Too rich to buy his own car

Three weeks ago I wrote about ‘Anna’, a cleaner at University who earns too little for the work she does. It’s now time to talk about the opposite case: people who earn too much and then some more.

There is one thing worse than giving monkeys peanuts, and that’s giving them money- Mark-Anthony Falzon

The occasion is the sacking (‘forced resignation’) of Ray Piscopo, until recently an executive at the Malta Environment and Planning Authority. It turns out that Piscopo helped himself to four wheels too many. He happily pocketed an allowance for using his own car, even as he drove around in one that was clearly not his own. In fact his car of choice came courtesy of the taxpayer.

Which roughly means that we paid him for not using a car he in fact used, one that we paid for ourselves in the first place. That’s the easy bit.

I’m not about to lecture Piscopo on morality. The dodge was his choice and it cost him his €53,500 annual salary. It seems that he may also be asked to give us back our car money. So, all sorted then?

Not quite. I find it quite astonishing that people should be prepared to buy cars for other people, just because those other people happen to have better-paid jobs than themselves.

I spent time the other day going through the long list of readers’ comments on timesofmalta.com. Although many had negative things to say about Piscopo, very few seemed to question the idea of ‘official cars’ or ‘car allowances’.

On my part, I have sunk so low in muddled reasoning that I actually think that the more money people earn, the easier they can afford to buy and run a car. And therefore the less reason for us to provide them with one for free. Same goes for petrol, mobile phones, and such.

It’s become standard practice to cook up ‘top’ (as in self-proclaimedly so, not necessarily demanding or highly specialised) positions, hand them over to the usual suspects, and throw in salaries that would make a senior civil servant blush. And then to throw in a bunch of goodies for good measure.

Let’s call them ‘perks’, for want of a rude word. They’re essentially free gifts that (in this case) taxpayers use to lure victims to jobs that would otherwise be undesirable because they are highly paid. Drop the perks and there would be no takers for €53K a year, the logic goes.

Like I said, muddled thinking. That’s because I’m missing three highly important elements that should prove without a shadow of doubt that perks are indeed a noble way of spending public funds.

First, the zoo argument. Or as alternatively immortalised by another of Mepa’s pantheon last year, the garage version: ‘If you want an expensive car you must pay for it’. Couple of Freudian slips there: I think Austin Walker meant to say ‘good car’ – or was it ‘if you want an expensive car other people must pay for it’?

In any case I prefer the ‘If you pay peanuts you get monkeys’ variant. Which has now become a sort of Pavlovian response, a ready defence which turns out to be not terribly strong on substance.

First, there presumably is something in between ‘peanuts’ and ‘exorbitant’. That something is called ‘fair’ and has been known to attract its rightful share of functional higher apes. Second, there is one thing worse than giving monkeys peanuts, and that’s giving them money.

The second extremely important thing to keep in mind at all times is globalisation. Huge salaries and perks are necessary, the argument goes, because the mighty – unlike us parochial sods – think and act globally. Drop the freebies and they’ll just zoom off to London, Paris or New York.

Save for a very few cases that include such types as ace heart surgeons and aviation gurus, rubbish. That’s because most beneficiaries of perks are neither terribly employable globally nor particularly mobile.

It’s simply untrue that they belong in a global market. Quite the contrary in fact: most of the time the best-paid, perk-laden positions go to people who dribble their way to the top by means of an equation involving tongues and bottoms. Very local bottoms I might specify – patata ta’ Malta is a healthy choice.

How about the few that actually are employable globally and who find it easy to move? Surely freebies serve a purpose in those cases? Not necessarily. The truth is that most of us prefer to live in our home country when possible. In other words, home is perk enough.

The third crucial argument is that I’m ranting; that mine is simply a type of politics of envy; that I would happily take a free car if the University gave me one.

That the last is probably true doesn’t make it right. The first two don’t hold, not when its taxpayers’ money we’re talking about. I don’t care if captains of industry get stacks of cash and perks from their companies. For obvious reasons, I tend to reason differently when I’m paying for it.

In sum, it’s not really Piscopo’s abuse of his rights that should worry us. Rather it’s the existence of those rights in the first place.

mafalzon@hotmail.com