this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2025
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[โ€“] TheGrandNagus 2 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Our minimum wage is indeed fairly high, and the taxes that low earners pay is very low, but we do have problems. Wage compression in this country isn't particularly good. Most people are either minimum wage or close to it.

Even a lot of highly skilled jobs aren't highly paid, it's a problem for the economy, for tax revenue, and for encouraging workers to go for better jobs/strive for progression. I don't know what the government can do about it, but the answer certainly isn't to pin it on young people and imply they're lazy.

But one thing the government can definitely impact is what you mention at the end of your comment: government policy can certainly help bring down the big costs like property costs (both for people and businesses), energy, water, council tax.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago

How do you even deal with wage compression? It feels like it's ingrained socially at this point, people just seem willing to accept that pay because there's no alternative. I know that for public sector jobs it's a tricky balancing act where the government can't increase a salary for roles in 1 Civil Service grade as it may disincentivise workers in another role at the same grade. That probably hasn't helped when highly skilled roles that require decades of experience are tiered similarly to a role that may only take 6 months of training, where that high skill role wage is being constrained by that lower skill role. Perhaps that's had a wider effect of bringing the perceived value down? I haven't spent any time really thinking about this though, if you have any resources on this, I'd love to give them a read/watch.

Also sorry if my comments felt like I was implying young people are lazy, that wasn't what I was getting at at all. I think the apathy that young people feel is absolutely valid, and even workers who are in their late 50's who have been hit by redundancy are feeling this apathy intensely as they may not see any opportunities that allows them to provide for their families due to the general outlook of things.