coming home to roost - that grey line that is shooting up to the point where it today accounts for more than education, defense and public services combined, is labeled 'Economic Affairs' i.e. the cost of borrowing, over half of which is interest payments. The cost of borrowing.
The UK economy has been very badly managed by people who bought into every idiotic economic fallacy known to mankind. It began under Brown and the BoE believing that artificially low interest rates are good for the economy and continued with the issuance of QE in the vainglorious belief that printing money does not lead to inflation. The result was an asset price bubble both here and in the US that resulted in the average house costing roughly double what it should normally cost. When that bubble burst, house prices tanked.
The madness continued with Osbourn's unwillingness to accept that the austerity anomaly is a real thing - if you cut back on spending, you have to restructure the economy and not just slice everything.
Simultaneously, that hapless government believed in 'Trickle Down' theory - cut taxes for the wealthy and the poor will magically somehow benefit. That is a real chestnut of a fallacy! First-semester stuff!
All this talk of income support presupposes that we have an economy that is actually capable of supporting low incomes - we do not! It, along with many other well-meaning schemes, is something we cannot afford. Busta!
That is the nasty and unpalatable fact that comes with having an economy that is based upon consumerism - what Thatcher called a service-based economy. This forum is witness to that - online this and online that and sellers of cheap Chinese tat abound here! Or as Napoleon put it - a nation of shopkeepers!
Every aspirant business-person seems to be trying to create a business that does nothing, creates nothing.
If you want to have social luxuries like income support, you must (as a nation) have an income. That means you have to build things that other nations want - we call those things EXPORTS. You must build stuff and then sell stuff. That means in today's world, being a member of a trading alliance.
If you want German- or Scandinavian-style social welfare, you must earn it. You can only do that with a healthy economy that earns by exporting things others want to buy.
Britain used to be one of the wealthiest nations on Earth. Thanks to the gold standard, it had a stable currency. It imported raw materials and exported finished goods across Planet Earth. What it did not have was a welfare state, so the inner-city poor were very poor and could expect to live much past 50 or 60. This became a major drag on the economy and it took until the 1940s for the UK to copy other European states and introduce basic things like universal healthcare, education, pensions and disability payments.
This! A major rethink is going to have to happen because we cannot continue with a government that spends 47% of the GDP but only gets 40% in taxes and borrows the rest by printing money - leading to rampant and rising inflation.
Inflation is a tax on the poor and the middle classes. The sheer absurdity of giving people free money by creating that money through borrowing and thereby making the money worth less and less does not seem to have occurred to our head schoolboy Prime Minister.
If he does not force a rethink through, the coming economic maelstrom will force one upon us all! He could start by realising the dire seriousness of the situation and form a coalition government - and appoint a real economist as Chancellor instead of yet another PPE numpty.
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0
Just that one? Governments up until a couple of months ago believed this. They probably still do, given that they've relaxes the rules on bankers' bonuses.
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And in answer to a comment above the bottom line is regardless of the benefits name its all coming out of the overall pot of money central government have and pointed out here this has dwindled at an almost alarming rate due to total mismanagement of the UK's finances.The OBR issued the following statement this year -
It continued -
So by their own admission, this crazy government is spending the equivalent of 7% of GDP that it just does not have! In simple terms - it is borrowing all that money!
Oh, but there's more!
Historically, the UK government cannot raise more than about 35% of GDP via taxes. As it goes above that figure, tax revenues start to fall and stop dead at 40%. Above 40%, the economy begins to shrink fairly rapidly - negative growth is the euphemism used. A recession.
And within the same report, the following chart was produced -
Real terms trends in Public Spending
This is a wonderful example of chickens coming home to roost - that grey line that is shooting up to the point where it today accounts for more than education, defense and public services combined, is labeled 'Economic Affairs' i.e. the cost of borrowing, over half of which is interest payments. The cost of borrowing.
The UK economy has been very badly managed by people who bought into every idiotic economic fallacy known to mankind. It began under Brown and the BoE believing that artificially low interest rates are good for the economy and continued with the issuance of QE in the vainglorious belief that printing money does not lead to inflation. The result was an asset price bubble both here and in the US that resulted in the average house costing roughly double what it should normally cost. When that bubble burst, house prices tanked.
The madness continued with Osbourn's unwillingness to accept that the austerity anomaly is a real thing - if you cut back on spending, you have to restructure the economy and not just slice everything.
Simultaneously, that hapless government believed in 'Trickle Down' theory - cut taxes for the wealthy and the poor will magically somehow benefit. That is a real chestnut of a fallacy! First-semester stuff!
All this talk of income support presupposes that we have an economy that is actually capable of supporting low incomes - we do not! It, along with many other well-meaning schemes, is something we cannot afford. Busta!
That is the nasty and unpalatable fact that comes with having an economy that is based upon consumerism - what Thatcher called a service-based economy. This forum is witness to that - online this and online that and sellers of cheap Chinese tat abound here! Or as Napoleon put it - a nation of shopkeepers!
Every aspirant business-person seems to be trying to create a business that does nothing, creates nothing.
If you want to have social luxuries like income support, you must (as a nation) have an income. That means you have to build things that other nations want - we call those things EXPORTS. You must build stuff and then sell stuff. That means in today's world, being a member of a trading alliance.
If you want German- or Scandinavian-style social welfare, you must earn it. You can only do that with a healthy economy that earns by exporting things others want to buy.
Britain used to be one of the wealthiest nations on Earth. Thanks to the gold standard, it had a stable currency. It imported raw materials and exported finished goods across Planet Earth. What it did not have was a welfare state, so the inner-city poor were very poor and could expect to live much past 50 or 60. This became a major drag on the economy and it took until the 1940s for the UK to copy other European states and introduce basic things like universal healthcare, education, pensions and disability payments.
This! A major rethink is going to have to happen because we cannot continue with a government that spends 47% of the GDP but only gets 40% in taxes and borrows the rest by printing money - leading to rampant and rising inflation.
Inflation is a tax on the poor and the middle classes. The sheer absurdity of giving people free money by creating that money through borrowing and thereby making the money worth less and less does not seem to have occurred to our head schoolboy Prime Minister.
If he does not force a rethink through, the coming economic maelstrom will force one upon us all! He could start by realising the dire seriousness of the situation and form a coalition government - and appoint a real economist as Chancellor instead of yet another PPE numpty.
Something really does have to give as the money the government collect in tax (I strongly believe) is going to get a very big hit in the coming year adding to their woes. On top of this many in business I have spoken to over the last few weeks plan on spending profits rather than facing large tax bills, great for reinvest plans but not good news for the chancellor's coffers.
The government cannot continue to borrow their way out of the issues they have created 2023 is not looking very rosey. So to the question and topic of the thread, what should an employee expect as the minimum average wage (for a full timer) in the UK right now?
The government own figures say anyone on 45k a year are likely to be in fuel poverty by April next year.
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Nothing the government did stopped the bankers (the money movers) from earning large sums it was just not called a bonus. More smoke and mirrors from Government to make the mass's feel better
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T
The Byre
Yup! Recessions also affect tax revenues. They lead to a fall in taxes and an increase in demands for the benefits that taxes are supposed to be spent upon - unemployment pay for example.
More QE to create the money to cover the shortfall leads to more inflation which makes the asset-poor (i.e. the poor and the middle classes who rely on the value of their currency units) even poorer.
Only this time, it will be worldwide. Almost every economy reached out for the Magic Money Tree - a giant and global exercise in kicking the can down the road.
2023 will mark the end of that road.
I'm just wondering two things -
1. Which domino falls first?
2. Will the world wise up and issue a currency based on the gold standard? (Forget CBDC, nobody wants that turkey - only the politicians and the central bankers want a Central Bank Digital Currency because it gives them more power - so that idea will be dead in the water!)
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- Original Poster
- #107
Just rough figures
In my opinion minimum wage should be based on 40 hours work and the amount a single person needs to have a 1 bedroom apartment with associated costs, be able to run a 5 year old car driving about 10k miles a year, pay £200 a month in energy costs, have £500 living costs and an extra £200 a month for savings/emergencies
If that single person has a child , it shouldn't mean the employer has to pay more, but childcare costs should be provided by the state, child benefit increased and a tax benefit is provided.
If that single person becomes a couple they should both be expected to work if childless and can then afford a better apartment as they have twice the amount coming in.
If the couple have children it should be same as if they are single
By doing it this way the children get the required support, but the parent doesn't benefit from having children
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Personally, I disagree with this. I think children have a happier and more well-rounded family life if at least one parent is around to spend time with them, instead of relying on a screen to keep them entertained. Then maybe the state wouldn't have to spend so much money on mental health support for children.
Yeah, so call me old-fashioned.
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Indeed. Which is why a single wage needs to be sufficient to support the family, like it used to be.
I know, that's harking back to a "golden age", and you can't turn the clock back and all that.
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Sorry, but I don't see how you can say "both should work if childless, but only one if they have children". The only way this works is if the state not only provides all the child's needs AND the other partner's costs. That just doesn't work unless you raise enough tax revenue, which means raising the wages of a single taxpayer to the point where you might as well tax them less and have only one person working in a household anyway!
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A "reasonable" rate is dictated by the market. If there are enough high paying jobs, all wages will rise, and those under-paying will find they can't recruit enough workers - which is exactly what's happening now. Given that Brexit has cut off the flow of low-paid Eastern Europeans, those companies paying minimum wage suddenly find they can no longer get workers at what they are offering.
They have a choice. Raise wages and prices, or go out of business. And to a point, that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's about time we stopped relying on cheap immigrant labour and started paying people properly.
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