If you walk down Oxford Street, London's busiest shopping thoroughfare, you might think that you're in wealthy country. Bulging bags hang from shoppers' arms, enticing window displays beckon you inside, where racks are packed with expensive temptations.
Yet what few shoppers know is that the assistants who serve them have no chance to participate in this cornucopia, or even, most likely to buy themselves a cup of tea as they take the weight off their feet. For as a report in the Evening Standard newspaper revealed today, just two — TWO! — of the 300 shops here pay staff the London living wage – the hourly rate calculated as the minimum necessary for a decent basic standard of life in the British capital.
There was much excitement when the Labour government introduced a national minimum wage in the UK in 1999, and certainly that's better than the previous situation, where employers could legally pay peanuts, but that full-time work can still leave many in a state of poverty cannot be acceptable in a rich country like Britain.
A couple of things make this possible. One is a culture that regards far too many jobs as not proper jobs at all. They're "jobs" done by students, by "resting" actors, by short-term immigrants, not proper professions in which you can spend career.
The second is the fact that the country seems prepared to accept huge numbers of adults, and of children, living in poverty. A recent report showed that 2.1 million British children whose parents work still be in poverty. When attempts have been made to do something about this, they have come in the form of government payments, not action for fair pay. This amounts to corporate welfare; payments that allow companies to keep scooping up excess profits, and paying their executives farcically high salaries and bonuses, while resting on the back of the taxpayer.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Isabella Fiske McFarlin
I agree. Obviously, that any child should live in poverty in this time is absolutely horrific. I see many hungry children in Vermont; I'd like to commend the Bethel, VT. schoolboard and all involved for providing some meals for children even during the summer. I wish more people would be concerned with this than with "balancing the budget." I'm sure it's important, for we don't want to be slaves to China, and all that, but we also want our kids to grow up healthy-- and grow up!
2 - Isabella Fiske McFarlin
I realize that the author is writing about the UK, but we have the same problems here in the U.S.
3 - Glenn Contrarian
I wonder how many of those who oppose even the idea of minimum wage could raise a child by themselves on minimum wage...
...as hundreds of thousands of single mothers here in the U.S. are struggling to do.
4 - Dave Nalle
We do indeed have the same problem here in the US. [Edited] leftists are promoting this ridiculous idea of a massively inflated and unjustifiable minimum wage aggressively here as well.
A real living wage is best set by the marketplace. To do otherwise is to destroy business competitiveness and force economization through the cutting of jobs. We have seen the damage which these crazy wage schemes have wrought in some of the more socialist European countries. Why anyone would want to follow their lead is beyond me.
Dave
5 - Natalie Bennett
"Business competitiveness" somehow allows bankers and executives to pay themselves many millions in bonuses - while ensuring that their cleaners can't afford their products. The "market" is a blind, thoughtless behemouth. If we want civilisation it needs to be carefully controlled and not allowed to run wild.
6 - Clavos
If we want civilisation it needs to be carefully controlled and not allowed to run wild.
If that's the price to be paid, then I, for one, don't want that version of "civilization."
7 - Glenn Contrarian
Dave (and Clavos) -
A real living wage is best set by the marketplace.
Care to show me even one modern-day example of this?
8 - roger nowosielski
@6
Good for you, Clav.
9 - roger nowosielski
BTW, no reflection on your intentions, Natalie, just got to express yourself better.
10 - Natalie Bennett
By "civilisation" here I mean a society in which everyone has a roof over their head, a decent diet -- and doesn't have to worry about whether that will still be there next week -- and a chance to feel like they are part of the society, not excluded from it.
Those are things that our current rampant neoliberal capitalism have patently failed to deliver.
11 - Clavos
Care to show me even one modern-day example of this?
Glenn, I assume you are aware that the current federal minimum wage is $7.25/Hr. and that McDonald's lowest starting hourly wage is currently a national average of $7.30?
12 - roger nowosielski
But our government, Natalie, supports this economic system, Chinese government, socialist as it may be, supports this economic system. Obviously, the problems you're raising go beyond mere capitalist or socialist solutions, beyond the party line, beyond the liberal or conservative thought.
13 - Doug Hunter
I've solved the problem. There's simply not enough little brown people working at slave wages to provide me all my 'rights'. I hear alot of talk about how we have a 'right' to a roof over our head, a right to healthy food, and a right to healthcare... but when I look on my roof I see former third world laborers, when I look at the workers in the fields I see hispanic immigrants, when I go to the doctor I often get in to someone from a India or another third world country.
We've exported as much as we could of the ugly underside of what keeps our gilded lives afloat, for that we can't export we reimport illegal workers for a share. Roger is right, neither side has an answer for just as we can't all be independently wealthy capitalist not everyone can have a cushy government or union job. Every fluff position, from CEO to bureacrat, rests their boots on the backs of untold numbers of low wage laborers.
No one is a slave to my rights.
14 - Boeke
It's a failure of our current system that while the highest of our citizens are allowed to achieve as high as they like, the lowest find their very existence imperilled.
15 - Glenn Contrarian
Clavos -
You didn't answer my question - and it's not your fault because I see that I could have phrased it better. Can you show me a modern-day example of a country that has no minimum wage, wherein the marketplace is setting the living wage...and where poverty is not higher than it already is in America?
16 - Clavos
America, Glenn. That was the point of my post with the minimum wage data.
17 - Glenn Contrarian
Clavos -
And you know very well your answer cannot apply because America already has a minimum wage and IIRC has had one since FDR.
So...try again - but I really don't think you will because I don't think you'll be able to point out a modern country without a minimum wage, where the marketplace sets the living wage, that has a poverty level not higher than America's already is.
18 - Glenn Contrarian
BUT I can certainly point out to you lots of countries that DO have minimum wages whose poverty levels are lower than in America.
And that begs the question: If having a minimum wage is SO VERY BAD, then why is it that there's NO countries without a minimum wage that have a poverty rate lower than America's, but there's lots of countries WITH minimum wages with poverty rates lower than America's?
And please try to not dodge the question by claiming 'causation/correlation logical fallacy', because that ONLY applies when the two factors involved are completely unrelated.
19 - Doug Hunter
Poverty being an arbitrary income level and relative measure that relates to no objective physical reality barely means anything within a country much less between nations. It probably tracks the Gini index pretty well, the US being high on Gini means there aren't too many to compare with.
Your best bets and better models of capitalism are probably Hong Kong which didn't have one until 2010 and Singapore which still doesn't. Both have showcased dynamic free market economies and limited government along with impressive growth transforming societies with limited natural resources. There are model socialist economies too, given the choice I'd live in the former though.
20 - Glenn Contrarian
Doug -
Granted that the poverty rate is objective and is more useful on a local level...but those of us who have traveled a great deal have gotten a fairly strong idea for which countries have a real problem with poverty, and which ones don't. Not every country that has a minimum wage is better off than America...but NO country that doesn't have a minimum wage is better off.
Also, one needs to compare apples to apples, not apples to oranges. Singapore and (for the most part) Hong Kong are both city-states and cannot be used as comparisons to true nations. I've been to both several times and I've enjoyed every visit...but you can't compare them to true nations.
My challenge still stands.
21 - Clavos
Once again, you miss my point entirely, Glenn. It doesn't matter that the USA has a minimum wage, since it is mostly ignored, even to the point that one of the most menial jobs in America, burger flipper, makes more money than the minimum wage, and its always been that way.
The minimum wage, as practiced here, is largely irrelevant, so I agree with you, those who fight it do so purely reflexively.
Not every country that has a minimum wage is better off than America
If you're speaking in terms of how well their "poor" live, then with the exception of some (not all) of the other first tier countries, none, even those with minimums, have a poor class better off than America. Again, with the exception of some not all, of the other first tier countries.
22 - Clavos
Most Americans (by far) won't work for minimum; in fact, it's often the case that the combination of welfare plus food stamps results in a better lifestyle than working for minimum. If there are children and the family receives AFDC, it's the icing on the cake.
This phenomenon is a major reason why we have so many illegal immigrants, many of whom are willing to work for less than minimum and do.
23 - Clavos
And please try to not dodge the question by claiming 'causation/correlation logical fallacy', because that ONLY applies when the two factors involved are completely unrelated.
Um, Glenn...no. Without regard to the minimum wage issue, just the fallacy itself: the fallacy is expressed as "correlation does not imply causation." The word "correlation," just as it sounds, means relationship. Dictionarydotcom gives its meaning as, "mutual relation of two or more things, parts, etc."
Now I know why you've never gotten that; you don't understand it.
24 - roger nowosielski
"Most Americans (by far) won't work for minimum."
They will if they must, Clavos. Not everyone is on welfare, physically or mentally disabled, or can make do with the help of family. Your pronouncement seems to suggest that these three conditions define the poor in America.
25 - Natalie Bennett
A telling statistic:
"In 2008, the official U.S. poverty level for a family of 4 was $21,834 ( Census Bureau "Poverty Thresholds"). With a 40 hour week, a family of 4 with one minimum wage earner would earn $15,080, only 69 percent of the poverty level. The minimum wage level is not indexed to inflation, which means that the real benefits will be eroded by inflation."