Does raising minimum wage and income tax allowances actually help anyone?

Sure it will give a few people a pay rise but doesn't it also just cause companies to put prices up because they know that people can now afford to pay more? Surely raising minimum wages just serves to push prices up. Is it more important to pass legislation keeping prices down?

 

Always got product choice though, there's always a cheaper alternative. Raising the minimum wage is imperative IMO.

 

Competition puts a lid on that. Fortunately, we've got Tesco, Asda, Morrisons and Sainsbury's all vying for supremacy. Plus the cheaper supermarkets like Aldi making inroads and the online merchants. Then you've got the independents. And all the big chains are branching out in to other retail areas, everything from finance to electrical. You'll be able to buy a car at Tesco's soon. They're not a cartel, they really are trying to undercut one another. It's the one aspect of capitalism that actually works. They all want a profit, but by doing so they need as many people buying their products as possible, so they stack it high and sell it cheap.

 

In that respect no one should get. Pay rise then or are you just discriminating against the low paid

 

People working should be better off than being unemployed, we need a living wage at least to make work pay. .

 

Yes is the straightforward answer I could bore you with some graphs I've just done. I'm working on some research at the minute for Demos on those very subjects.

 

It's probably better to raise the tax allowance threshold than to raise the minimum wage. The first doesn't place any more of a burden on business whilst giving the lower paid more money.
However, I'd also be in favour of raising minimum wage, most companies will be able to absorb that, I think the level of the "living wage" should be made the minimum wage - people have to be able to survive on the wage they are making.

 

Have to disagree there Jay,British supermarkets operate on the highest profit margins in the western world,you go down to the market and look at fruit and veg it's not only cheaper but usually of better quality,and they way they treat suppliers is nothing short of a disgrace.
As to the minimum wage,one of the snags is it only impacts on honest employers,the dishonest expect 40 hours of work..or more but only pay for 20...particularly when using migrant labour(according to a Polish lad I know)

 

Interestingly the 'living wage' is 90p higher than my old job was per hour.

I did ok... Ish.

 

Higher profit margins than power suppliers, funnily enough. Funny which issues the press pick up and run with.

 

The minimum wage, or rather the level of it, is a scandal. I'm no economics expert but when working pays less than benefits you create a problem.

 

You're sort of proving my point though mate. The market is part of that competition. There will always be somewhere charging less, be that a major supermarket or somewhere like Barnsley market, which keeps the price reasonably low across the board. I wasn't setting out to say that the major supermarkets are the best place to buy your fruit and veg, I don't think they are, rather that we have competition from a number of different retailers in this country and that competition will keep prices down even if wages increase.

Sometimes I shop at the market, it's cheaper, but sometimes I shop at a supermarket, it's more convenient and I'm prepared to pay a little bit extra for that convenience. If the supermarket suddenly bumped up its prices, convenience would go out of the window and I'd do all my shopping at the market. As would thousands of others. The supermarket would take a big hit in their pocket and would have have to lower prices again to bring back the customers. That's how competition works.

Didn't mean to suggest supermarkets are the best places to shop, apologies if it came across that way.

 

what do you think the average profit margin is in a british supermarket?,the profits the large supermarkets make is more down to the enormous turnover they have rather than a big profit margin,many items,especially promotional items are earning less than 10%.Cigs,which account for a fair proportion of turnover are 5% and below.When you pay your utility bills or get a mobile top up,the retailer is earning less than 0.25%.