’16 year olds don’t deserve £10 per hour’. A Labour supporter’s takedown of that sorry claim went viral.
With the election debate raging on, somebody posted on Twitter that ’16-year-olds don’t deserve £10 per hour’:
A 16 year old scanning groceries or stacking shelves does not deserve or need £10 per hour
— Aps 🧚🏼♀️ (@sIaghetti) November 8, 2019
But this sorry claim got taken down pretty fast.
Takedown
The tweet references Labour’s promise for a £10 minimum wage. Fortunately, a supporter’s takedown of the claim we should exclude 16-year-olds went viral:
Read on...
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Jeff Bezos does not deserve or need $9,000,000 per hour but here we are https://t.co/5qUqtSXN4t
— Laura Williams (@lozwilliamsx) November 8, 2019
Bezos, founder of Amazon and the richest man on the planet, literally earns $8,961,187 per hour.
Jeremy Corbyn has previously challenged Bezos’s extreme wealth and told him to pay taxes and respect workers:
I have a simple message for @Amazon and Jeff Bezos:
Pay your taxes and respect workers' rights.
Change is coming.https://t.co/zgsYjExXUb
— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) October 21, 2019
You can only take that type of money through exploitation, tax dodging, and uncompetitive market practices.
Others on Twitter called out the ageism of paying younger people less:
But if they are doing the same job as the older ones … why are they being paid less
— mollymoo 💋🇰🇪 (@princessdelfueg) November 8, 2019
a 16 year old will be paid below minimum wage and yet pay adult fare for just about everything, why is that?
— dinah (@17dinahh) November 8, 2019
Labour’s policies, such as a £10 minimum wage, free higher education, and fully public healthcare, are universal. Whatever your age, gender, or race, they do not discriminate – the policies will apply to you.
Obscene inequality
The UK’s richest 1,000 families have increased their wealth by over £500bn since the 2008 financial crash, while the majority of us face austerity cuts. The idea we should be punching down at 16-year-olds is not just ludicrous but depressing.
This is a global issue. Oxfam’s latest report found that 26 people own more wealth than the bottom half of the planet.
Corbyn’s Labour is right to make inequality the focus of its campaign. This level of disparity is simply grotesque.
Featured image via Sophie Brown/ WikiCommons
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Young people don’t get their rent or groceries any cheaper so why should they be paid so much less? It’s just wage theft. Another rip-off they face is today many of them don’t get paid a full wage until they reach twenty-five, whereas I was paid a full wage when I turned eighteen in 1978. So today’s under-25s are being ripped off for an extra seven years. It’s ugly wage theft but that’s rapacious Tories and capitalists for you.
Bezos, founder of Amazon and the richest man on the planet, literally earns $8,961,187 per hour????
No, he does NOT earn that amount! He receives that, but certainly does not EARN it. nobody really earns that kind of money, it is impossible to work that hard …
It makes no sense to limit a 16 year old’s, or young person’s ability to earn unless, and only if that young person is doing a job that they cannot perform as well as a more experienced person. For example if it took a young person 15 hours to do a service on a vehicle which should take 2 hours, then there is a problem, and this is usually fiscally adjusted to compensate, however, who would be stupid enough to expect an untrained 16 year old or young person to be able to perform as well as an expert anyway?
That said, a minimum wage should guarantee a standard of living which is acceptable to all, including young people just starting their working life, and should/must be an incentive, not a disincentive to work, and should/must not be a struggle (other than the struggle with learning a new job).
Saying that 16 year olds don’t need £10 an hour is a deliberately inflammatory statement, made by a person/s who is/are likely paid to create division for political purposes.
Why are those who make such stupid statements incapable of grasping that causing the young difficulties does not help them, us, or our nation? Why, if work is so bloody important to society, do idiots keep trying to de-incentivize them, and us, with their banal, brain-dead bullshit? Are they deliberately trying to fuck the future for everything? It really looks like it to me.