Think we need to hear the view of Elrazor's cousin before we can come to any strong conclusions on the salience of Rawl's original position.

I'll take the general attempt to divert the argument away from the fact that it's possible to live fairly comfortably on minimum wage without tax credits as conceding the argument.

No one would argue against any policy that increased social mobility, However I'm not sure how tax credits and welfare achieve this.

I'll also be earning around the minimum wage for the next 3 years - a healthy £370 pm increase on the amount of money I survived on during my Masters. Quite happy to use this as a case study to provide further evidence, seeing as it's highly unlikely anyone positing itt works minimum wage.

The **** you will, lol. I was just answering a new line of argumentation.

Again its been objectively shown that you cant live comfortably on 1K or whatever a month. Its not even a debate anymore.

Your budget was blown apart utterly with holes, no monies shown for countless things, and the budget from LA again demonstrated that the person was not living "comfortably".

Fully expecting full core semantics over comfortably.

Even though that is another massive goal shift from you, from can live so well on 1K a month that any extra would just get spent on "luxuries."

cool. cos you totally represent everyone.

Thread got good. I propose we all go to the pub with Rasta

I wouldn't be seen dead in the company of a screwed up little crypto-racist like him, thanks, but maybe you could persuade him to bring his map along that forms the basis of his views about Muslim vs Non Muslims.

No shame I hope. You brought that information into the public domain on this forum, inviting comment. I was serious about your psychological problems being the likely cause. It's not natural to be so hateful of large numbers of people, and it often stems from the self hate or low self esteem that in your case a contrived Narcissism fails to mask.

One of the problems you have in debating here with people who are much older, more travelled and more experienced than you is that they can see through your BS very quickly. Why do you think it is that hardly anyone here agrees with you?

We could seat ourselves in order of racistness (Altho you might have to sit on Phils knee), Rasta could draw up the map and we could pass it along discuss it and maybe draw penis's on it.

Lidl in the UK and Ireland has agreed to pay all staff the living wage, which, in the case of the UK is £1.20 above the minimum wage in Ireland is €2.85 is above the minimum wage. It seems to lidl their employees are worth significantly more to them than your approximate. Notice that they are being paid more than the minimum so that it is a restricted market is irrelevant.

I don't understand the point you are trying to make with regard to the bold so I would like you to clarify, in the case you do mean developing nations I would like to understand the relevance to a discussion about the UK.

So not taken out of tax then.

You are claiming that the Tories should be given credit for bringing the minimum wage in line with the living wage, something they are yet to do, in a discussion about the ending of tax credits which will cost someone earning the minimum wage an amount roughly equivalent now.

Taking roughly £200 from someone earning the minimum wage right now and having the minimum wage increase over the lifetime of the government is not something the poorest should be thanking the Tories for.

Congratulations on your scholarship, you do realise this is an opportunity not available to everyone right? You also have a mortgage right?

I do not intend to diminish your achievements but your opportunities were not available to everyone, not everyone has academic motivations, the support required to go back to college, a partner in work, the reduced mortgage and responsibilities that actually benefit from the flexibility of not being in full time employment. I also did not intend to dissect anyone's personal circumstances but you shouldn't generalise from your own.

The scholarship was available to anyone poor enough and smart enough. I do have a mortgage; an artifact from when I worked 60 hours a week in a factory. My partner had long since disappeared when I did my masters, so that also didn't assist my financial situation. I appreciate the tone of your response, but you did effectively call me a liar for funding my own masters.

There is a great blog here about funding postgraduate studies. This guy managed to raise £40k in 2.5 years towards his PhD.

In terms of generalising, the original question arose when someone questioned my claim that it's possible to live on £1000 a week. It was possible for me, but I appreciate it's not possible for everyone. That point notwithstanding, and again in my circumstances, it's very possible to earn rubbish money, be happy, and find lots of ways to fulfil your social and cultural participation for less than £45 a week. Posting on 2+2 is a fine example

Apologies this is now the third post of yours I've responded to but this I think warrants some attention.

I have a number of problems with this, firstly on an individual level not everyone has academic motivations or the life circumstances that allow going to college for 3/4 years. I agree that education is generally a good thing and should be encouraged but people who don't or can't avail of it shouldn't be blamed for their poor life outcomes. However, we could go round in circles about individual cases and I don't think that's particularly helpful.

My main problem is that even if I accept that any individual member of the group, minimum wage employees, can better their earning potential, the entire group can't. If this were the case who would do those jobs? My position is that we as a society need certain jobs doing, shelves need to be stacked, tills need to be staffed, pints need to be poured, offices need to be cleaned, sandwiches need to be made and so on. As these jobs need doing the people who do those jobs should be able to have a decent life. I don't want the person who serves me breakfast to hate their job. These aren't just jobs kids should do or second earners for additional household income. These are jobs we need doing.

What's wrong with people content in jobs some consider mundane, why are they wrong to want a decent life on the back of harder work than many better paid people do. I won't look down on the people that fulfil roles that benefit me but you seem like you must. That you talk of "bettering themselves" only adds to this view.

Not everyone is going to be smart enough.

I said I didn't believe you. I am going to get nitty and point to the distinction between withholding belief in what you are saying and disbelieving you, I am doing a masters in philosophy after all. You did however raise your partner during discussions and as the earlier posts highlighted it wasn't clear whether your bachelors and masters were contiguous. Regardless you did benefit from a period in work where you were able to secure a mortgage and your fees were paid.

You really want to nail that week/month distinction.

What do you think the tax credits cut means for those it is not possible for?

As I suggested earlier their are predominantly low wage communities, they remain low wage communities because the majority of people who earn better wages leave, or in some cases have to leave in order to earn them. These communities have shops pubs etc that are going to have less spent in them with the withdrawal of tax credits. You disproportionately hit poorer communities when you lower the money available to people at the bottom, people in these communities are not saving, the loss in tax credits not only affects them but the places where they spend.

I want people who earn at the bottom to be happy, I don't want people doing jobs we need doing to be ****ed off, I'm good with trying to ensure the opportunities exist for those with ambitions but I want a decent life for those whose primary ambitions do not relate to their job.

Its one thing to be given 1K a month whilst studying something I assume you find stimulating and interesting+adding value to career prospects and on the other hand to work a horribly menial job and at the end of the week not have enough money for 2 pints of beer (according to LU budget).

I just dont understand how anyone finds that acceptable, not only acceptable, but considers that person to have to much.

Elrazor,as an academic cant you see how bad your methodology is for thinking about these issues is?

Social issues have to be thought about in the aggregate, that is what society is, an aggregate and the interaction of aggregates.

Do you think a scholarship exists for every single person across every discipline who might need one?

You never think that Persons X who need a scholarship to continue education might find they cant due to finite funds for scholarships?

What sort of accommodation do you have? If it's the sort designed for the convenience of students, close to the university etc then that's not a realistic comparison to how non-students have to cope.

As a regular adult on very limited means you would find yourself having to deal with the grottier end of the private landlord market some distance away (in time and money) from where most of the jobs.

Charity???? I think you're getting very confused between the realness of the market figure with anything to do with it being a fair return for the work provided.

The free market price is superficially a very attractive idea of some meaningful true value but it's no more than that.

Again this grinding inhumane perspective.

"Get by" is such a horrible vague term. It defines nothing useful.

Just because they "get by" does not mean their lives would not benefit from access to "free food." Or that they would not avail themselves of it if it were available.

Which they actually do because there are loads of charities and NGO's distributing food in developing countries.

You can get by seems to mean you should only want free food if you are literally starving.

We should house all the working poor in cubicles and feed them a paste full of the basic nutrients and calorific needs. There can be a communal space with a few footballs etc etc.
They can have a 2 pint beer allowance per week.

This is fine because they will survive/get by.

Lots of people in the third world would kill to have such a comfortable life style.

Ok so as were discussing methods, here is the IFS report that is often cited for the argument against removing tax cuts, and here is a nice graph to illustrate why:



However, i skimmed the full report and quite frankly the way they described their study would be rejected by most peer reviewed academic journals, due to their lack of description about the number of hours used to calculate new earning under the National Living Wage. This is directly from their method:

Why not just say how many hours a week their results are based on? It's one sentence. I've read enough journals to know when something as fundamental as this is missing, it's because the authors are trying to gloss over something (However, it could be there and I've just missed it).

One of the main problems with tax credits it that it penalises people for working more than 30 hours (they lose something like 40p in the pound of tax credits when their earnings increase). My guess is that the IFS report uses a number of hours worked per week much lower than 35-40 hours. The reality is that many people who used to work those kind of hours before tax credits came in, will have have cut their hours to 30, and this is why they are "losing money" under the new system - because the old system contained a fundamental flaw that people exploited.

Moving back around to the question of tax credits, while at face value what the conservatives have done makes a lot of sense, I'm worried that certain populations are being penalised to the point where they won't make ends meet. I personally don't think this extends to single people with their own house and low income, but clearly this move may adversely affect other populations more severely than it would have affected me when I claimed, as for people in my situation and similar, it was all cream spent on lifestyle choices, and in my opinion this is not why the welfare system exists.

My house is a 2 bed-semi in a pretty decent neighbourhood. By way of comparison, an identical house next door is available to rent for £595pm. It's easily big enough for 2 people to share, and with the bills split between them their housing costs should be similar to, if not less than, mine.

Where is it in relation to the university and cheap access to the bulk of low paid jobs?

Lidl is highly unionised and a privately owned company. I like them as a company but their view of giving high wages isn't due to the wealth creation of their staff but due to the personal policies of their family ownership.

If all businesses thought like Lidl we wouldn't need a min wage.

The bolded is pointing out that because they don't have such high expectations in other areas, eg living several adults to a room is normal, the true necessities get met. Basically we over value a lot of luxuries in this country and there are no true poor here because these high expectations of quality of life get met. People here talk about living with parents in your 20s as a hardship, it's ridiculous.

Everyone has the life circumstances for going to college. In mine there are people from all walks of life in all circumstances. Disabled, single parents, ethnic minorities of all kinds, middle class, working class, young, old, smart, dumb.

I don't care about the people who don't have the academic motivations to improve themselves. I would however point out there are tonnes of manual labour and trade jobs that need filling at a significantly higher pay rate than min wage, however.

Most min wage employees do better their circumstances, the others could do more. If these jobs still exist in the current form and most of the people who would fill them have skilled themselves out of the bracket then either the wage will go up significantly or some lucky hardworking poor person who didn't win the lottery of being born in Britain can get their chance by travelling over to do the job. I know for a fact these guys would love to pull pints and clean offices at 6.50 an hour.

You keep saying this but the hard numbers from even your own testimony do not support this at all remotely.

Also the whole point of TCs is to give some "cream" (lol) to those that work, it was meant to form a new social contract that said if you contribute and work hard, you should have a minimum standard of living that is more than just "getting by."

The Conservatives have tried to shift the cream supply from the State to market by setting a higher MW, and in essence I support that, but not if it does in fact lead to less cream for hard workers, which seems to be the case.

Ultimately its about how high you want to set the bar on the quality of life of a working person, you seem to want to set that bar really low.