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The minimum wage here may be higher now. That was the rate a few years back. I took it as a starting point.

Minimum wage is not meant to be enough to support a family; it is the entry level wage and the level for summer jobs for teenagers.

One doesn't expect a person to remain at that level, but to get experience and skills and get promotions and raises in order to earn more. I think that is a philosophical difference we have with socialist countries.

Yes the minimum wage is a mined field until just a few years ago we never had one. It was introduced by the Blair Government. In a way it was good it stopped a lot of unscrupulous employers under paying the opposite is that where an employer may have taken a young person on for a year or so on a low wage and then if the person showed promise gradually increased their wage some small businesses cannot do that. Of course it does not catch the real rouges as they continue to employ illegally illegals.

A friend of a friend got into trouble over this and ended up having to fork out a large sum of money in back pay and grant full maternity rights to the employee.

Even so our minimum wage you could not support yourself independently on you would have to rely on some form of additional credits from the government. This is Blair's recent thing to encourage people to work pay them low but give out welfare payments to make the rest up. So the minimum wage can have the reverse affect and help keep all wages low.

It is interesting that you say main difference between the US and socialist countries does not mean on the whole people in America think of Britain as a socialist country? I suppose I think of Britain similar to America that we are basically a capitalist system which sometimes have a government to the left and sometimes to the right but basically is based upon free market trading and people making their own way in life.

It would be interesting to hear your views and others re Britain