You'd really rather be unemployed, earning a wage of zero, rather than employed on a low wage? In the current system, perhaps that's forced for extreme cases (earning £20/week might lose you £60/week benefits), but that strikes me as a bug which should be eliminated.
Yes, of course it's better to have a better paid job where you're doing something valuable - but when that's not an option, when you're faced with a choice between earning very little and earning nothing at all, should the government really step in to demand the latter?
If you insist on a higher salary or nothing at all, that means that at least some of the time you're forcing no salary at all - which hardly strikes me as an improvement.
Unemployed versus low wage
Yes, of course it's better to have a better paid job where you're doing something valuable - but when that's not an option, when you're faced with a choice between earning very little and earning nothing at all, should the government really step in to demand the latter?
If you insist on a higher salary or nothing at all, that means that at least some of the time you're forcing no salary at all - which hardly strikes me as an improvement.