Higher wages can make bad habits worse
This is my column in The Malta Independent on Sunday, today.
Caritas Malta, which works extensively with the poor and disenfranchised, has proposed that the mandatory minimum wage be raised from €158 to €180.
This has met, as with the last such proposal, with objections from employers, who say quite rightly that the increase in payroll costs will have to be passed on to the consumer, raising inflation, diminishing price competitiveness and spurring redundancies. The overall effect will be rising unemployment and, contrary to the well-meant aim of the exercise, more people taking home less money.
I’m a great one for believing that it is the market which should determine how much people are paid. People with skills that are essential to high-demand businesses, but who are in short supply, are paid a great deal more than average.
Twenty years ago, graphic designers took home relatively large salaries. Design had not yet made the transition from laborious and time-consuming manual processes, while demand for advertising and marketing collateral was on a steep upward curve in the first real consumer boom since the 1960s.
Then, when design turned digital, the price of computers plummeted and training became available to more people, the market was flooded with designers and only the best and proven ones, working independently and not for an employer, began earning a significant amount.
Today, it is information technology professionals, operating in a market where demand for their services exceeds supply, who can pretty much name their price. But that will eventually level off, too.
Of course, it’s not enough to have skills and abilities which are in high demand but short supply. Those skills must also be essential to making money for your employer. Where making money is not a factor for the largest employer in the field, as with state education and health-care, wages and salaries are not pushed up. That’s why nurses and teachers are not paid as much or more than IT workers.
Caritas Malta’s motives, in proposing a new minimum wage level, are good and well-intentioned. I know that for a fact, because I have discussed the matter briefly with Monsignor Victor Grech, who runs the operation, and we share similar concerns about poverty and the inability of increasing numbers of families, at the lower end of the socio-economic scale, to make ends meet.
We are in agreement, for example, that a major contributing factor is the widespread absence, in the socio-economic groups most dependent on social benefits and the minimum wage, of even the most basic shopping, cooking and food preparation skills. Though it is possible to feed a family inexpensively and well, in the absence of those skills, the wrong sort of food is bought: processed, pre-prepared, and delivering the double whammy of lacking nutrients while eating up the family budget. When people can’t cook, they can’t shop cost-effectively and the result is disastrous for both health and wallet.
There are those who believe that dependency on this ‘poor people’s food’ – which ironically is pricier than fresh food in Malta – is the result of women having to take on paid employment outside the home. Not so, for it is more than possible for people to work and cook too, and at the upper end of the socio-economic scale, where there is more health and value for money awareness, cooking from scratch takes place every day even when both adults work outside the home.
Others say that cooking skills have been ‘lost’ in the socio-economic groups that are most under financial stress and subject to poverty. But this is wrong. The truth is that among the most financially besieged classes, cooking skills never existed at all, so there were none to pass down the generations to begin with.
That is why, even when the financial lot of the next generation improves with better education and higher-paid work, the individuals involved have to make a determined and conscious decision to set about learning how to shop, cook and eat.
If they have insufficient interest or motivation, they will become dependent on highly processed foods and ready-meals, or bulk up every day on bread and pasta, which is the kiss of death in this diabetes-ridden sector of society.
The reason why cookery skills are virtually non-existent among the recent descendants of the Maltese urban working-class and the rural poor should be obvious, but it isn’t obvious to many because of all the myths with which we like to feed our soul, about the great and wondrous honest meals of past generations.
The harsh reality is that if you never have food, or have very little of it and with no variation, you never learn how to cook.
Most of the dishes we think of as Maltese, with the exception of minestra which developed as a way of cooking up any vegetables the household could scrounge, all in a single pot because fuel was expensive and firewood scarce, are actually those of a very narrow sector of Maltese society.
Let’s not run away with the idea of a past peopled by Maltese women baking ross fil-forn and mqarrun. Good minced beef/pork is an essential ingredient in both of those, and until the 1960s the vast majority of households couldn’t afford any meat at all, to say nothing of the oven to bake those dishes in. If a village had 500 houses, and 50 of them had ovens, you can bet that the local bakers were not taking into their ovens 450 household dishes against payment every Sunday.
The development of cooking skills depends on the availability of ingredients and more specifically, on the availability of food. People who slaughtered a chicken once a year at Christmas, and who could never afford meat, never learned how to cook chicken in a hundred different ways or how to select, buy and use different cuts of meat.
People who never owned an oven and who had to pay the baker to roast their dishes on special occasions never learned how to bake or how to prepare roast meals that cannot be entrusted to the benign neglect of a village baker.
People who owned only one cooking-pot and had only one flame – a spirit-burner or a ‘kenur’ – just threw all the ingredients they had into it and let them stew and boil.
There were no skills to pass down the generations.
The rural poor lived off stale bread and whatever vegetables they could get out of the fields, stewed together in the one family pot. The urban poor lived off stale bread and whatever they could scrounge or beg – including left-overs from military messes and convents – or buy for the odd penny.
Why else do you think corned beef is a staple ingredient in the cookery, rather than the sandwiches, of the descendants of the Maltese urban poor? It is used in recipes in substitute for minced meat, even now when minced meat is cheap and everyone can buy it. We like to blame it on ‘the British’, but the reality is that the British don’t include corned beef in their cooking. They use minced beef or lamb. Corned beef is sliced up and goes into sandwiches.
But enough about one of my favourite subjects. I got a little carried away there and left no space to tackle the real enemies of financial survival among the socio-economic groups dependent on the minimum wage: smoking and gambling.
Smoking and gambling are the real killers, consuming a great part of the household income. The worst of it is that they are taken for granted by the households which suffer from this blight. They are not seen as problems to be tackled and eradicated, but rather as difficulties to be worked around and coped with.
The housewife whose low-paid husband smokes two packets a day and gambles whatever money he has access to will not lay down the law and deliver an ultimatum. And most times, even if she does so it delivers no results. So instead she will take on a poorly paid job herself to earn back the money he spends on cigarettes and gambling. Sometimes, it is the wife who smokes and gambles. Sometimes, both parents are smokers, burning up a minimum of 70 euros a week. If the minimum wage is raised in situations like this, we know where the money will go.
When people who earn relatively little are addicted to smoking and gambling, these cease to be nasty habits and constitute a major social problem. They are an affliction to the family. Before there is a proper study of just how much of the income of minimum-wage earners goes on cigarettes and gambling – and this will be difficult because in the latter case especially, people lie even to their spouses – we cannot have a proper discussion about poverty and raising the minimum wage.
These are the sorts of problems that are rendered worse, not made better, by throwing more money at them. Caritas Malta knows the extent of the problem of gambling, smoking and unrealistic spending, leading to usury, at the lower end of the socio-economic scale, because it provides voluntary and charitable services which help those embroiled in the hell of it.
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Raising minimum wages will not solve the ‘poverty’ problem in Malta..
Countries which have higher minimum wages, social assistance to single parents, welfare, unemployment benefits have not succeeded in eliminating poverty. On the contrary, they created a certain mindset which expects handouts from the government and NGOs.
Food banks, distribute tons of foodstuffs daily. ‘Soup Kitchens’ feed hundreds and church volunteers prepare breakfasts for children who are sent to school hungry each morning.
Without being cynical, I can attest that many (not all) of these parents, smoke and drink but complain that they cannot make ends meet.
Welfare states compound the problems and not solve them. Many ‘poverty cases’ are second generation welfare recipients who simply do not want to work towards improving their lot in life.
They find it much easier to blame the system than to get off their derriere and do something about improving their education or their skills thus securing a decent job.
With all the assistance available to them, many still are homeless, some living in cardboard boxes, or at the Salvation Army or Mission Services and other agencies partly funded by the government and partly by charitable donations..
There will always and everywhere be ‘disadvantaged classes’, some by misfortune and therefore they should be helped, but most find themselves in dire situations because they’d rather live scantily than to put in an honest day’s work. Much easier to go to Social Services office and get a handout – after all, that’s what their parents did.
I think you got your April Fool’s day piece mixed up with today’s.
It is amazing that an NGO with so much experience in the field of social problems should come up with this half-baked idea. Is there a politically partisan agenda?
For one thing, increasing the minimum wage will do nothing for those who do not have a job. I would have expected Caritas to push for reforms to encourage more women to find employment. Perhaps Dun Victor didn’t want to upset the more conservative elements in the Church and the PL.
Yes parents who give priority to gambling and smoking over the well-being of their children are a reality.
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But writing this article as a reaction to Caritas proposing a raise in the minimum wage is unfair to say the least.
Surely there are a greater amount of people who weren’t as lucky in life and have to settle for factory jobs or other low-paying jobs and have to raise a family with as little as 158 euros a week.
Would you just stick to “mal-hazin jehel it-tajjeb” and not give the proposal any more thought?
[Daphne – I did not start thinking about the subject when Caritas proposed raising the minimum wage, Chris. It’s not a new or original proposal but an obvious one. My views are liberal, so I already have serious problems with the idea of a minimum wage at all. I accept that a minimum wage is necessary only to avoid abuse and exploitation by certain employers, as we are seeing with immigrant workers who are unaware of the law and their rights. But beyond that, it’s ‘rod to fish with’. Rather than raising the minimum wage arbitarily, it should be a matter of helping people train for better paid work. The solution to the manifest problems of being stuck in minimum-wage level work for years, if not for a lifetime, are not solved by raising the minimum wage to help this person raise his standard of living. He should be helped to raise his standard of living by getting into better work.]
Let’s spell it out then. Raising the minimum wage by itself is sheer lunacy. At it will do is to:
1) Bring the median wage closer to the minimum wage, thus bringing the largest segment of the working population closer to the famous poverty line.
2) Provide further stimulus (if any were needed) for employers to keep their employees at minimum wage, because if the minimum wage is decent enough, why pay them more?
3) Provide absolutely no incentive for those on the minimum wage to find a better-paid job.
4) Actually discourage employers from employing more people at the lower end of the salary scale.
5) Give yet another helping hand to that segment of the population which already receives maximum fiscal and other benefits. Those just above the minimum wage will feel robbed and cheated, and indeed they’d be right. Mintoff’s legacy and the destruction of the middle class and all that
6) Improve the lot of the lower classes not one jot. What they need is an awareness of who they are, what they are, and where they stand in relation to the rest of society. That’s absolutely the only way to raise oneself up from the abyss of the lower class. I should know, because I went through that process.
[Daphne – Thank you, H.P., though I would add that the patronising (as distinct from realistic) members of the middle-class who propose this kind of thing make the fundamental mistake of assuming that their values and priorities are everyone’s values and priorities, and that when members of the under-class (as distinct from the good old-fashioned working-class, most of whom are NOT on the minimum wage) say they need more money then it’s because they wish to 1. buy better food, 2. give their children a better education, 3. furnish their homes comfortably, 4. actually buy a home. The reality is far different, and it’s pointless and stupid to be too politically correct about it.]
I could go on about this. Those who propose this kind of thing seem never to have been on the minimum wage themselves. That’s the trouble with this blasted country. You’re either financially secure and intelligent, or in penury and unskilled in the art of thinking.
The only voice we need in this debate is the one that’s never heard: the ever-growing number of skilled, intelligent people, many of them graduates, on the minimum wage. I’ve been there myself. And I can tell you that they are the most hard-working, uncomplaining lot I’ve ever met. We’re in the middle of an economic crisis, and we’re lucky even to have a job.
Raising the minimum wage is profoundly unjust and antisocial. Remuneration should be commensurate with skill.
[Daphne – Yes and no. It should actually be commensurate with supply. And demand. And whether the employer is a money-maker or not. Hence nurses/state health care. And bankers.]
Yes, the forty/fifty-somethings who whine about the minimum wage should be told in no uncertain terms that the era of prosperity and the welfare state is over.
We’re creating a lost generation of intelligent and motivated graduates who will never be financially secure, and will forever be stuck in a cycle of dead-end, low-earning jobs.
If we need to reduce the spending power of the Sixties Generation in order to improve the lot of Generation X, then so be it. If we fail them, our words on “iz-zaghzagh huma l-futur” will stand as a monument to our empty promises and vile lies.
The government did try to induce minimum wage earners to train for skilled jobs that will eventually mean a higher pay, but I understand the response was next to nil, so that seems to prove that some people would rather live on the minimum wage and social handouts.
The whole social services system needs to be revamped as there are many who are abusing of the system. Social services should be what they are meant to be, help to the really needy and not those who horde money or in the case of elderly pass on money to their children and grandchildren whilst they are quite willing to live a very frugal life.
As always brilliant!
If I may add a personal view to your paragraph containing
“……in the socio-economic groups most dependent on social benefits and the minimum wage, of even the most basic shopping, cooking and food preparation skills.”
I would love to have more time to develop training in marketing from the perspective of the consumer.
I had a patient who complained with all seriousness that after paying me for my services, she had no money to play tombola. She was a heavy smoker and had solid gold bracelets on both arms. Her priorities in life were topsy-turvy.
My family doctor told me that when the Super 5 Jackpot goes very high much less patients visit his clinic. This seems to happen on a regular basis. The higher the jackpot, the less patients since there are the ones who prefer the spend their money on Super 5 rather at the doctors’.
I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard one woman say to another (at the supermarket) that the bank wouldn’t give her a loan to pay off her huge mobile phone bill.
In my parents’ time I remember them worrying about the thought of considering to get a loan to purchase a shop or a house. Now that we’re over that and that people’s relationship with money and loans seems to have become so relaxed, here they go, rush to the bank to apply for loans to pay for debt.
I think the banks should stick a sign on their doors: ‘loan applications to pay off debt will be rejected outright’. Would save them precious time.
I can’t understand why people with a low income tend to have the most expensive habits. Smoking, drinking and gambling.
When the cleaning lady of the block where I live stops for a cigarette break my heart aches, because I am so sorry for these people who were brought up in the wrong culture and the wrong mentality.
Because unfortunately they are desperate. Unfortunately desperate people tend to do all sorts of things.
Corned beef pie with peas and onions is yummy to say the least whilst ‘pulpetti tal corned beef ‘ having been left in the fridge overnight are a treat on fresh Maltese bread and a damned sight tastier than boiled (steamed) fish .
Haven’t the time for smoking or gambling though .
[Daphne – Why not just make your pies and meatballs with minced beef? Corned beef is no longer even the cheap substitute for beef which it was originally, so why bother? It’s not that brilliant for your blood pressure, either, with all that salt.]
What about “brodu tal-cornedbeef”? It’s the broth of something which had already been processed. The taste could be yummy for some, but in my opinion is disgusting.
The problem with some people is that they do not realise just how cheaper , healthier and tastier their take-away greasy pastizzi , qassatat , timpana and burgers would be if they bothered to learn how to make them themselves.
And that includes the pastry and fillings. Chicken mince and offal, pork-end cuts, fish trimings and imported veg are dirt cheap and a darned sight cheaper then corned beef.
You open a Pandora’s Box to a discussion on food preparation. Corned beef pies and pulpetti tal-corned beef are tasty yet we only have them occasionally.
The real issue is lifestyle, burning calories and sweating can go a very long way in sorting out a lot of modern life maladies.
Butter, especially the common salted variety when spread thick is a tasty devil in disguise.
Two generations (or maybe three) ago, full use of organs was made to provide nourishmentfull use of organs was made to provide nourishment. Many remember ‘ kirxa ‘ as a nibble served in bars, but it is rarely seen now.
[Daphne – Tripe. That’s because it was eaten out of necessity. Nobody wants to eat it now that there are better, affordable things.]
The question to be answered is where old skills /tastes have disappeared to and why.
Sadly pea and ‘arcotta’ pastizzi shops are on the rise.
One could also add that there’s an absence of a leftist philosophy to address the yearning for more these people go through every day.
Taking up your example regarding cooking, this misconception can be seen in the contrast between the regions north of Rome and the rest. The former think nothing of proposing stale bread, scraps, vegetable skins, rice and the odd bone creating minimalist dishes which make the most of the nutritional value of the ingredients.
The south still delves in timpana type dishes which nutritionists warn against, not to mention the sweets.
It’s a culture thing, where aspiration to better oneself is exchanged for the ability to dispose of things in an unaccountable manner. It arises directly, in my view, from the social links and structure the people live in, where a sense of purpose inhibits self indulgence.
I would add another phenomenon, this time shared with Britain; the amount of money spent on blinging Japanese grey imports, it afflicts young couples and seems to be a shared thing. There’s a major local subculture fed by a whole industry and has recently found a footing in Sicily.
‘where a sense of purpose should inhibit self indulgence.’
Did the Caritas Malta report factor in the cost of smoking and gambling when compiling the list of items a household is expected to consume so as to lead a reasonable healthy and well balanced lifestyle?
The proposed increase in minimum wage is supposed to reflect achieving this lifestyle regardless of smoking habits. I do not have access to the report, but it would be certainly difficult for Caritas Malta to justify an increase in the minimum wage based on smoking and other habits. Such expenses would be factored separately.
“If the mimimum wage is raised in a siutation like this [i.e., spending too much money on cigarettes and gambling], then we know where the money will go.”
But exactly how do we, or can we, know where any extra money will go? Where’s the evidence?
[Daphne – That’s why I wrote that it would be irresponsible to raise the minimum wage without a proper survey of the social/financial problems which afflict the relevant socio-economic group. We do know already that smoking and gambling become more frequent and problematic the further down the socio-economic scale you go (which isn’t in any way unique to Malta). It is hard to make a strong argument for raising the minimum wage – a burden on employers and the taxpayer-finded state payroll – of people who won’t give up the bad habits which are the monetary equivalent of the proposed wage increase. The liberal view says that individuals cannot be obliged to give up their bad habits however detrimental they are financially (personal choices etc). But the liberal view also holds that employers and taxpayers should not be expected to, effectively, pay for those bad habits.]
I feel you are exagerating about poorer people not knowing how to cook. Necessity is the mother of invention. But I do agree with you about the cigarettes. They are a hidden but accepted addiction. And if the gov continues to raise the taxes, addicts will continue to smoke but have less money for more important necessities. I know cos I have one at home and I don’t encourage him to stop because he changes from Dr Jekyll to Mr Hyde without them. Probably we would end up divorced if he were to quit and he would end up the most hated man on the island.
[Daphne – Those are withdrawal symptoms. They don’t last forever. That’s not a very wise choice you made there: another few decades of damage to his health (and yours) and bank balance (and yours, presumably) while living in a stinking home, rather than a few months of tantrums, panic attacks and eating everything in sight, after which everything settles to a normality you probably never knew existed.]
‘Probably we would end up divorced if he were to quit’
Probably he will end up dead before his time if he doesn’t.
Other than that you are also compromising your health (and that of your children, if any) by passive smoking.
I know two different cases of people who quit smoking for the sake of their pockets and nothing else.
It was hard but they succeeded. The Health Department offers counselling to smokers who want to quit.
1. There’s a major flaw in your argument: any possible positive correlation that might exist between minimum wage increments and a corresponding increase in ‘bad habits’ does not necessarily imply causation.
(You might find that the number of women buying cornettos on a beach increases as more bare-chested men arrive throughout the day. Freudian logic would probably suggest that the increasing number of men is causing the women to instinctively hold a somewhat phallic shape in their hand to attract and seduce the men — and the numbers at face value will probably back this claim. The real reason is, of course, simply the fact that the weather got warmer; otherwise none of the sexes be on the beach in the first place.)
2. Also, by implication, should we raise the taxes for the high earners?
Assuming they’re not tax evaders, that’s a sure way to control their disposable income. So using your line of thought, we’ll preemptively make sure they’re less inclined to start / sustain their cocaine addiction, because bad habits exist among the well-to-do too.
And please don’t suggest that ‘at least they can afford [the habit]’. Sooner or later they’ll seek help to rehab. And who’ll foot the bill for that? Exactly, the taxpayers — incidentally the same group making good for the welfare benefits handed out to those on the poverty line.
[Daphne – The flaw in YOUR argument is that my reasoning was about the control of bad habits. It is not. I don’t care whether people smoke, as long as they don’t do it around me. And I don’t care whether they gamble, either, as long as they don’t put their children at the mercy of the state or charity by doing so. My argument does not apply to high-earners and their cocaine habits because they earn their own money in a free market career sector and can blow it on whatever they please (except that it is illegal, of course, and their demand for this criminal substance creates misery on the other side of the world). It applies to an increase in the state-mandated minimum wage, which effectively forces employers to pay people more without receiving any concomitant increase in services, and also to social benefits. For these, justification is required because they are being IMPOSED on third parties (taxpayers and employers) who cannot reasonably be ordered to fund the bad habits of others. This is why people – and justifiably so – become upset and annoyed when they see individuals on social benefits standing at slot machines or chain-smoking, but have a different sort of negative reaction when they see some big-shot burning money.]
“Smoking and gambling are the real killers” You hit the nail on the head.
A lottery is a taxation
Upon all fools in Creation
And Heaven be praised It is easily raisied.
……….. Henry Fielding 1731
In my opinion corned beef is getting even more popular in Malta as at LIDL’s is very conveniently priced and I could notice that people even buy it in large quantities.
At least they buy corned beef. Some people don’t even buy meat (because they can’t afford it because they put stupid priorities before their basic needs). Corned beef provides ‘some basic’ nutritional value.
I don’t deny a word of your article.
However, it’s also true to say that capitalsm whilst being the motor or the economy can be heartless and indeed cruel.
A fairly recent article on bbc.com remarked on the fact that the rich-poor divide is increasing and the gap now stands as it stood almost a hundred years ago – if I recall the figures correctly.
[Daphne – Tim, that’s because the rich are getting richer, though, and not because the poor are getting poorer. The number of millionaires and billionaires has increased in the developing world, so has the number of very comfortably off people. BUT, relatively speaking the ‘poor’ are comfortably off too. I think it was fatuous of the BBC to compare the situation today to that of 100 years ago. The actual disparity might be the same – because there is now previously undreamed of wealth, but the situation of the people ‘at the bottom’ is not the same at all. A century ago, they lived in the most unbelievably squalid conditions and poverty was real poverty: the sort of poverty where you don’t have shoes, wear rags, and beg in the streets. It’s our perception of poverty which has changed so much that we have forgotten what real poverty is. Let’s face it, the way even we grew up in the 1970s would probably be considered ‘poverty’ by our children today. Sometimes I look back at the way some of my school-friends lived and think how it would be considered poverty and deprivation of the worst kind by today’s standards, except that it wasn’t really, was it, at the time. It wasn’t even really poverty at all. They had a home, food on the table, went to school, a bedroom of their own.]
It is clear, the article stated, that whilst capitalism generates money, this doesn’t trickle downwards but is drawn upwards. In effect, the rich get richer, the middle-income earners get squeezed and the poor get poorer.
Not all capitalists are greedy – BMW, after record profits last year, just gave their employees a bonus of – again, if I’m not mistaken – an average, or possibly a minimum, of €7000. Has anything similar ever happened in Malta? I doubt it.
Remember, I’m not talking about commission here, I’m talking about an ex-gratia bonus.
I’ve known quite a few employers in Malta. Some were outright rapacious – paying the minimum wage and exacting as much as possible from their employees. Some, even though far more civilised, still profited from the lack of well-paid employment around and imposed unfairly on their employees.
To mention a couple of examples – employers often require sales employees to provide their own vehicles for company use. Real estate companies don’t even employ you – they ask you to be self-employed and tie yourself to their company and put a clause (probably illegal) in their contracts prohibiting you from working with any other real estate company in future. Hysterical – they don’t employ you but they try and dictate where you should be employed.
[Daphne – Ah, but this is probably where you and I part company. I say the problem lies with the people who accept those terms. If they accept them, they can’t complain – and nobody can blame the real estate agents for doing it if they can find so many suckers with so little self-respect. It’s not as though they are preying on refugees who are vulnerable. The people they engage are by definition sort of pushy and confident.]
Yes, there exists a certain type of person who wants to get paid as much as possible for as little work as possible. Equally, however, there’s a certain type of employer that is quite happy to pay peanuts, regardless of whether he employs monkeys or Einsteins. I think we need seek to address the problem of the latter before we seek to address the problem of the former.
I’m not so sure about the rich poor equilibrium and the effects, or lack of, implied, not when a top manager earns 500 times as much as an employee at the lower end of the salary scale. Twenty years ago the difference was ca. 10-15 times.
There could be a direct correlation between this and the state of the global economy
The yachting industry has seen a sharp drop in sales of smallish boats (30 to 55 feet), whereas the superyacht segment keeps increasing the size of their product, going from the mega to the gigayacht, capable of remaining out at sea for years, whatever that implies.
The automobile is going through the same situation, mainstream producers recording 30% decreased sales on entry level models worldwide whilst specialist makers, one of them producing an 8.5 million dollar car, can’t keep up with orders.
The result being an imbalance in demand causing the closing down of medium sized companies whose market has simply shrivelled. Whenever these carried a reputation, the rights are acquired and the product ethos is changed upmarket, a speculative exercise, leaving a vacuum in the no frills utilitarian sector, which is what generates the wealth, apart from distributing the money. In the case of the automobile sector, this is inhibiting any R&D and radical innovation.
Given our jaded wants, we result incapable of designing anything suitable, which is what India, not China, is intent on doing.
They’ve just had their first general strike for the introduction of a nationwide minimum wage last month.
‘The problem lies with the people who accept these terms’. I can assure you that if push comes to shove and you have 3 children to support you will accept such terms, at least until something better can be found. Don’t even try to deny this, please.
I know plenty of working mothers are still very careful about their cooking and what they feed their children.
Unfortunately there are the ones who feed their children only rubbish with the excuse that they are too busy with their jobs and the opt for other fast options.
There are non-working mothers who do not cook because they are simply lazy and careless. Their children live on pastizzi, pizza and bread.
Frances Camilleri, who lectures in gender studies at the Workers’ Partecipation Centre, said on television that plenty of money is being spent by working mothers on fast cooking and pre-prepared food to save time.
In my opinion if a mother decides to have a job to live better financially, should do her homework well so less money goes down the drain.
You forgot to factor in the mobile phones and the cost to run them when one is illiterate, and the great big amount of soft drinks and snacks bought.
“If a village had 500 houses, and 50 of them had ovens, you can bet that the local bakers were not taking into their ovens 450 household dishes against payment every Sunday.”
The woman in the picture is actually coming from ‘tal-forn’ . “Tal-forn ,il-Hadd kien jaghmel ix-xiwa.”
http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1084/1424353852_0766b452ba_z.jpg?zz=1
Only gambling and smoking? What about tattoos, earrings on various parts of the body, and constant use of cellphones.
Tattoos and ear rings are a one-time expense. But yes, mobile phone overuse is a problem.
Now that means the priorities are wrong.
This gentleman sounds very much like a failed medical student with chips on his shoulder against the medical profession (especially the Minister) in general.
http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/en/newsdetails/news/national/Joseph-Cassar-playing-political-ball-game-MUMN-20120320
Maybe Caritas are being played as useful idiots, a kind of Edward Bernays lite, putting out feelers for the government to test the waters/ (prepare employers) for an increase in wages. How else are governments supposed to pay off ever increasing debt loads if not by inflation?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays
Hint to the destitute: roll-ups+filters= 7 euros/month.
For a real horror-show, Mons. Victor Grech should head west to Portugal… pensioneers surviving on EUR 200 a month and taxes on healthcare so severe – that honest hard-working Portuguese are dying in their dozens because they simply can’t afford it. My heart aches.
This is a socio-economic problem of gargantuan proportions.
After almost fifty years of visiting people in their kitchens I could write volumes about it.
My admiration for Dun Victor and his mission knows no bounds.
He has been a great friend since long before I started going into kitchens. We have talked for hours on this and that.
He knows his stuff very, very well
Caritas’ suggestion is no panacea but is, nonetheless, very valid.
Likewise, Daphne has made many a good point in her article.
She even reminded me of my younger days.
Almost every Sunday in summer my grandmother entrusted me with taking and collecting the roast to and from tal-forn.
She was a superb cook and followed her 1890 edition of Mrs Beeton’s to the letter.
The ovens in our summer residences were not large enough to take dishes to feed twenty people.
So off I went at ten to tal-forn. I was given the comba with a number. Collection at around 12 noon. Tlett soldi.
The roast potatoes were to die for.
I have never tasted such delicious roast potatoes since the days of Mikiel tal-forn, the comba, the tlett soldi, my nanna and Mrs Beeton.
You know why? Because every dish in the oven absorbed the aromas rising from the other dishes and so tasted so much better. I heard this once from an Italian chap who was explaining to a lady that even their panettone tasted different if the oven was full or only half full.
Re the argument which Daphne raised, I agree with her. I know of a family who had a room for six cats and a dog but the children shared a room.
I know that the EU has a programme that tries to train women to budget wisely. It was started in France and in Malta a course was held to try and train trainers to carry out the project. But I never heard anything else about it.
€158 weekly wage is peanuts. I think Caritas is right on this one and I don’t think there’s any correlation between higher wages and bad habits. With a mere €158 weekly wage your disposable income is zilch.
[Daphne – There are so many misconceptions about this. The minimum wage is the minimum wage, not the mandatory wage. People are free to train for higher-paid work. If they can’t be bothered, tough. When people have children and their income is low, there are social benefits to help them out. But you don’t raise the minimum wage across the board (and it has to be across the board because it’s the state-mandated minimum) so that a 16-year-old girl who’s dropped out of school or an 18-year-old who’s decided he’s not interested in working at anything much can have ‘disposable income’ and still buy a house a car. That’s a perversion. Payment is reward for skills and labour, not a reward for being. We’re in dangerous living-wage territory here.]
I am proud that my country has free health care and generous social benefits, having an insurance guaranteed for whatever might happen is a peace of mind. Maybe I will never need such social assistance however knowing it’s available its comforting. Is it wrong if wealth is distributed equally? Minimum wage is a safety net to all employees to earn a decent and modest salary.
Inequality is a negative phenomenon even on utilitarian grounds, the lesser the gap between rich and poor the better for the whole society. It is well known that homicide, higher disease rate, infant mortality rate, depression and prison population is associated with socioeconomic inequality.
[Daphne – You are completely wrong about the suicide and depression. Suicide and depression have nothing to do with socio-economic inequality. They have to do with a myriad of causes, most of which are linked to the feeling of loss of control over one’s life or existential despair. The Scandinavian countries have a high suicide rate, not a low one, despite their socio-economic equality. It’s also pretty high in Japan. There was a lot of suicide and depression behind the Iron Curtain, despite the state-imposed socio-economic equality of another kind. Inequality is not a negative phenomenon but an inescapable and unavoidable fact of life. You can’t have state-mandated equality – that experiment failed spectacularly, as we saw over the course of the 20th century, and you can’t make people equal through taxing the rich and laying down the law on how much the poor are paid. The reason is that there is no equality in biology. Some people are born beautiful. Some people are born intelligent. Some people are born with sought-after abilities. Some people can stick at it. Some people are more to start with while the vast majority are not. One is no more justified in resenting those who were born with money than those who were born with supermodel looks or a Massachusetts Institute of Technology brain. Whether it’s hereditary money, looks or brains, it’s all unearned – and all hereditary.]
I dont have any research/info to back this, but sometimes I get the impression that people with low educational skills are ‘less worried’ and only become concerned with ‘making ends meet’ when they find themselves in dire straits; to the contrary people with a higher degree of education end up doing more ‘calculations’, on how to improve constantly the quality of their life. For the former, it’s enough to keep as they are, they keep any progress as a super-bonus; so they’re never really worried and depressed.
An important factor is being overlooked. If the minimum wage is increased to € 180.00 will the wages of those employees who already have this figure as their normal wage get an increase too so as to regain their higher wage rung from the minimum wage? And if yes, will the next rung up get an increase to retain its position? … and so on… where will it stop ?
Slippery slope “arguments” like yours are no argument at all. If it were an argument at all, it would be an argument against having a minimum wage at all.
When the minimum wage was first introduced, there would have already been people who were paid around the same amount. Was that an argument against introducing it?
Of course, the above is not to say that the minimum wage should be increased. It is just that the slippery slope argument is generally devoid of substance.
Erm, Kenneth…. don’t dismiss this argument so fast.
This is your correct mindset thinking here…. but go explain it to a few people…. and you`ll start getting mixed answers to your reasoning.
Whilst I agree that a minimum wage rise shouldn’t automatically trigger this reaction, I still think it could be a possibility.
Back on Daphne’s point, some people don’t even know what they spend per month, yet they look at what they earn. They don’t see what leaves their pocket, but then they complain when it is empty.
Say this is a typical adult breakdown:
Cigarettes: Half a pack per day ( € 4 x 183 times ) = € 732
Mobile phone topup: € 20 x 12 months = € 240
Go / Melita Home Pack: € 33 x 12 months = € 396
Sports Channel? Only € x amount per month.
Flat Screen TV? Only € x amount per month.
and so on and on.
And for the young clubbers, let’s break that down:
Bus to Paceville: € 1.50
Taxi from Paceville to home: € 2.50
5 drinks @ € 2.50 €12.50
Burger bic-chips € 4.50
Total € 21 x 2 nights a week € 42
€ 42 x 52 weekends = € 2184 a year!
Poor?… Malta is far from poor! We are just wasteful and we dont even know it.
I understand you do live in Malta.
Mister,
The minimum wage in Malta (and in the rest of the world) has had an increase quite a few times, but never have I read that the people whose wages then matched the increased minimum wage demanded an increase in their wages specifically because of the minimum wage increase.
Then again, perhaps I’m giving people too much credit. After all, some have demanded sillier things.
Every time the minimum wage in Malta was increased after its introduction it was through COLA, so although the percentage narrowed the actual amount did not.
I do not know how long you’ve been around but I was on the shop floor when it was introduced in Malta and do remember some grumbling and at least my then employer adjusted wages accordingly.
I also remember when the minimum amount of leave days was introduced and some of us lost up to a week leave which was gained by others.
With the advent of late night shopping, microwave, food processors and the deep freeze, there is no excuse for not preparing healthy and delicious home-made meals and at a decent price too.
Very often I see employees in supermarkets throwing away crates full of fresh vegetable leaves and stalks (cauliflowers, broccoli, turnips, courgettes flowers etc), that could be turned into meals.
I know of people who throw away dry bread instead of using it to make breadcrumbs. Left-over meats, vegetables and cheese can, with some imagination, be transformed into other meals.
Tasty meat meals can be prepared for a few euros with learning how to make meatloaf (pulpettun), in my opinion a lot healthier , tastier and cheaper then burgers, pulpetti etc, from inexpensive mince, chicken offal and left -over sausage and the judicious use of fresh herbs and spices.
I think this country needs an organized nationwide campaign to educate people to make better and more practcial use of the household budget and improve on their culinary habits whilst cutting down on waste.
Those organising cooking programmes on television should take a tip from similar programmes on Italian TV where they are now focusing on small budget healthy meals made with traditional and inexpensive basics.
I couldn’t agree more
It’s ironic to hear the economist who helped Caritas with this report say that the minimum wage should be raised. When I started working after school, in a factory where this economist had a great deal of clout, I was paid a pound a day, and told that I couldn’t be paid more than that because I was ‘training’.
When I became ‘tal-post’, this same economist had supervisors running after us to build up our production for the princely sum of eight pounds a week. Now, in his dotage, those days long gone, here he is, advising Caritas on raising the minimum wage to 180 euros a week.
As the saying goes “KULLHADD GALANTOM BI FLUS HADDIEHOR”. It’s obvious he no longer runs a factory.