No, because of small to medium sized business growth, which spurs job creation and the economy. You put that minimum wage up to £15 overnight, or even £12.50, you'd have some small enterprises (as in approx. 3 employees) go under altogether, you'd have those on the cusp of booming have to cut back staff etc.
People on the left have this view that if you're a 'business owner' you're automatically minted and obviously a Tory. They have no idea how it works. Take your café comment that they have to sell six cups to pay for the wage... but what about VAT? Business rates? Corp Tax? etc. etc. etc.? SMEs are absolutely hammered from all sides; a near 100% increase in wages for staff would be horrific for loads of them, and not just them, all of us, because all it does is further monopolise bigger businesses who can absorb the increase.
No, the NMW should act as a safety net only accessible to businesses below certain revenues. It shouldn't be the baseline. Unlike what the lad said above, it's not that I think people should be paid differently for the same job, but I think that if you work for a business that is pulling hundreds of millions in profit then you should the wealth should be redistributed accordingly, so that job shouldn't be considered the same; it should be aspirational to work at McDonald's or Amazon, they shouldn't be allowed to exploit people when they have that level of success.
Consider football - a striker for Man Utd and a striker for Morecambe do exactly the same job but are renumerated differently based on skill because the employer is literally in a different league. Imagine every football club paid every player minimum wage!
No they don't.
I think it should be higher... SME's should be protected from monopolizing multinationals in other ways than keeping a NMW up that's barely above living standards.
Besides, which small to mediumsized company is on the cusp of booming with JUST personnel on minimum wage? Not too many I'd wager. Reality is: mostly the ''lowest percentile' works on these wages. In reality: the cleaning lady, housekeeping personnel, the barman, ppl at MacDonalds, Amazon...., often un-unionsed & undefended. Skilled labour is not the scope here. For example: HGV-drivers earn more than 15 already... SME's working in construction pay quite well. If they don't, they don't have a workforce & go under.
This has been debated for decades & not just in the UK. You're forgetting the often made argument that the NMW drives inflation to undesireable heights! It's been done to death. Fingers have been pointed to France. France has a minimumwage of more than 10 euro. NIC & other 'patronal' contributions not-included (so actual cost is considerably higher).
Making comparisons between countries is difficult & unnuanced (schools in France are free for example, so is (to a degree) the university) so this could impact the calculation of your minimum wage), but you can hardly argue that France is 3rd world country now, can you?
On the other hand however, I can somehow agree with you anyway, because we see (in EU states) that low skilled labour is shifting to self-employed contracts paying 5 euro an hour.... Which is, of course, even worse. So what do I know?
