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“The new ‘National Living Wage’ is a welcome policy with a somewhat misleading title. It has legal clout – which the voluntary Living Wage doesn’t – but it also fails to reflect how much families need to earn to have a decent standard of living.” – Conor D’Arcy, policy analyst at think tank Resolution Foundation, who helped inspire George Osbourne’s living wage policy of £7.20 announced in Wednesday’s Budget, said the label did not reflect the reality. His comments sparked much debate among our online commentators. “A ‘living wage’ depends on your lifestyle, needs, demands and skills. There are people who thrive with the same income on which others starve” – Tom Flinn, Dunbar. “What is a living wage? Plucking an hourly rate out of the ether is no good to man nor beast. The number of hours worked must come into it surely. Normally a wage defines the remuneration to be expected for working a 40-hour week. Even part time work on a contractual basis requires the number of hours to be stated. A sum of £7.20 per hour for a 10-hour week does not, in my opinion, constitute a living wage” – Alex Sloan, Fife. “Whatever happened to wealth redistribution? Trade unions were neutered, that’s what happened, as the pendulum swung in favour of employers, leaving working families at the mercy of corporate Britain, with a low-wage and low-productivity economy, and disincentives both sides to become a dynamic productive growth force leaving CEOs the lazy route to driving down wage costs as the solution to improving their performance related pay, instead of taking the more difficult task of growth in high valued productive output. Osborne’s budget will only reinforce this, as a policy of managing decline” – William Maley, Ayr. Join the debate at heraldscotland.com