In a world full of injustices and inequality what really gets Phills and Elrazors goat is someone working full time getting 50 quid a week so they can perhaps go to the cinema.

The problem is more the existence of super-high earners who can buy as many burgers as they want at any price, meaning that burger producers can expect at least some demand at any price point.

It also seems that there are other implications when you reduce the disposable income of people who don't have enough to save.

Well, as I've had to budget within £1000 p/m for some 5 years as a student, I can tell you that I did have to make some tough choices, but lived comfortably within my means and never once found it challenging to make ends meet. Sure, I only managed max 2 holidays a year, managed with the same car, clothes and did a number of household repairs and maintenance myself, but that's life.

I don't come from a privileged background and have worked a few crap jobs with long hours and low pay, however, in going to university as a mature student have taken advantage of the same opportunities available to everyone else in this county.

How did you fund your masters? How did you have 1k per month to live on for 5 years as a student? You had the same clothes for 5 years, what car did you buy on low pay that lasted the 5 years you were at university?

I don't believe you.

What do you base that on? The price of labour would drop to a price where people were willing to work for it. No-one would be willing to work in a job which wouldn't give them enough money to physically survive.

Yes, you can obviously fill that gap by just saying "ah well the government would just have to subsidise them" but if that were the case, where does it stop? Why wouldn't people work for £1.00p/h? or £0.65p p/h?

Why would competition for jobs driving down the price of labour stop at your entirely arbitrary price of £3.00 p/h and drop no further?

No-one would work for £3.00 p/h in anything other than a professional-level internship where the main reward was the experience and contacts rather than the money. It wouldn't afford you any tangible benefit beyond a slightly better quality of homelessness or warmer and cosier version of gradual malnutrition/starvation.

Wait, what?! Elrazor has a masters?!

I don't determine his worth. I'm approximating his worth in an unrestricted market.

People use food banks because of a mix of being bad with money and their availability. There is a reason most people in developing nations get by without needing free food and it's not because they have a high min wage.

No one in Britain needs to use a food bank. They will certainly have other things to cut back on. I'm in no way saying they shouldn't exist btw, I'm perfectly happy with charity helping people who won't help themselves.

Save your judgement. Rastamouse will tell us if this masters means anything.

This is complete crap. 'Opportunity' varies pretty wildly depending on your parents' SEG.

The min wage will eventually meet the living wage to replace tax credits. If labour had saved during the boom we wouldn't need to face this reality that Britain cannot afford to keep its hammock like welfare system. Id labour were actually responsible they would have brought in these reforms capping payments and increasing the min wage a decade ago.

Welfare should be robust and always there for people who need it in times of need. For every other time there is work. The current system is unsustainable and needs reforming and given we aren't going to get a legit system like guaranteed income payments transitioning to a high salary low permanent welfare society is the next best option.
Depends how many hours they do. If they are 37.5 hours a week full time at min wage and have no other deductibles they pay the latest rate on around £2500. So at 20% they are paying less than £10 a week but have full access to all the tax funded things like schools and NHS etc.

The living wage is tory because Osborne and Cameron are moving the min wage up to meet it. Turning the min wage into the living wage by the end of this parliament.

Wtf are you talking about?

I was approximating a possible figure (ie probably wrong but chosen for demonstration sake) where jobs would be filled but it would only happen if income was topped up or people cut back on living standards.

If the option was making fifteen quid a day or starving in the street they would make fifteen quid a day. If the option was between two families (or extended family etc) sharing a small house or living in a cardboard box down by the river they will share the house.

This is the reality in most of the world.

Britain is only immune to such choices because we have a high min wage and a welfare system that bridges the gaps. Along with a little of the big society via food banks etc.

Take away min wage and either quality if life drops or income for most jobs is subsidised. Many min wage jobs at £6.50 aren't worth £6.50 ie people would take them for less in a true supply and demand situation.

Which in case I need to spell it out for the slower readers I'm not advocating.

Socio economic group?

Nope, BTW. Absolutely bull****. Higher education is absolutely there for anyone in this country who wants it. The poorest even get a completely free education.

A friend of mine is working on her PhD after failing most of her gcses. Another is doing an accounting BA after failing most of hers. Legitimately the hardest working person I've met because she isn't a natural at our accounting course and she also has huge responsibilities outside of the course with her family. Our course leader was legit in shock when she told him the details of her situation last year.

Along with the usual teens and early twenties others on my course are parents including single parents with kids ranging from very young to at least one with a teen. A few of us are older and changing careers from a wide range of stuff including a former professional jockey who also didn't have good school grades but is one of the best on the course cos he works hard.

Access courses are a wonderful thing and higher education is there for anyone in this country willing to work for it. No one whatsoever has any excuse for not bettering themselves. Literally none.

All of which leads you to support the prevention of Muslim immigration?

I'm just checking I've got your line right, I wouldn't want to put a terrible slur on your considered and informed opinions by mistaking them for the mindless outpourings of someone who blames his own inability to progress at work on immigrants.

Have you ever considered that the reasons for your sexual dysfunction at such a young age are psychological, and may be rooted in the deep loathing of groups of people that you seem to suffer from? Just wondering...

Lol how Phil and Elarazor keep like clockwork referencing their friends.

Its almost like tons and tons and tons of empirical data does not exist utterly confirming that social class is the biggest determinant on economic outcomes.

But their friend.

Laziness is hard to quantify. You need to do qualitative research.

Its laziness is perhaps the most nuked to quantum dust argument in existence.

I gained a Santander scholarship for my masters that covered my tuition fees due to academic achievements at undergraduate (I finished top of my class). My father is disabled and I receive careers allowance, and I also worked part-time lecturing. I also saved a few £k from my student finance when I lived with my g/f that I used when necessary.

Very odd line of logic being employed by Phill and Ian 'Elrazor' Fraser. The fact that working class people can work bloody hard and end up in a better position does not mean that the current state of affairs is desirable. There is still a tonne of (non anecdotal, sorry) evidence to suggest that middle and upper middle classes people looking for a career have the dice loaded in their favour.

To be fair if someone from a sink estate in Glasgow does not grow up to be a doctor its bound to be because they are lazy.

The lazyness argument is just simple and naked bigotry.

Anyone making it should definitely look to go to the pub with Rasta.

Most of those at the bottom end of the income scale work harder than anyone in this thread.

Oh yeah?

In the days of the European empires, that was what was always said of certain subject peoples considered 'inferior races': that they were lazy. Note that, for Victorian social Darwinists (whom Darwin would have despised), the word 'race' meant what we would now mean by 'class'.

Phill and Elrazor should indeed make a pub date with Rasta. They'd have such fun.

Street sweepers. Dustbinmen. Millions of self-employed or zero-hours nobodies doing jobs that certain posters here, including me, wouldn't look at for status reasons. All those night-time office cleaners with daytime jobs as well. Supermarket staff, given the hours supermarkets are open now. They all work and work, and their work makes the world go round, but are they 'successful'? Don't be daft.

The ironic thing is that for all Phils talk of bettering oneself is that more MC children will now grow up to earn less than their parents than anytime since WW2.

No, the market will tell you if the Master's means anything.

If your Master's wasn't in a subject that any employer would consider a worthless load of old codswallop, and was in a subject that made you a useful person, you wouldn't have to insist that other people pay for it, as you'd be comfortable in the knowledge that it would be worth your own money that you'd soon make back in your career.

John Rawls might argue that one's propensity to laziness is out of one's control in any event.