Labour Leader: Keir Starmer V

[Tony L]

The more I think about it the more I think I’m against any ‘minimum wage’ at all. I’d far prefer to see a universal basic income and people and businesses free to do as they please above that. £15 per hour would be absolutely crippling for a lot of small businesses and would just drive them off the map. Those that did survive would obviously have to increase prices to the end user thus hitting the poorest hardest with more expensive goods and services. UBO is the only way forward IMO. Everything else is trying to address the 21st century world with 19th and 20th century mass labour thinking.

PS I’m prepared to bet about 50% or more of self employed folk make a hell of a lot less than £15 an hour. We have no dinosaur!

 

[gavreid]

Any business that can't pay £15 per hour just isn't viable - let's have the state subsidies out in the open. The way things stand the state is subsidising the likes of Bezos who don't even pay the tax that provides the subsidy. We need to create a more sustainable economy not a copy of Malasia or some such. When people earn more thay can afford to pay more for goods and services and the income benefits wider society. The minimum wage acts as a downward force on everyone's wages.

 

[Tony L]

Any business that can't pay £15 per hour just isn't viable - let's have the state subsidies out in the open.

In which case be prepared to say goodbye to your corner shop, independent pub, low-end music venues, recording studios, independent/community art galleries etc etc. Most will be staffed on very cheap wages, likely cash in hand. As ever Labour and Conservative only deal with elites vs lumpen proletariat mass labour, or jobs within the state bureaucracy. This simply isn’t how much of the world works.

FWIW pfm doesn’t pay anything remotely close to £15 an hour, yet here we are! There are hundreds of thousands of businesses like this one and I certainly don’t want some over-paid gammony trade union leader or equivalent telling me whether I’m viable or not. They can stick their closed-box bureaucratic thinking right up their arse as far as I’m concerned. I believe in the right to choose one’s own path through life and always have done. If someone wants to work for whatever money they like they should have the absolute right to do so.

It’s also a meaningless figure as everyone has different outgoings each month so “viability” is a variable. A teenager living at the parental home or retired home-owner obviously has different outgoings than someone mortgaged to the hilt drowning in credit card debt etc.

 

[gavreid]

In which case be prepared to say goodbye to your corner shop, independent pub, low-end music venues, recording studios, independent/community art galleries etc etc. Most will be staffed on very cheap wages, likely cash in hand. As ever Labour and Conservative only deal with elites vs lumpen proletariat mass labour or jobs within the state bureaucracy. This simply isn’t how much of the world works.

FWIW pfm doesn’t pay anything remotely close to £15 an hour, yet here we are! There are hundreds of thousands of businesses like this one and I certainly don’t want some over-paid gammony trade union leader or equivalent telling me whether I’m viable or not. They can stick their closed-box bureaucratic thinking right up their arse as far as I’m concerned. I believe in the right to choose one’s own path through life and always have done. If someone wants to work for whatever money they like they should have the absolute right to do so.

No, I'm just saying let's have any subsidies out in the open so they're not given to those seeking to exploit. There are a vast number of larger employers who have managed to drive wages down to the minimum by outsourcing to spivs.

 

[Tony L]

No, I'm just saying let's have any subsidies out in the open so they're not given to those seeking to exploit. There are a vast number of larger employers who have managed to drive wages down to the minimum by outsourcing to spivs.

This is why I believe in a universal basic income. It is a totally open and transparent base level. Beyond that progressive taxation on income that leaves the lowest earners owing nothing. Scrap NI, scrap VAT. Just UBI and progressive income tax. Most importantly collect the tax owed. The problem is neither Labour nor Conservative will do this as both parties are built on pork barrels.

 

[gavreid]

This is why I believe in a universal basic income. It is a totally open and transparent base level. Beyond that progressive taxation on income that leaves the lowest earners owing nothing. Scrap NI, scrap VAT. Just UBI and progressive income tax.

It does amount to much the same thing for people in employment. Again the Bezoses (and Starmers) of this world will claim that it's unaffordable.

 

[Frizzy]

You could say UBO has started via the state levelling up low wages , though I have thought for some time that ubo is inevitable. Shame the three big trails failed though the reasons given were varied and vague.
It may well be like communism and roddenburys Star Trek world, in that it only works if everyone buys into it, competing models won’t work alongside each other.

 

[Le Baron]

In which case be prepared to say goodbye to your corner shop, independent pub, low-end music venues, recording studios, independent/community art galleries etc etc. Most will be staffed on very cheap wages, likely cash in hand. As ever Labour and Conservative only deal with elites vs lumpen proletariat mass labour, or jobs within the state bureaucracy. This simply isn’t how much of the world works.

FWIW pfm doesn’t pay anything remotely close to £15 an hour, yet here we are! There are hundreds of thousands of businesses like this one and I certainly don’t want some over-paid gammony trade union leader or equivalent telling me whether I’m viable or not. They can stick their closed-box bureaucratic thinking right up their arse as far as I’m concerned. I believe in the right to choose one’s own path through life and always have done. If someone wants to work for whatever money they like they should have the absolute right to do so.

It’s also a meaningless figure as everyone has different outgoings each month so “viability” is a variable. A teenager living at the parental home or retired home-owner obviously has different outgoings than someone mortgaged to the hilt drowning in credit card debt etc.

I find this a bizarre mission statement. Is it true that you or people around you are choosing to earn well under a minimum wage and gladly accept any ensuing poverty? Or do you have another income stream which makes all that not quite so acute?

Of course if some dogged 'entrepreneur', the type who later tells the tale of sleeping in his car, eating only soup and paying himself pennies a day, wants to take that to 'grow his enterprise', well that's up to him. This is not valid for any employees who join a company hoping to earn enough to live above subsistence level. That's not an unreasonable expectation and is the very definition of viable in terms of furnishing the economy. At the very best a company would have to be staffed by some sort of collective agreeing to run an enterprise for love rather than money rewards, but that's not the position of most companies, who shouldn't get to decide someone is worth well under the market rate for the sake of them choosing art over money.

There's a tension between labours of love and labours of love that then posit themselves as a business, because the latter has to conform to other people's expectation of earning a living. Anyone insisting on market economy rules has to then accept that even the most lovely community art gallery or bookshop operating on those principles is subject to those market risks. Once they are in receipt of subsidies, they're not quite an independent business and waving a fist at 'the state bureaucracy' is a bit hypocritical if it's the only thing keeping it afloat beyond wage suppression on the basis of 'otherwise we'll go broke'.

Basic income is exactly a state subsidy, which comes with conditions despite the rhetoric. And an actually potentially inflationary one because there is no guarantee that it mobilises anyone to do anything in any organised way. If you get a basic income, why would you engage in work - potentially beneficial to society - when you can choose to simply refuse? Every proposal I've seen for it is an excuse to destroy social protections on the alleged basis that everyone now has the means to support themselves.

 

[Seeker_UK]

If someone wants to work for whatever money they like they should have the absolute right to do so.

I think that anyone can already work for whatever money they like.

 

[russel]

Any business that can't pay £15 per hour just isn't viable - let's have the state subsidies out in the open. The way things stand the state is subsidising the likes of Bezos who don't even pay the tax that provides the subsidy. We need to create a more sustainable economy not a copy of Malasia or some such. When people earn more thay can afford to pay more for goods and services and the income benefits wider society. The minimum wage acts as a downward force on everyone's wages.

High wages were what drove the industrial revolution, there were big money prizes for developing methods to extract water from mines, John Harrison’s marine clock that enabled accurate navigation was a prize created by the admiralty. In other words the UK was a high wage high technology country and you cannot replicate that by driving round in painted cars driving up house prices.

 

[Tony L]

I find this a bizarre mission statement. Is it true that you or people around you are choosing to earn well under a minimum wage and gladly accept any ensuing poverty? Or do you have another income stream which makes all that not quite so acute?

Find it as bizarre as you like, and it is certainly an outsider’s perspective as I am fiercely independent and my idea of hell is working for someone else in a conventional 8 hour a day role. I rejected that concept right from the off and consider my freedom to be worth exponentially more than any wage. I have only done traditional 8 hour a day work for maybe 7-8 years of my 58 years on this planet, and about half of those were as a contractor (i.e. able to define my own path to a far greater degree). I also spent much of the ‘80s off grid in the black economy again doing my own thing. I know exactly what low income is, but I want to be the one choosing, I certainly don’t want to see political parties formed in the days of mass labour and aristocracy effectively taking options off the table due to their myopic 20th century or earlier thinking.

If I want a job for the money on the table I’ll take it, if not I’ll find something that pays more. I may choose to take a few hours in one place and do other things as well. That is 100% my choice, not Keir Starmer’s, Boris Johnson’s, or Jeremy Corbyn’s. I am fundamentally anti-authoritarian, and that means I am against politics screwing around with people’s businesses and life choices. I obviously draw the line way before sending children up chimneys etc, but with the safety net of a universal basic income and the level playing field of fair and progressive taxation I believe in people’s right to self determination beyond that.

 

[gavreid]

High wages were what drove the industrial revolution, there were big money prizes for developing methods to extract water from mines, John Harrison’s marine clock that enabled accurate navigation was a prize created by the admiralty. In other words the UK was a high wage high technology country and you cannot replicate that by driving round in painted cars driving up house prices.

£15 per hour isn't a high wage in today's money, it's still relatively poor pay. It proves the point about the minimum wage acting as a lead weight on everyone else when you realise which types of roles are paid at that kind of level, it's actually around the average weekly earnings.

 

[Heckyman]

Both amount to a pay raise, why do you think one is better than the other? Though I think it probably would help.

Take the current HGV driver "crisis". Despite all the media noise, you can still find job ads for HGV C+E (Class 1) @ £10 p/h!

Companies were fine with "market forces" driving down wages, they just have to bite the bullet now the pendulum has swung the other way.

Government should concentrate on its core role, running a fair tax system and the public infrastructure (education, health, transport, environment etc.).

 

[Le Baron]

Find it as bizarre as you like, and it is certainly an outsider’s perspective as I am fiercely independent and my idea of hell is working for someone else in a conventional 8 hour a day role. I rejected that concept right from the off and consider my freedom to be worth exponentially more than any wage. I have only done traditional 8 hour a day work for maybe 7-8 years of my 58 years on this planet, and about half of those were as a contractor (i.e. able to define my own path to a far greater degree). I also spent much of the ‘80s off grid in the black economy again doing my own thing. I know exactly what low income is, but I want to be the one choosing, I certainly don’t want to see political parties formed in the days of mass labour and aristocracy effectively taking options off the table due to their myopic 20th century or earlier thinking.

If I want a job for the money on the table I’ll take it, if not I’ll find something that pays more. I may choose to take a few hours in one place and do other things as well. That is 100% my choice, not Keir Starmer’s, Boris Johnson’s, or Jeremy Corbyn’s. I am fundamentally anti-authoritarian, and that means I am against politics screwing around with people’s businesses and life choices. I obviously draw the line way before sending children up chimneys etc, but with the safety net of a universal basic income and the level playing field of fair and progressive taxation I believe in people’s right to self determination beyond that.

That's dandy, but the off-grid community is always actually benefiting from public infrastructure, spending and other people's work whilst preaching 'independence'. Somewhere there is someone else working to make all this happen. I don't want to tell you whether or not you can opt-out, that's up to you, but it doesn't set a universal standard for the rest of the population who need to draw a salary to support a family and other differing needs. The wider economy isn't built around mavericks.

It's also built around putting resources to use for everyone and the pattern you outlined doesn't do that. It looks a lot more like the I'm all right Jack Thatcherism claiming that it's all their for the taking (as little or as much as you want or need) if people just get on with it, but this is the upside-down version. While I'm typing now (off work with a bad back) someone else is shuttling about in a van making sure the internet is still working everywhere. So it would fine for me to say I'm opting-out and being a 'digital nomad', someone else is propping me up. If him and everyone goes off to be a digital nomad to avoid 'authoritarianism' it would be a fine Stan and Olly mess wouldn't it?

Basic income is a nonsense idea.

 

[Tony L]

I’d hate to live in a world dictated by your particular brand of far-left authoritarianism. I’m obviously no Thatcherite, but I’m certainly not on your page either.

 

[Le Baron]

I’d hate to live in a world dictated by your particular brand of far-left authoritarianism. I’m obviously no Thatcherite, but I’m certainly not on your page either.

I can't see what is 'far left' about having everyone organising work for the benefit of everyone else in a shared economy. In general though I don't know what 'far left' is supposed to represent other than the inbuilt pejorative notions.
If fair return for work is 'far left', then I'm far left and glad about it! Wishy-washy market anarchism is hardly social justice, nor is it coherent to the meaningful workings of a regular monetary economy.

Isn't a basic income actually submission to authority? It's maintained by government decree and can be taken away too. You then rely on that transfer payment and the maintenance of government stability/authority.

 

[paulfromcamden]

In which case be prepared to say goodbye to your corner shop, independent pub, low-end music venues, recording studios, independent/community art galleries etc etc. Most will be staffed on very cheap wages, likely cash in hand. As ever Labour and Conservative only deal with elites vs lumpen proletariat mass labour, or jobs within the state bureaucracy. This simply isn’t how much of the world works.

I can certainly confirm that lots of 'grassroots' or 'underground' (not 'low-end' please Tony ) venues are run on buttons. They'd love to pay staff more but unless people start paying £50 to go and see skronky free jazz on a wet Tuesday it's simply not an option.

That said, there are plenty of large megafirms *cough* Amazon *cough* who should probably be stumping up a bit more and won't do so without being legally required to.

Perhaps there should be a threshold where firms employing, say, 30 people or less are exempt? It's tricky.

 

[paulfromcamden]

Anyone insisting on market economy rules has to then accept that even the most lovely community art gallery or bookshop operating on those principles is subject to those market risks. Once they are in receipt of subsidies, they're not quite an independent business and waving a fist at 'the state bureaucracy' is a bit hypocritical if it's the only thing keeping it afloat beyond wage suppression on the basis of 'otherwise we'll go broke'.

Are you arguing against state funding of the arts?

 

[Le Baron]

I can certainly confirm that lots of 'grassroots' or 'underground' (not 'low-end' please Tony ) venues are run on buttons. They'd love to pay staff more but unless people start paying £50 to go and see skronky free jazz on a wet Tuesday it's simply not an option.

That said, there are plenty of large megafirms *cough* Amazon *cough* who should probably be stumping up a bit more and won't do so without being legally required to.

Perhaps there should be a threshold where firms employing, say, 30 people or less are exempt? It's tricky.

Certainly. I'm not trying to crush people who provide culture on their own time. This sort of thing should be possible without living generally in either penury or extravagant luxury or having having other people do so.

 

[Le Baron]

Are you arguing against state funding of the arts?

No. I'm saying practically the opposite. That people pretend such things are businesses when in fact they could never operate under the normal conception of so-called 'market forces'. Subsidies keep a majority of the arts afloat.