Pass a law to peg benefits and national minimum wage levels to rise annually until they reach a living wage level.
At a time of large and rising unemployment we\’re going to increase the cost of labour to employers and also to increase the benefit level so as to make employment less attractive to employees?
This would be to repeat Roosevelt\’s mistakes of the mid 30s. Making labour more expensive when there is an excess of unused labour simply means that less labour will be employed. This has actually been tried and it failed, dismally and awfully, as the story of 1930s American showed.
No, seriously bad idea.
Yup, that would be a shocker. Amazing that Polly thinks making wages higher when many small companies are already on their knees will help matters.
Don’t give Roosevelt all the credit it was his predecessor, Hoover, that introduced wage controls.
All politicians, and Polly, seem to share a gift at knowing what us mere mortals should earn.
What’s that quote about people who fail to learn from history…?
Yes she fell out of the stupid tree and hit every branch. As a Conservative rather than a Libertarian , I am concerned about inclusiveness especially mobility and vastly less impressed with the market than many here .
Redistributive welafer is not the answer though . Maria`s paradisal vision ie Sweden has less redistribution than the UK after transfers are subtracted . It starts off more equal , and the reason for this might interest us , its example on education for example .
It has been clear however for along time that there is no scope for further redistribution through the tax system ( IFS ). If you wish to pull the back of the caravan up ,( and I think I would ) then you have to think about opportunity incentive at low levels and rebalancing from services .
“Amazing that Polly thinks making wages higher when many small companies are already on their knees will help matters.”
It will help reduce the number of small companies. Perhaps that is P0llyana’s aim? After all, they are motivated by profit, they must be completely evil.
As much as I’m against the minimum wage in general, it isn’t really the problem we’re facing at the moment.
Polly is an unheralded genius.
Just imagine, basic benefits were say £20,000 a year (same as average wage) and the minimum wage was £15 per hour. We’d all be rich! There’d be no poverty! Nobody would need to work at all and we’d all have a wonderful life of leisure!
What can possibly go wrong?
“Just imagine, basic benefits were say £20,000 a year (same as average wage) and the minimum wage was £15 per hour. We’d all be rich! There’d be no poverty! Nobody would need to work at all and we’d all have a wonderful life of leisure!”
If she is reading this – it might be in her column tomorrow.