Joseph Muscat: “Rich people are talented. Poor people are not.”
I strongly recommend to you the two video-excerpts of an interview with the prime minister on the subject of selling passports, on timesofmalta (link below).
Muscat fudges, lies and bluffs his way through, rudely trying to interrupt difficult questions, blatantly lying to contradict the interviewer (on the subject of the United States/Canada investor programmes) and betraying his shocking values.
He wants to sell them passports because of ‘the very good networking opportunities’.
When Mark Micallef, the interviewer, asks him whether selling passports is not inconsistent with all the fuss he is making about immigration, the prime minister says:
There is a world of difference, because what we are doing with this scheme is attracting talent.
Micallef interjects: Money, not talent.
And the prime minister insists: No, talent. We will select them for talent.
In other words, there is no possible talent among what he considers to be the human detritus that washes up on our shores. But all rich people are talented.
Or worse, in his value/logic system: rich = talented; poor = not talented.
Or much worse than that: money = talent; talent = money.
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http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20131110/local/pm-muscat.494048
Very right-wing reasoning for a purported socialist.
He must think Manuel Mallia is the wonder boy of the century.
That’s not even right wing, that’s Bush Jr’s neocon.
Just because you call yourself something does not make you that thing. Stalin could have called himself a philanthropist liberal and Hitler could have called himself laissez-faire but it would not have changed the fact that they were fascist/socialist, which might I add are more or less the same thing.
Except when you live in a country like Malta where many cannot weigh an argument to save their lives.
Those who won the election knew that if they said they were the fairy godmother they would have been believed. Market research and a multi-million marketing campaign is what won the election albeit by hook AND by crook.
Have you ever seen an irresponsible parent inch their way to the head of the queue in a supermarket or bank? First they irritate their child with something they KNOW annoys him, forcing him to sit still for example or not allowing him to open a packet of sweets. Then the tantrum starts with crying and squirming. But lo and behold as soon as they are allowed pass forward they immediately promise the child a toy, give him the packet or let him run around. Their principle (or lack thereof) do what you must, to hell with the repercussions.
Persuading fools was a piece of cake.
And even if what he is saying were true, Muscat wouldn’t be attracting talent, but attracting a one-time donation from talent, which in itself amounts to peanuts.
Does the law on selling passports say that apart from money they should have talent, like singing or playing the piano?
No. It just follows the Labour logic that if you have the money then you have talent, and vice versa.
The USA grew to become a superpower and a success story on the philosophy and practice of “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
Appalling indeed.
In 1994, one of the very few geologists of Malta who worked at the Petroleum Division at the Prime Minister’s Office was a Sub-Saharan African. He was not rich but talented.
Oh Muscat has his fingers crossed behind his back and is referring to the ‘talents’ in the parable.
”Talent” for what exactly? Cooking the books?
The PM answers in riddles.
His answer to Norman Vella’s arrest was “The police should have handled it better”.
In other words, the police fucked up a planned frame-up.
Reporters and Opposition MPs need some training in quick-fire response culture, tar-rahal style.
Forget ethics and logic with a person who doesn’t bother with either. Respond in kind.
Yesterday it was comparing the rights of the rich to those of the ones who get their passport by marriage.
It seems the rich should get their passport once the ones who marry a Maltese become a burden, whereas they, being rich, won’t.
It must be a cunning plan to increase the country’s global wealth statistics.
In the second clip, Joseph Muscat is contradicting a senior journalist of The Times who is effectively more prepared than the prime minister on the subject.
On the subject of Canada’s investment program, Muscat is very clearly mixing Canada’s immigration policy for its citizenship policy.
It is very evident that the prime minister has some confusion about the subject, and is not being properly advised. This is very serious, and it could be why he is failing to make the right decisions about the investor program.
Mark Micallef of The Times is right to say that Canada’s investor program only awards a citizenship and hence a passport after several years of residence.
Someone should explain to Muscat the distinction between the purchase of a passport (citizenship) and immigration. An immigrant is physically present in the country in which he is an immigrant, and he lives there, works there, possibly has a family life there. The immigrant travels on purpose to the country in which he is an immigrant. Will those who buy passports from Joseph Muscat and Manuel Mallia via Hanley & Partners be migrating to Malta, to live and work here?
Canada is a long-established immigration country and as part of its immigration policy, it has the Immigrant Investor Program, to which Muscat makes reference. See the website link here.
http://www.cic.gc.ca/ENGLISH/immigrate/business/investors/index.asp
The link confirms what Muscat has said, that the program had been stopped temporarily because of immense interest shown in it.
This is an official website of the Canadian government. The program is clearly called the Immigrant Investor Program and falls under the ‘Immigrate’ tab. The program leads to a PERMANENT RESIDENT VISA, not to citizenship or a passport.
The site has a separate tab about citizenship.
These immigrant investment programs exist in other countries which have a history of immigration like Australia, which has its own Business Innovation and Investment Program.
http://www.immi.gov.au/media/fact-sheets/27business.htm
Those who qualify for those business immigration programs are initially granted visas, not citizenship:
“Most Business Innovation and Investment migrants enter Australia on a provisional visa for four years and after satisfactory evidence of a specified level of business or investment activity, may apply for permanent residence.
Alternatively business migrants may apply for a Business Talent visa to get direct permanent residence if they have high level business skills or have obtained funding from an Australian venture capital firm. ”
It is very worrying to see a Prime Minister who is either lying or not properly informed on this very serious issue involving the sale of Maltese citizenship.
Joseph doesn’t even know how the EU functions, let alone bis he familiar with Canadian and Australian landed immigrant schemes and obviously much less with procedures connected with the acquisition of citizenship.
In the biblical parable, talents were money. Perhaps that is what he is thinking of.
Malta’s Got Talent
John Dalli has money. Does that make him talented?
There are 50 shades of talent.
Allow me to share the unpleasant surprise I got on hearing Tonio Fenech in a radio phone-in on Radio 101.
Mr Fenech explained that the 35% tax on dividends is not redeemable.
So what are the consequences on a middle-class working couple aged over fifty with three daughters still studying? We bought BOV and HSBC shares toe top up our pensions with this income in six years’ time.
We also bought shares for our daughters and on their eighteenth birthday they were handed this hen which lays two golden eggs every year.
Fairly enough as we are a working couple the 35% withholding tax was sometimes partially refunded by the Inland Revenue Department.
Our daughters used to get yearly and half yearly dividends plus a tax refund of around €250 in summer.
The way these payments were spaced was ideal for my family.
Now my daughters will be getting 35% less income. My wife and I will get a reduction in our income of at least 4% now and in around six years’ time our pension plan will have a cut of around €1500 per year, based on the dividends of 2013.
My parents will also feel Joseph Muscat’s pinch or rather punch next summer when the tax refund, which financed their traditional seven-day holiday in Gozo, will not arrive.
So now we know which new middle class josephmuscat.com had in mind.
In four years time I know already to whom I will not be voting.
My understanding is that the 35% tax on source on dividends is a provisional tax, as opposed to the 15% withholding tax on bond and bank interest income. A lot of people obtain a refund for that dividend tax or a deduction from the tax due.
If the recent budget changed that, the PN should be running the story in its media. That is a huge blow to a huge chunk of the population.
No wonder this budget is so deceptive. The government did not even have the courage to outline the details of additional taxes that will amount to €21 million additional revenue to the government.
Jekk nivvutaw trid tghid. Ghax kif mixjin nibza’ li anke din se nitilfu jekk mhux se nqumu qawma fuq taghna. Skuzani m’ghandix fonts Maltin bhalissa.
This is a ‘positif bagit’ so please no questions and no criticism, because if you do, that’s because you are ‘nekitif and geliss.’
It is the Minister who must explain this point, and although he was challenged about it on Xarabank by Mr. Tonio Fenech, he did not explain.
In the December 2012 version of the 2013 budget, Mr. Fenech had announced the revision of tax rates so that persons earning up to Euro 60,000 would benefit from substantial tax savings. In that measure the Minister did not discriminate between any of the sources of the income. It was a plain reduction in the tax rate by creating a new tax band just below the top rate of 35%. See pages 37 to 39 here.
http://3c3dbeaf6f6c49f4b9f4-a655c0f6dcd98e765a68760c407565ae.r86.cf3.rackcdn.com/e9bdcf7edc0af087b25dd7405832ac951337946477.pdf
In last week’s budget for 2014, the Professor of Mintoffianomics had the following statement in the section on the further reduction of the tax rate for the tax band immediately below 35%:
“Ir-rata ta’ taxxa personali ta’ 32% applikabbli għal dawk li jaqilgħu anqas minn sittin elf ewro se terġa’ titnaqqas għal 29%. Dan japplika għal kull komputazzjoni: singola, miżżewġin u ġenituri. Din il-miżura se tiswa 13.2 miljun ewro. Kif kien oriġinarjament ippjanat meta ddaħħlet din il-miżura, id-dħul minn dividendi rċevuti minn individwi se jibqa’ taxxabbli bir-rati ta’ taxxa li kienu jeżistu qabel l-introduzzjoni tar-rata tat-taxxa marġinali ta’ 32%. Din il-miżura hija importanti sabiex ikun żgurat li l-miżura tat-tnaqqis fir-rata tat-taxxa personali tibqa’ sostenibbli.”
See page 9 here:
http://3c3dbeaf6f6c49f4b9f4-a655c0f6dcd98e765a68760c407565ae.r86.cf3.rackcdn.com/f5b48bed763d4c3c3cf0ba11ad1975593536291114.pdf
I don’t know why he says that the dividends measure was planned like that before, because the previous PN budget did not contain any such measure. But that’s politics.
What I cannot understand is how this is going to be applied in practice. Does this mean that anyone falling in the income tax bracket above 25% will have one’s dividends taxed at 35%? If this is the case, this would create discrimination on the tax refund on dividends, because those taxed at 25% or less are entitled for a partial refund.
Is the Minister of Mintoffianomics on his way to eliminate the tax refund system on dividends paid to Maltese residents, whereby he will put in place a 35% final withholding tax? This would be crazy and outrageous.
How can I make a proposal for the AGM which I never attended, so that the BOV dividends will be paid by the end of this year and not in January?
For the company’s accounts it does not really matter whether these are paid in 2013 or 2014, but for the poor shareholders who are pensioners, jobless or families, this measure is going to hurt.
Dear Daphne,
I’ve contributed a brief post under this item (and another one under another subject-matter) and, at time of writing, none of them have been posted, unlike contributions of other readers offered after mine….
What reading should i make of this? Perhaps, am implicitly and politely invited not to comment on your blog?
Respectfully,
[Daphne – Just assume that I’m taken up with other matters and will eventually get round to it. Also, comments are moderated from the top down, so the system is last in, first out, because the most recent comments are at the top.]
Manuel Mallia hides his talent under the mattress.
Most Maltese do not even have 650,000 euros. So with Joseph Muscat’s reasoning, most Maltese have no talent.
Have you seen Joseph Muscat’s declaration of assets? He doesn’t have euro 650,000. It’s clear evidence of his absence of talent.
What the prime Minister must be alluding to is the ‘parable of talents’.
Non Sequitur, Mr. Prime Minister, and you are our prime and shining example of how money is not equivalent to talent.
Evidently, without a teleprompter the Prime Minister’s delivery is very flaky and incoherent.
Is he suggesting that Malta does not have enough home-grown talent and that it would benefit from injecting some from abroad?
The leading article in The Malta Independent on Sunday says:
The Opposition leader yesterday threatened to publish the list of all those on the receiving end of Maltese citizenships through the programme when returned to government – turning up a notch his attempts to scuttle the programme before it gets off the ground. This threat is coupled with similar threats to revoke all the citizenships granted and to repeal the programme at some point in the future when the Nationalist Party is returned to power.
http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2013-11-10/leader/secret-citizenships-unacceptable-3142582274/#.Un_uMCiftlA.facebook
Muscat pointed out twice that the price might go up if the demand is great.
Obviously once the people who were already promised a passport get theirs at a bargain price then he might as well put the price up and milk those who did not make a pre-election deal. So sad.
It would be interesting to see how ‘talent’ is assessed in the due diligence exercises being carried out by the different parties..
For heaven’s sake how can Muscat compare putting a cap on marriages to foreigners, which would be a cap on civil liberties, with a cap on what is a base monetary transaction. You can see where his priorities lie if he cannot see what a poor comparison it is.
Apparently there was the Festival Tal-Kanzunetta Maltija last Saturday.
Now that’s talent.
Considering how the scheme is devised, there is no talent in the EU.
“Jien cert li … dan il program ha jwassal ghal ripple effect sostanzjali fl-ekonomija li m’ghandux x’jaqsam ma’ l-ammont ta’ flus li dawn il-persuni ha kunu qeghdin ihallsu”
He couldn’t have put it better.