Someone's always got to pay, don't they?

If one group are to get more than another must get less. This is true even if the economy is growing - even if all are gaining more it's still true that what is being added to the incomes of one group isn't being added to that of another. When it's sharing out more for all of course it's much easier, more peaceable, than when we're fighting over a fixed pie. As, when and for example, there's a legal insistence upon higher wages for one specific group:

The care of more than 13,000 elderly and vulnerable Britons could be thrown into turmoil after one of the biggest providers of home care visits in the UK warned it would go bust unless creditors backed a rescue plan.

Allied Healthcare, which has contracts with 150 local authorities and also provides out-of-hours services for the NHS, is asking for breathing space on its finances after cashflow problems that have been triggered in part by an £11m bill for back pay owed to sleep-in care workers.

Whether or not those workers should be paid while they sleep isn't the point. Just as, today, our point isn't whether the minimum wage should justly rise or not. It's just an insistence that someone, somewhere, has to pay that higher cost. Or, of course, the jobs won't exist and those supposedly getting that higher pay will get none.

Which is an important point. Legislatively raise wages by £11 million and some, one or another, employers will go bust. Or, customers - here the taxpayers - must pay more. Noting who loses does rather change the joy doesn't it? As opposed to the usual political stance of only considering who wins.