Jobcentre suicide attempts.

[pottedplant]

So what effect would increasing minimum wage (increasing the employers' costs and reducing the ability to compete) have on unemployment?

 

My comment was in relation to reducing the benefit bill.

[pottedplant]

It would make it worse.

 

At times when there's millions of people unemployed it would actually make sense to lower the minimum wage to encourage companies to take more staff on (though of course this will only work if benefits are lowered too so you're always better off in a job than on the dole).

 

Decreasing the minimum so does not work:

 

An example- it takes 100 people to pick 100 cabbages and I pay them £10 each. ........... and the government subsidies by giving them £10 each. Or because the minimum wage is lowered I use 200 people to pick 100 cabbages and give them £5 each - and the government subsidies by paying them £15 each.

 

So get my cabbages get picked quicker, costs me no more, employ more people but benefit bill goes up! Great.

[poppet2]

It would make it worse.

 

At times when there's millions of people unemployed it would actually make sense to lower the minimum wage to encourage companies to take more staff on (though of course this will only work if benefits are lowered too so you're always better off in a job than on the dole).

 

People will still be subsidised if the minimum wage is lowered. Housing benefit and council tax benefit will still need to be paid because people are paid so little. Then there are tax credits which subsidise the low earners. What we need is an affordable living wage per hour so that people don't have to rely on any benefits to prop them up, whether from the DWP, or any other government office. It's just robbing Peter to pay Paul.

[danny128]

Decreasing the minimum so does not work:

 

An example- it takes 100 people to pick 100 cabbages and I pay them £10 each. ........... and the government subsidies by giving them £10 each. Or because the minimum wage is lowered I use 200 people to pick 100 cabbages and give them £5 each - and the government subsidies by paying them £15 each.

 

So get my cabbages get picked quicker, costs me no more, employ more people but benefit bill goes up! Great.

 

Off course it will work, i will make loads of money if i can pay less to my staff.

[pottedplant]

Off course it will work, i will make loads of money if i can pay less to my staff.

 

Of course you will doh!

[Rupert_Baehr]

Decreasing the minimum so does not work:

 

An example- it takes 100 people to pick 100 cabbages and I pay them £10 each. ........... and the government subsidies by giving them £10 each. Or because the minimum wage is lowered I use 200 people to pick 100 cabbages and give them £5 each - and the government subsidies by paying them £15 each.

 

So get my cabbages get picked quicker, costs me no more, employ more people but benefit bill goes up! Great.

 

You'll probably hire one Latvian on 80p per cabbage 'piecework rates' who will pick 100 cabbages on his own in the same time that your British workforce would have taken.

 

The 100 workers who would've cost you £10 each will sit at home on benefits and complain that the Latvian immigrant took the job that they weren't prepared to do anyway.

 

You've paid £800 to get your cabbages picked (and saved £200) which will mean that when your cabbages are offered for sale alongside the cabbages grown elsewhere, the customers will buy your product because the price will be competitive.

[cardoor]

My comment was in relation to reducing the benefit bill.

 

 

Replacing all benefits with Citizens Income is the only way to save the public purse and still provide a safety net.

 

http://www.coalitionforeconomicjustice.com/

[MrSmith]

You'll probably hire one Latvian on 80p per cabbage 'piecework rates' who will pick 100 cabbages on his own in the same time that your British workforce would have taken.

 

The 100 workers who would've cost you £10 each will sit at home on benefits and complain that the Latvian immigrant took the job that they weren't prepared to do anyway.

 

You've paid £800 to get your cabbages picked (and saved £200) which will mean that when your cabbages are offered for sale alongside the cabbages grown elsewhere, the customers will buy your product because the price will be competitive.

 

And although the Latvian is happy to have this job, they thought that joining the EU would bring inward investment to Latvia and enable them to find employment at home.

[Teddybare]

now they are a drain on the NHS...

 

Austerity cuts

 

Probably heard that any who has attempted to take their own life gets a free pass for benefits. It's easier to run a razor over a vein than turn up fortnightly to the Jobcentre.

 

Other bloke probably looked around and thought he was in Tunisia or Tibet, easy mistake to make.

[Rupert_Baehr]

And although the Latvian is happy to have this job, they thought that joining the EU would bring inward investment to Latvia and enable them to find employment at home.

 

That's probably true.

 

I met a couple of Poles who came to the UK to work some years ago. contrary to popular opinion they didn't come to the UK so that they could undercut British workers - they really wanted to be paid the same amount that British workers were paid - but they didn't get it.

 

They did get paid, however (and because they were both highly-skilled, competent and efficient workers, they managed to make a fair bit of money.

 

After a couple of years they took the money they had made, went back home and bought their own farms.

 

Had they been really unlucky, then a couple of enterprising hard-working Brits (who had been working in the UK for some time, so had a 'head start' on the immigrants) could have gone to Poland and bought the farms before the two Poles got back.

 

That didn't happen, of course.