Matt Nolan on the living wage

Matt Nolan blogs at TVHE:

Let me start this by underlying everything with a certain point – living wages are idiotic if our concern is to make sure that the worst off in society have a sufficient income.  By imposing a “price floor”, you are ensuring that there are a group of people who can’t get jobs and will get hurt – unions don’t care because they don’t represent the unemployed, but I find it morally abhorrent.  You want a minimum standard of living for societies worst off – have a minimum income, it’s as easy as that.

A minimum income scheme, which has merits, would need a radical reshaping of the tax and welfare systems.

Let’s take someone working full time at $19hr.  What does this person earn pre-tax $39,420pa (this excludes benefits which they are targeting to increase it further). What is nominal GDP per capita.  $47,157pa.

So either we have a society where different types of labour, and different peoples requirements for income (eg a 18 year old and a 57 year old), aren’t terribly different and so people shouldn’t get paid very differently – and as a result the potential worker who “offers the least” may well still get hired – or this will lead to higher unemployment and cut backs in hours for these people.  Who won’t get hired in this sort of situation – people that are risky to hire or haven’t developed skills yet.  So the young, the vulnerable, those that have been out of work.

I just think it is daft to claim an 18 year old with no experience living at home needs to be paid the same as a 45 year old with 20 years experience who is supporting a family and mortgage.

I mean I swear to god unions, and their determination to get what they want without thinking about the consequences for other people, makes me sick.  There are people who struggle, and as a society I think we should try to help them – part of this is ignoring faux research by unions, and making sure that we actually push government to sufficiently redistribute to the poorest

Instead so many on the left and unions support paying welfare to millionaire parents. That is because they are really just about growing the size of the state that they tend to live off.