It’s time for a living wage

Hiking the minimum wage could turn out to be a win-win situation for everyone, says Merryn Somerset Webb.

Exactly four years ago I popped a short blogpost up on our website. In it I ran down some of the things we would do if, like George Osborne, we had just announced that halving the budget deficit was a non-negotiable part of government policy.

We said we would cap all public-sector salaries at £175,000; we would cut all non-means-tested benefits; and we would make our taxes flatter, less complicated and hence less avoidable.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.