So the chancellor is raising the minimum wage.
Workers on the minimum wage are set to get a pay boost from April, with the rate for those aged over 23 rising to £9.50 an hour from £8.91.
The rise means a full-time worker will get £1,074 extra a year before tax.
That bit I’ve highlighted in bold is the key issue here. Quite apart from minimum wages pricing people out of work, that before tax matter is important.
Launching the Conservative manifesto in April 2015, David Cameron promised: “By 2020 we will have raised [the personal allowance] to £12,500 – making sure no-one on the Minimum Wage who works 30 hours a week pays any income tax on their wages.”
What Sunak is doing is raising the minimum wage so that a full time employee will now fall into the income tax bracket again. Ask yourself this simple question: Who benefits from this? The employee, or the exchequer? It makes a good headline, but all that Sunak is doing here is feathering the government’s nest at the expense of the lowest paid. Now that’s a con trick.
Remember the mantra: The state is not your friend.
And a magical increase in GDP.
And then there are the sacred “differentials”.
And doctors retiring even earlier.
DH: “doctors retiring even earlier.”
The buggers have been retiring behind closed doors since the panicdemic was created!
It’s like it has no consequences….how about higher costs hence more inflation which is state sponsored theft?
Rather than “feathering the government’s nest at the expense of the lowest paid”, take a step further back up the money-chain.
What he’s actually doing is quietly taking money from the employers, via their employees (allowing the latter to keep some of it)- the extra cash starts out from the employer, not the employee. It’s as much a ‘stealth tax’ on the employer. It’s almost Brownian in its silent cunning.
Fair point, but what will the employer do to compensate? They will put up prices and/or reduce staffing levels so the tax incidence comes back to ordinary people again.