NewBrit

I disagree. If a person starves to death because they refuse to work, that does not make them a slave. According to the dictionary: A slave is someone who is forced to work by a slave master/owner for nothing in return. Surely to be a slave, you must have a slave master/owner. If a person refuses to work and then starves to death, who is the slave master? Tip: There is no slave master.

£15 an hour, 9.5 hours a day, that is £37k a year, not bad at all.

I agree that "value generated" is subjective and the price is decided by market forces. Apologies for not being verbose enough. I agree that people can manipulate the market to get paid more than the value they generate, but as I said, eventually the business will go bust...like Lehman Brothers.

In this case your landlord has two roles. The first role is as property manager/lettings agent for which he gets some money. You are probably right that it accounts for a small fraction of the total amount he receives. He can also hire someone else to do this role for a small amount. The second role is as the owner of the asset that is producing value. In this case the rental property is generating value by providing a place for you to live. In my area it is much cheaper to rent than to buy (taking everything into account, moving costs, selling and buying costs, mortgage, maintenance, inflation, etc), so my landlord is subsidising my housing costs. So it is a win for me, and my landlord seems happy too, so a win for him.

People get paid for the value that they generate. If the employees get paid more than the value that they generate, the business will go bankrupt. Cleaning is a low value skill and is usually done by younger people (with lower skill) for a short time until they build up more skills and move on to bigger and better jobs.

For the "average" person on 26k to retire on 17500 per year they need to do the following: Collect the state pension that is currently £113.10 per week = £5876. The remaining £11624 per year to get us up to £17500 per year needs to be funded by a pension for example. £11624 after tax is roughly £12800 before tax. A pension pot in todays money that pays £12800 per year is around £213k. To build this up with the average wage of £26k, the person needs to save 17% of their salary per year from age 23 to age 67. This will of course have an effect on after tax pay. Monthly take home pay on a £26k salary, will go down from £1720 to £1425 to fund the pension. With this amount of take home pay you won't be able to save for and buy a house in most of the UK.

For £950k, you can get the following houses/flats in other major cities: A 4 bedroom luxury 171 square meter flat in a trendy part of Berlin, Germany: http://www.rightmove.co.uk/overseas-property/property-30535524.html A mansion in one of the most exclusive neighborhoods in South Africa, 10 minutes from Cape Town central business district, extremely low crime and trendy bars and world class views: http://www.property24.com/for-sale/camps-bay/cape-town/western-cape/11014/101610316?Branded=true 7000 sq feet mansion in Boulder Colorado. Boulder is a tech hub with high salaries and excellent weather: http://www.homes.com/property/962-white-hawk-ranch-dr-boulder-co-80303/id-500012356914/