Here's why we must raise the minimum wage

When the taxpayer is forced to step in to support a worker's basic standard of living, something is seriously wrong. Raising the minimum wage is the only realistic solution.

Every now and then, a blog post really gets your attention. When they do, they are almost always about tax dodging or house prices. Sometimes gold does it too. But that's about it. Good news, then, that we have a new subject that everyone wants to have a say on:welfare to workers.

I first wrote on this several years ago, but I picked it up again late last week as the issue of the £22bn-odd of benefits we pay to people in work came up again. My suggestion (see below)of an increase in the minimum wage as one way to deal with the problem (the higher the wages, the fewer benefits have to be paid out) hasn't been 100% popular.

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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.