Minimum wages and the self-employed.
A new paper on improving self-employment with comment from Lord Adair Turner* created a lot of interest in this week’s Resolution Foundation event.
Resolution’s thorough study proposes new government policies to make self-employment more secure, to tackle the abuses of ‘bogus’ self-employment, but also to protect the tax base as employment practice changes:
Adair Turner welcomed the ideas but set Resolution’s work in a worrying bigger picture.
He thinks changes in the structure of employment caused by digital technology, together with the idea that free markets can solve every problem, are leaving too many of us without the resources needed for ‘citizen-quality life’.
Conversely he says it may be necessary: to intervene more in the labour market to ensure a living wage in the sectors most affected; and to invest more in the public services the workers most affected rely on.
Self-Employment: The Minimum Required, Resolution Foundation, July 2017.
*Baron Turner of Ecchinswell, Chair of the Institute for New Economic Thinking and former Chair of the Financial Services Authority.