SURVIVAL IS INSUFFICIENT

An opinion piece by Ryan O’Connell – first published on 16 August 2026.

A lot of people seem to be calling to an end to minimum wage. How will this help, and who will it impact?

The usual people are put up as those that should be given less: young people, the elderly, disabled people. It should be fine to pay those people £4 an hour right, they aren’t as valuable as the rest of us.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I don’t want to live in a society with a designated under class, that can be mistreated and underpaid with impunity.

Let’s say we do scrap minimum wage. A person is earning £4 an hour. They can’t afford a residence, so I guess we’ll have to subsidise them. You, me, the government via our taxes, now has to pay for this persons rent. And this is somehow beneficial to the wider economy?

Oh but the businesses will do better! That’s right, one person at the top, a business owner, can employ and exploit people, pay them £4 an hour and that 1 person will get richer. So we are then banking on this tiny economy of business owners to circulate that cash and grow the economy.

But what do those business owners do? They put it in a savings account, they buy a 2nd property. They don’t make up for the lost circular economy from having staff on £4 an hour. Because none of those £4 an hour staff are going to restaurants, pubs, clubs, or shopping or using hotels or at sports clubs or gyms or the cinema or the theatre.

So which part of this is going to make Jersey a success?