Metropol

cdd wrote:To those who believe in the NMW, what do you say to the argument that you are stripping people of the right to sell their services for the price they are willing to?

I would say that desperate people will do just about anything to survive.

What do you think their motivation is?

If we lived in a welfare less country, I would say their motivation was to survive.

But we (rightly) live in a country where there is a benefit for those who are out of work, in the form of the jsa.

The jsa effectively sets a minimum wage, since firms will have trouble hiring if they undercut it.

I just don't get why it's necessary to directly interfere with the labour market by setting an actual minimum, which (surely) robs some people of rights.

cdd wrote:I just don't get why it's necessary to directly interfere with the labour market by setting an actual minimum, which (surely) robs some people of rights.

The right to what?

We work to live. To survive. To eat. To put a roof over our head. To have heat and light.

What right are does the NMW rob people of? The right to be exploited?

cdd wrote:If we lived in a welfare less country, I would say their motivation was to survive.

But we (rightly) live in a country where there is a benefit for those who are out of work, in the form of the jsa.

The jsa effectively sets a minimum wage, since firms will have trouble hiring if they undercut it.

JSA isn't an alternative to a job (or it certainly shouldn't be), its the social insurance payment for you to survive if you don't have a job. By definition, a NMW should exceed that figure, as no one can be expected to survive on less. Well, perhaps in the third-world, but not in Britain in 2012.

You just argued that people have the right to sell themselves short of a survival figure - but if their JSA is cut off if they refuse such a job (which of course happens) then it becomes a race to the bottom. Firms wouldn't have issues undercutting JSA if people have it removed if they refuse a job.

And never in my life would I offer to pay someone less than JSA or the NMW.

But not everyone is decent like me.

The NMW level is exploitative. I think it's time we started introducing mechanisms which link the amount people on the 'bottom-rung' of a company are paid a figure per hour within a certain percentage of the highest paid person in that company.

WillPS wrote:The NMW level is exploitative. I think it's time we started introducing mechanisms which link the amount people on the 'bottom-rung' of a company are paid a figure per hour within a certain percentage of the highest paid person in that company.

That would anger quite a lot of people.

WillPS wrote:The NMW level is exploitative. I think it's time we started introducing mechanisms which link the amount people on the 'bottom-rung' of a company are paid a figure per hour within a certain percentage of the highest paid person in that company.

When the boss gets a pay rise, everyone else does. Sounds fair to me