Minimum Wage

Yeah I thought it was beneficial, a reform Labour had to grant to keep the support of the poor. I know it pushed up a lot of people's wages, don't know about it pushing anyone's down though, but it wouldn't really surprise me. Still, I don't think you can say minimum wage legislation is a bad thing really...

Hi

I don't mind the minimum wage as such, but it coincides with benefit cuts, and "disasters" like the Tax Credits system.

As importantly, it is part of a raft of social policy measures designed to consolidate working class slavery and push more resources towards the elite away from the already most impoverished parts of the working class.

So as an isolated thing, I suppose it’s vaguely progressive (but nothing like as progressive as a minimum income, which has revolutionary implications) but within the context of the rest of the social policy with which it is bound up, it’s reactionary.

Love

LR

Hi

I am specifically referring to the debts incurred through the government’s refusal to write off over payments, which can easily run into a couple of thousand pounds. As you know, I’m heavily involved in advising people on how to best cope with these problems and have spent a lot of time in the C.A.B and had dealings at the local MP’s constituency office and the tax credits system has caused a lot of hardship. As state-debt it can’t be written off by bankruptcy either. Having chatted to a few experts on the matter, and this is where I see what you’re getting at, those suffering hardship which common sense would suggest would be unacceptable in a “civilised” society are so small in number and politically marginalised, there is little they can do but take specialist advice on how to best avoid starvation under these circumstances.

On a more practical note, our lives do not fit the tax credit formula, people’s circumstances change more regularly than the tax credit system anticipates. People shouldn’t have to report-in to the government every time their working hours, income or child care arrangements change. Our advice to people claiming tax credits is to regard it as interest free loan, rather than a gift, until two years after you get explicit documented confirmation from the Revenue that the amount has been calculated correctly.

If you visit the local job centre, there are a lot of jobs advertised as don’t-worry-about-the-low-pay-tax-credits-will-make-this-job-worth-your-while, so there’s an argument that they suppress real wages. Part time workers don’t qualify either. Since this government came to power real incomes for the lowest paid without dependent children have shrunk compared to prices of necessities such as housing and energy.

Either way, tax credits and the minimum wage can’t be examined in isolation, but as part of a raft of social policy measures designed to enhance authoritarian control over, and transfer resources from, the working class.

Love

LR

Hi

Long enough to stop you from starving to death, as long as you go through the appropriate genuflections and grovelling to the bourgeoisie. Most tax, social housing rent arrears and utility bills can operate in the same way as long as you show whatever middle class adjudicator is in charge a record of your income and expenditure so you can justify the regular amount and timescale. Not a pleasant experience, a bit like paying your tithes to the baron the priest and the king.

Not too willing, although if one’s dead posh I suppose one might think it’s entirely reasonable. There’s a process involving sending the debt collectors a sheet showing your income and expenditure and statutory amounts you’re allowed to spend on car, TV, food etc. Humiliating sure, but more importantly, it’s authoritarian conditioning pure and simple.

Love

LR

Lazy, can you outline the revolutionary implications of a minimum income? There was an Australian Labor Party economist who argued something similar. My initial reaction was that under capitalism it would just be inflationary and defeat its own purpose by devaluing the self same minimum income (Sorta like printing more money). Differences in wealth would be preserved by pre-ownership of capital. Do you see it being pegged to a consumer price index or something?

(Sorry if this is off topic. Maybe it needs a new thread).

What I remember is that for 13 weeks you can be looking for a narrow set of work - as a Specialist in owl droppings if you like. After that they want you to accept anything within a category, office work, for example, and after six omths they'll get you to an interview and might New Deal you - i. e. send you to a training scheme or make you do voluntery work for your dole.

It was certainly better before the JSA and other 'reforms'. In some Europ countries it's still possible to sign on as, for example, a flag-pole painter, or poet, and hold out for those jobs (real examples from Holland), although they're suffereing a neo-liberal assault as well.

The change isn't so much about the cost, as about ensuring labour market 'liquidity', i.e. that people move quickly from one job to another and that they move to the jobs that are offered, which are increasingly poorly paid service jobs.

Hi

The Bank of England wasn't independent back then. The Government could print as much money as it wanted and put up with inflation as a consequence.

Love

LR

Nothing much to add(as usual)pretty much what Lazy and Laz said, it's just nice to read lazlo and lazy agreeing and making so much sense. It also great that Lazy isn't demanding you prove something like an angry schoolteacher every time someone makes a post ( a little snipe made in good humour)

Also, pre-JSA the so-called "stricter benefit regime" regulations relied on badly-paid, demotivated civil servants (I was one at the time) to enforce them, who (often) just didn't bother. In fact, "SBR" targets were removed from individual civil servants after a year because of low-level disobedience/not being arsed. What JSA did was to enshrine these regulations in law, thus forcing civil servants to carry them out as part of their day-to-day duties -- or at least, making it far harder to opt out.

It's also worth pointing out that during the Tory years, JobCentres were starved of workers & resources. As part of the New Deal, Labour has (selectively) invested a lot more in JobCentres and (unfortunately for some claimants) enabled the rules around claiming benefits to be applied a lot more rigourously.

That's part of it - stronger unions, etc. There was also the issue that with cyclical unemployment, the unemployed of today is assumed to be the unionised full-time worker of tomorrow, so there's no point in punishing them as you need them. With the creation of mass unemployment as a norm, the unemployed are assumed to function as a reserve army of labour that has to be squeezed and liquified to reach all the unnatractive parts of the economy.