Re: Cameron - Immigration

On Tue, 30 Oct 2007 12:40:43 -0700, Mel Rowing
<mel.rowing@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Oct 30, 4:37 pm, Maria <mariathom...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Tue, 30 Oct 2007 08:47:42 -0700, Mel Rowing

I can't agree at the moment, while we have working people (10 million+
working families) receiving up to £250/week in tax credits in order to
enable employers to pay minimum wage, and 5 million people out of work
and on benefits.

So we are told!

Look beneath the figures.

The only reason that employers pay minimum wage is nothing to do with
tax credits but to do with the skill levels of the people he employs.

Disagree. He knows that even if he only pays £5.45 an hour, the worker
can get that topped up considerably, therefore there is no incentive
for him to pay more than that, not just for jobs that 'anybody can
do', but also jobs that a more limited number of people can do.

The aim of any business is the maximisation of profit. This is
achieved in two ways. First by charging the highest price the market
will bear and second by driving costs down to the minimum. Wages
represent a cost to a business. The minimum wage represents therefore
a floor to cost savings in this area.

It matters no one jot to an employer as to whether an employee makes a
living wage and hence tax credits being extraneous to his business are
of no concern to him otherwise he would surely favour married
employees with families over single ones.

I should think that he believes quite simply that only those who can
afford to take the job will apply for it. If I could afford to
actually employ somebody, that's what I would think.
Why else do all the jobs in the Jobcentre have a little notice on them
saying that 'If you are looking for work, Tax Credits could top up
your earnings'?
The employer knows damn well that he would probably have to pay more
should tax credits not exist. The job my husband was doing (now done
by an immigrant) he started in 1996, and when he left, the wage was
exactly the same as when he started. The wage is still the same now,
11 years later.
Please do not tell me that tax credits have not effected wages! Of
course that is all academic now, because if there is a British person
who would like to do the job but can't afford to, there are hundreds
of migrant applicants to whom £5.45 is an excellent wage.


Similarly with employees. Though other considerations may have some
influence essentially the reason why employees work for one employer
rather than another is the wage rate. If neighbouring firms paid 50p /
hr over the going rate then the original employer would have to raise
his rate to avoid losing his work foce. However, this never happens.
The reason that it never happens is because, thanks to the minimum
wage, these people are already being paid more than what would be the
market rate. They're like buses, lose (miss) one and another will be
along in not too long a while. Like you say, there are a potential 5m
of them out there. Whilst that remains the case, wages of unskilled
labourers do not rise. On the contrary they should be falling.

If it were not for the minimum wage, they would be - of migrants were
taken out of the equation they would be increasing IMHO.

The the supply of hewers of wood and the drawers of water exceeds
demand. Were there no minimum wage then many would earn even less.

And if it were left to the market, many would earn more. And that
would give incentives to people to improve themselves whereas at the
moment there is little, since tax credits top up the money so
considerably.

No they wouldn't! You can only earn more if you can offer more.

That's what I am saying....that there is no incentive to learn more in
order to be able to offer more because the wages do not increase to
reward the effort. Why bother? Might as well go fishing instead.

If
that were the case then they would be earning more. That's why forms
promote their best (in all senses of the word) workers and pay them
more to retain them. That's why skilled workers earn more than
unskilled, they are less easily replaced.

Skilled as in with degrees or professional qualifications you mean?

It takes investment at a personal level to acquire skills and/or build
a career. I'm afraid an investment some are not prepared to make. I
have in mind schoolmates of mine who gave up grammar school places to
leave a few months earlier without 'O' levels. People of my generation
(and the one that followed) who gave up low paid apprenticeships to
go into better paid (at the time) but dead end jobs. People who lost
apprenticeships by taking day release training but failing to fulfil
their obligation by turning up for night classes.

I know a few lads who lost their apprenticeships because the
government grant ran out - they were laid off by their employer and
another apprentice employed in his place.

You can't blame anything or anybody for any of that.

You don't get many skilled people earning the minimum wage. Last week I
paid a self employed plumber £40/hour and he didn't seem to be the
sharpest knife in the box.

Self-employment is a different matter IMV.

It's the ultimate expression of that personal investment I've just
mentioned. If you've something to offer you do well. If not you don't.
If you can't get out of bed or feel like a "sickie" then you earn
nothing,

I am arguing that sans minimum wage and tax credits that is exactly
how everyone would behave.

Benefits are part of the problem. Nobody suggests that folk should be
left destitute. However, the existance of benefits acts as a
disincentive to beneficiaries to seriously seek work and turn
themselves into the highest marginal tax payers in the country (the
reason behind tax credits) Better by far to remain the highest hourly
paid group in the country and rely a little bit on "the black" for
those little extras.

It is true that distortions in the age structure of the population to
put strains on social and economic infrastructure. I would have
thought that that stood to sense. It's ludicrous to suggest that we
can maintain 5m un- and underemployed and eventually carry them
through into old age and yet further support with a declining work
population without there being significant increases in worker
productivity but average skill level doesn't permit that.

Then we need to address that, but who is going to do that when there
is a virtually unlimited supply of workers?

First of all we pay the guy who fails to turn up Mondays and expects
to leave early on a Friday what he's worth.

Just get rid of him.

One thing that has struck me whilst abroad is the way that age seems
to relate to social role. For instance if you use a supermarket in the
US then the chances are that your goods will be packed or your goods
cashed up by somebody in their teens. Here the same jobs will be
carried out not unusually by someone in middle age.

That's because US teenagers expect to have to work their way through
college (part of that same personal investment) There a wayward
teenager is threatened with "ending up pumping gas". Here you pump the
bloody gas yourself because the task is simply not worth the minimum
wage rate.

Here we pay an 18 year old £50 p/w (or whatever it is) to lie in bed.
If that same 18 year old went to university to invest in himself, it
would cost him £60 p/w.

Do you know, my little girl, who is now 16, has applied for 15 jobs
since leaving school last June and has not even been offered an
interview, nor even received a rejection letter? She has applied at
Wimpy, several hotels, DIY stores, high street shops, and even the
local theme park for temporary summer work. She is wholly prepared to
do anything to earn some money - she's 17 next month and wants to
start driving and needs the money for lessons.
She did some cleaning for the firm my husband works for over the
summer - they didn't really want to take her on because at 16 she is
not allowed to clean a toilet.
She is the opposite of workshy, but I will be surprised if by the age
of 18 she actually has any motivation to look for a job left - maybe
she'll just take the £44/week too.
It's not like it was when we left school Mel - there is almost
*nothing* out there for young people who do not achieve good academic
grades.
Even in 1978 when I left school, at a time when things were supposed
to be economically dire, I was offered two or three full time
permanent jobs every time I went job-hunting, and that was not with
government departments but just local firms. If you failed at school,
as long as you weren't completely illiiterate, they would simply train
you up, because they were not prejudiced against young people who had
failed to achieve C+ grades.
Employers have become narrow, picky and closed-minded towards the
young, and with limited vision wrt on -the-job training, and maybe
that explains why so many youngsters are walking the streets feeling
hopeless, pushing prams, or with needle tracks up their arms . That
just didn't happen when I left school, nor when you did I suspect.

I'm getting emotional now so I'll stop there.


.

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