Do you think the Minimum Wage is too low in the UK? I think it should rise to £6.50 per hour(US$9.00).?

Answer 1

Well considering minimum federal wage in US is actually 5.15dollars and not 9dollars, I can't really see the comparison being made. Minimum wage deals in countries are a good idea to help the underpaid, young people, immigrants etc but often now bad employers are using the base rate to attract employees as if it is a salary to aspire to, this is so wrong.

Answer 2

Not really... the type of job I do was once way above the minimum wage when it first began, now it is not very much above it.. It is OK for the lower paid workers and yes they should be able to earn enough to fund a normal lifestyle but it is demoralising for people who have worked that bit harder and think why do I put all this effort in when I could be screwing tops on tubes of toothpaste for £1 an hour less? Beside there are that many tax credits etc for people on low incomes, even single people that I feel there is not really a need for the minimum wage to keep increasing at the rate it does.

Where I work, there are people on the minimum wage who are deemed by Inland Revenue to not earn enough, therefore they get topped up by the state. Meaning that in some cases they take home more money than people who have worked harder to get higher placed jobs and who work more hours! Is this fair?

By all means increase the minimum wage but stop the handouts for people who can't be bothered to do a full days work!

Answer 3

Yes it should, I do not know what person could live on £5.00 per hour properly.. I know they have tax credits to help out the low waged but really the whole idea is to go back to work without help from the government.... And minimum wage is national, which is unfair the the people in the south of England where the cost of living is much higher

Answer 4

Its difficult to imagine how anyone could survive and support a family on £5.00 per hour, even with the help of tax credits etc. Because there are now so many one parent families in this country, it is difficult to survive on a single wage packet anyway. I earn over £11.00 per hour (24k per annum) and I have 2 kids to support. Although this is a good wage, it is still only just enough to pay bills, transport, food clothing etc. My kids consider us to be much poorer than any of their friends who have 2 parents. Despite this, I am not on the lookout for a nother husband, nor would I consider doing a lower paid job with less hours to claim government handouts. Everything we have I have earned and its worth it to be able to hold my head up amongst other single parents who won't work and live off the state and my National Insurance contributions. Oerhaps it would encourage more people to work if the minimum wage was put up. 36.50 does not seem like an awful lot of money for an hours work.

What would be better would be to reduce the prices of food and fuel etc, so that the minimum wage would be enough to manage on in the first place. Also to build more affordable social housing and stop the buy at any cost culture that we live in now. I live in a nice council house in a nice area, yet I wouldn't dream of attempting to buy it on my salary. It would mean I would have to have a 100% mortgage for around £200,000 after discounts. I am sure that would cost me much more than the £300.00 per month I am paying now .

Answer 5

Minimum wage is being increase next year but not to the levels suggested.

If you pay everybody a £million per year it doesnt increase everybodies purchasing power it simply drives inflation to the point where it counters the increase.

Wages can only really go up relative to productivity and increased value from the output or you get inflation which counteracts the effect of any "increase"

So minimum wage whilst a good idea to avoid exploitation is not about the amount you pay but about the whole economic footprint.

Answer 6

I think £6.50 is too high. If minimum wage is too high then more people will be working illegally since employers can't afford to pay them minimum wage. This will leave more people open to exploitation and without any legal support or recourse.

Answer 7

I think it should be scrapped completely. It doesn't work and if anything my wages went down not up when it was introduced. Raising it to £6.50 per hour won't do anything. All it means is employers will be greedy and not give employees the pay rise they deserve because they don't have to and your wages will only go up when NMW does.

Answer 8

I always felt that employers and employees were capable of making their own arrangements. What is the point of importing cheap labour, if you counteract it by keep increasing the minimum wage. Although, immigrants wont work for peanuts for ever. If you artificially ratchet up wages, then employers have to make redundancies or go bust. You can't beat the market place.

Answer 9

i imagine we choose a maximum salary better than we choose a minimum salary, IMO. herald a rule the position the utmost paid worker of a public restricted agency can not earn better than say 20 situations its lowest paid worker. Yeah, the CEO of Tesco will pay himself £2 million if he likes, yet on condition that he would not ideas paying his checkout artwork force £one hundred,000 a three hundred and sixty 5 days. this style of rule may also help our small agencies to compete with the large boys. And enable's close ALL tax loopholes. No aspect bringing in larger taxes if we gained't assemble the tax that human beings owe already. there's a daft quantity of wealth contained in the global, and that is better targeted on the very authentic than ever in the previous. Time to spread the love, fat cats.

Answer 10

The minimum wage will always be too low because the world's governments are run by blood sucking leeches that like to keep the rich richer and the poor poverty stricken. I say we fight the power wherever possible!