PAYING a bit more money to people who struggle to make ends meet sounds like the kind of right-thinking, common sense measure which leaves you standing right up there on the moral high ground.
When you consider how hard it must be to make even the minimum wage cover the weekly bills, bringing in something like a 'living wage' – a pay level which goes beyond just existing – looks like the next step in the long battle to close the gap between the haves and the have-nots.
That's what you'd think, anyway.
However, there is another way of looking at it, and it's this: this is an initiative steeped in pass-the-parcel political cynicism.
If you really, genuinely want to put more money into the pockets of poorer working people then one of the easiest ways to do it would be to take less off them.
In this day and age, of course, with government apparently funding anything extra from coppers it finds in crevasses, taking less tax off the lower paid would mean putting your finger into the pockets of those who earn more.
In the broadest sense, that usually means the middle class because that's where most people are.
Any government which needs to claw back cash will have little choice but to raid their strained piggy banks yet again.
Hold on, though: don't the middle class also represent a massive swathe of voters? Indeed.
So the cynic in me wonders whether that might not be entirely unrelated to some of those behind the campaign for a living wage deciding that it should be businesses that pay it. And that if they don't, the politicians will name and shame them.
Puts a new spin on it, doesn't it?
These bright ideas are never quite as straightforward as they seem, and the other spanner lurking in the works of this seemingly noble initiative is one of the simple laws of economics: the more you have to pay people, the fewer jobs there will be.
This is why well-paid people are a minority we're always jealous of.
Now, I'm not for one moment seeking to suggest that those able to pay more shouldn't do so. Fair's fair, as they say.
But at least some of that extra money they get is because they are better-qualified and, therefore, able to hold down a better-paid job in a higher value activity.
If you start loading cost on to jobs which are either low-skilled or involve producing things which can be made anywhere… that's where they go.
Not good if you're young, unemployed and willing to trade a low wage for a foot on the jobs ladder.
At which point you might conclude that a living wage is a great thing to aim for, but may be harder to achieve than we think.
So how come some pretty big businesses have thrown their weight behind this campaign?
Well, ask yourself this question: what proportion of their workforce is on the minimum wage? Not a lot, is the likely answer.
So, the politicians can make noble speeches, they can wag fingers and name and shame.
It probably looks good on TV when they do. Whether it makes that TV any more affordable is another matter.