We'll all be most shocked by this finding, that low pay is less than average pay. No doubt about it really, that just is a stunner. Although perhaps we might think that the part worth remarking upon is that anyone would make this complaint. Yet here it is:

The government’s own official number cruncher, the Office for National Statistics, also warned the new government minimum falls short of average family spending. It reckons mums and dads working full-time would earn £212 per week less than the average amount spent by all households with two adults and two children last year.

Put simply, the living wage rise is not what it says on the tin.

That is an interesting thing, one worth remarking upon. If the "Living Wage" does not bring all up to average disposable income then it's not a "living wage"?

We do seem to have changed from that original definition of what a living wage is. Something that used the logic of Adam Smith's linen shirt to ask people what people should be able to do in order not to be considered poor in our current society. That was something which only indirectly talked about inequality. We got to a cash number (that £8.75 an hour figure today) which was based upon the populace's gut feel of what inequality in disposable income was fair and/or just.

That has just morphed into the idea that the living wage is not doing its job if disposable income is unequal.

That the poor in a rich society have something is just one of those things society should aim for. That there be none on less than average income isn't something any society has ever achieved. Probably better therefore that it not be set as a goal, eh? Nor used as a complaint?