From Neil Wilson
""But that all changes when you have a JG. So is it reasonable to expect an unemployed person of 60+ to work for a fraction of his previous wages or salary? What about 55+?"
Yes. It's called obsolescence.
Your 'higher wage' is only there because you have multiple bids in a market to drive the wage above the living wage. If that stops happening then your wage drops as well. That's what redundancy and economic shrinkage does in the actual job market that most people operate in (the secondary job market), where economic pullback and the effect on wages is a fact of everyday life. And you've recently seen it with the steelworkers in Redcar, etc.
In the current system you drop onto JSA at £73.10 per week - where you will likely stay until you get to state retirement age or finally come to the realisation that a minimum wage job at B&Q is your only option.
In the new world you will get a JG job at the living wage where you can do stuff that makes you happy and add great value to society. A significant improvement.
There are far too many people who think they get higher wages because they are somehow magically brilliant or wonderfully skilled. Nope. It's simple supply and demand in a market alongside unionised activity to help keep that in trim.
Nobody has any right to a higher payment than anybody else regardless of how wonderful they think they are. The JG is very much an equal pay employer - and it needs to be because that wage fall is part of the reset mechanism of capitalism. It is one of the auto-stabilisers.
The JG changes an unemployed buffer stock into an employed buffer stock. It deliberately tries to avoid disrupting the private sector wage structure and in particular changing anything so that it artificially maintains boom or obsolete skill wage rates."
""The introduction of a JG will give the neo-liberals , the not-so-innocent fraudsters, a very powerful weapon indeed to force down wages. We need to be careful about that."
One person's forced down wages is another person's greater equality.
Try telling the 20 something struggling in the private sector 'gig economy' that a 50 year old is worth paying until they retire on a six figure salary they no longer provide the output to cover.
You will get cycles of the right forcing down wages, and the left forcing them back up by raising the living wage. It's a useful tension that keeps things where they should be - about equal.
Those who want a higher waged public sector job are very welcome to put the proposal to council tax payers (via their unions if they have one) - including the increase in council tax necessary to cover it. If your peers agree that you are a Very Valuable Person doing something Really Useful then they will pay the council tax necessary to cover your increased salary expectations.
So you have a democratic way of getting what you want. You just don't get it 'by right'."
