Classless Society?

A few months ago a government "Czar" Alan Milburn stated that "work may no longer be a way out of poverty"  I thought that was pretty interesting considering the government is so

keen to get everyone working. Admittedly Alan Milburn is from the Labour benches and not actually part of the government although part of the social mobility commission.

But the suggestion, from a governmental organisation, that the holy grail of 
work= prosperity is not necessarily so.

This is grist to the mill for the living wage supporters. I have great sympathy for the cause. I am not sure why, to be honest that the minimum wage is not the living wage. 

In terms of a full time job any employer who employs a person for 40 hours or more a week has a moral duty to ensure their wage is appropriate to at least pay for that individual to be able live. After all the employer has removed the opportunity for that individual to earn it elsewhere by occupying their waking hours already. It verges on slavery to have full time employees not earning a living wage.

I remember the arguments over minimum wage. Some voices said it would cost jobs and be detrimental the the economy all over the place. However even the USA had minimum wage. It did not harm the economy. It gave the lowest and most poorly paid in the economy the security that they could not be paid less than this level.

I find it difficult to reconcile two arms of industry and employment. On the one hand I have heard of employers who spend much of their time finding or encouraging employee behaviour that doesn't just go the extra mile but the extra 50 miles. And then I hear employers carping about being forced to pay living wage (Not the same people to be fair). There is a something for nothing culture in this country but it extends beyond the long term unemployed who are the usual targets, you find it amongst the business community that appear to suggest that we are not only lucky to have their job we should be willing to sell our souls for the benefit of one of their pay packets

I think there needs to be a public debate about whether a job, if it is not cost effective to pay a living wage for, is actually a job we should be doing. I really point this question at manufacturing industry to be honest. If our industry cannot compete on costs perhaps we should stop trying?

This brings up another issue. There was a book published in the seventies by Paul Willis

entitled Learning to Labour. In this book he wonders how working class people got working class jobs and Middle class people got middle class jobs. I will get around to reading it all one day but the Author was a guest on a radio show where a comedian asked himself just the same question and his quest to seek a better life for himself. In a roundabout way Micky Flanagan explains himself and I think the conversations with his counterparts to be the most illuminating.

If we were to act as I suggested, and discontinue with work that is not cost effective to pay living wage for, will certain parts of the economy be unable to react. Micky Flanagan felt in some of his commentaries that there was a lack of ambition in his environment. Lets just say life for some was a lot simpler, a job, a house, a family and beer on a Friday.

Where would they be left? The part of society that does not see education as a means to a prosperous lifestyle but a part of life to be endured?