Kurt Sansone thinks the living wage is 'novel' because his Dear Leader told him so
Kurt Sansone at The Times, in what is supposed to be a factual news report, has described the idea of a living wage as “a novel concept”. He has assumed it is novel because his Dear Leader said so. So of course, it must be true.
More precisely, Joseph Muscat described it on Super One radio as “this exciting new idea of a living wage”.
I am aghast that somebody with a doctorate in public policy had never heard of the living wage, still less the arguments for and against, before now.
They do say that his doctoral thesis was written for him by others (well, one particular other), but that is just a ghastly smear. Because I don’t want any letters from the Dwarf Jester Director of Labour Communications, demanding an apology, I’m happy to say it’s a ghastly smear.
But honestly.
Honestly.
What must Alfred Sant be thinking?
More precisely, what is Kurt Sansone doing for his pay-cheque? The news comes in that Joseph Muscat has suggested a living wage and he reports it just like that, without giving readers of The Times any context or background.
They’re expected to Google ‘history of the living wage’ for themselves because their brave reporter hasn’t even bothered to do it for himself and thinks that the living wage is ‘novel’.
The idea of a living wage is neither new nor exciting. It is as old as the hills, and can be traced all the way back to the Middle Ages. Adam Smith had something to say about it in his Wealth of Nations (published in 1789) and the living wage movement became really big in the United States in the first half of the 20th century.
Perhaps it only came to the attention of Muscat and his Dwarf Jester now (and I suspect Marisa Micallef, who’s not particularly bright but thinks she is, might have had a hand in it) because Ed Milliband has floated it around in Britain in his attempts at becoming Labour leader.
And in this Joseph Muscat is JUST like his predecessor. He wakes up one morning with a buzz-word which he’s read about somewhere and chucks it at the electorate because he thinks it might win him some votes, without stopping to think about the logistics behind it or how wise it is or how it will be implemented.
Here we go again.
CET
Svizzera fil-Mediterran
Partnership
Repeater class
The living wage
Unbelievable
Ma, xi dwejjaq ta’ nies – mohhom biex joholqu l-kaos, l-aqwa li jitilghu fil-gvern halli l-dwarf jester isir importanti b’ xi desk f’Kastilja, qisu l-Mini Me ta’ Muscat.
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Dear Daphne,
Insejt wahda mal-lista: STATE OF THE ART.
Don’t you cringe and doesn’t your skin get the creepy-crawlies when you think who might be our prime minister in a few years? Ma x’biza u x’misthija!
Incredible! An age-old idea being so amateurishly floated as a novel concept by Muscat and faithfully publicised by loyal reporters.
I came across the concept some 15 years ago and did some more detailed research on it about eight years ago, which brought to my interested attention a book by John Ryan, titled A Living Wage published 1912. If that is novel then I am still expecting to be born.
This really confirms my belief that the Maltese socialists have still not come to terms with the fact that meaningful education and information is now available to more than the perceived managing elite.
After al,l the PL is the progressive party!
In fact it is older than that. On Wikipedia, on Google, I found this:
The living wage is a concept central to the Catholic social teaching tradition beginning with the foundational document, Rerum Novarum, a papal encyclical by Pope Leo XIII, issued in 1891 to combat the excesses of both laissez-faire capitalism on the one hand and communism on the other. In this letter, Pope Leo affirms the right to private property while insisting on the role of the state to require a living wage. The means of production were considered by the pope to be both private property requiring state protection and a dimension of the common good requiring state regulation.
Pope Leo first described a living wage in terms that as could be generalized for application in nations throughout the world. Rerum Novarum touched off legislative reform movements throughout the world eliminating child labor, reducing the work week, and establishing minimum wages.
And continues………………… J.
OK, so maybe Joseph Muscat was reading the Rerum Novarum while recovering from his injury. That would have kept him away from those official ceremonies.
“belief” in the last para may be better
There is a related concept – family wage. He should have used it. It sounds better than ‘living wage’ to his accolytes.
The unions seem too eager to applaud the idea. They should study any proposal well. Some argue that a living wage, established by law, can result in an increase in unemployment.
Joseph Muscat does it again. Every time he reads something in the foreign papers which sounds new to him, there he goes talking about it in public.
Remember how he copied “human recession” from Larry Summers? The Labour supporters are easily impressed with terms that they do not understand.
The living wage is a concept that makes no sense. It is based on the notion that a person can live decently with so much of food, health care, entertainment etc.
But the truth is that different people have different food, health care, entertainment and other needs. So a “one size fits all” living wage cannot exist.
It would be difficult to imagine every worker establishing his/her own living wage.
Raising the minimum wage to a living wage would impact our productivity ranking and is likely to result in loss of employment.
The living wage concept is used to distribute social welfare in Sweden. For welfare it works OK at best, with an incredibly high frequency of abuse.
To apply a living wage system you have to restrict it to very few criteria, none of them in relation to the person’s worth.
For welfare it seems to work though, despite its problems. It’s hard working out a replacement.
But novel? Yeah right.
Also, how will that work for employment?
Once an employer finds out the worker has three children, not a working wife and supports his parents there is no way he would hire them, as the wage would be too high. Single men with no children will always be preferred.
And this from a socialist?
http://blogs.ft.com/westminster/2010/08/ed-balls-unconvinced-by-ed-milibands-living-wage-maths/
Kemm kelna nies ilbierah fuq il-fosos, kif fqajnihom
mela ghama?
Daphne, in the list above, you did not mention the mega-pledge before the last election: that overtime will be tax-free.
Now, they tell us that Labour will not pursue this idea any further.
They have realised it was yet another mistake by Labour.
This kind of behaviour by Joseph Muscat, taking somebody else’s idea and presenting it as his own, reminds me of those students who plagiarise books and websites, thinking nobody will find out.
It is now 3 p.m. on Independence Day and the only reference I can find on timesofmalta.com to the event we are commemorating is to Joseph’s Muscat’s saying, after laying a wreath at the Independence monument, that Mintoff will soon be out of ITU.
Quite unbelievable:
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20100921/local/muscat-calls-for-joint-celebration-of-independence-and-freedom-days
Labour have nothing new to offer. Old ideas and old tactics. The only new thing that they can offer is a new party emblem and new hardship on us all if they ever get elected.