A Story of Corporate Subsidy and Your Average Working Stiff....

Ahhhh the minimum wage where to start... As a mutualist I see the wage as a good thing for ordinary working people and find the bleating of corporate capitalists against any rises offensive.

Ah I can hear you thinking...Beowulf is one of those horrible Libertarian Socialist/Mutualist types who's completely opposed to statist solutions of any kind. Now this is broadly true but I am also a political pragmatist when it comes to legislation that helps ordinary working people. Until employees are in a decent bargaining position with employers vis a vis wages and hours then this kind of statistic intervention will always be needed alas. Also the proposed increase in the minimum wage prevents employers from living off state subsidised wages and externalities the true cost of their business onto the taxpayer.

So 'New' Labour are doing the right thing by increasing the minimum wage. This then leads to the question as to why they are increasing the wage now? As ever for 'New' Labour it is a case of panic induced political calculus. They have seen the polls and they have seen fear, the fear that their core vote won't turn out. Thus this small increase is calculated to get their core vote out on election day. Which leads us onto the question of whether it will actually work or not? I don't really know to be honest and I think the only way that we'll know for sure is at the coming general election sometime in May.