Last Monday the President gave a speech in which she urged government to “bail out” the poor. As reported, she “repeatedly excused herself for being overwhelmed with emotion while speaking about poverty”.
Histrionics aside, I can see why she was so moved. My Oxford dictionary defines ‘bail out’ as ‘to rescue someone from a difficulty’. Which is funny, because I thought socialism had little to do with rescuing people and everything to do with putting structures in place that make such sobbing heroism unnecessary.
The organisation that calls itself Alliance Against Poverty was nearer the mark when it said the other day that it was not right for the country to worship at the altar of a booming economy while thousands of citizens lagged behind, some in poverty.
Now I do not particularly fancy myself a socialist, nor do I entirely buy the tale of widespread poverty and destitution peddled by what I once called the rent-seeking faqar brigade. For example, I think it’s ridiculous of the brigade to say that 80,000 (or was it 100,000?) people in Malta are on the brink of poverty. The point is that I don’t believe everything the faqar folks say. That doesn’t mean, however, that I believe none of it.
It’s certainly true that the bromide of a booming economy masks a slew of dire predicaments faced by chunks of the population. Whether or not they’re on the brink of poverty, these people struggle to make ends meet. At any rate their prospects are not booming in the least.
Take construction, very noticeably one of Malta’s most thriving sectors and one in which the only thing that follows a boom is a bigger boom. Pigs, the rumour goes, can orgasm for 30 minutes. That’s as nothing compared to the 30-year-long (and counting) climax experienced by building in this country.
The Alliance Against Poverty are quite right in saying that the mantra of the booming economy is deceptive
No matter, the point is that a vibrant construction industry means more work and more money for the many thousands of people who work in it. It also means a set of big numbers that contribute no end to the booming economy. Environmental costs aside, it is therefore a good thing.
It is so for some of the people involved in it. Certainly it is brilliant for the land sharks and big developers, for example, some of whom seem to have such a problem spending it all that they buy things like tigers and front doors in solid bronze. It is also very good for the legions of builders, plasterers, electricians, trade suppliers, and so on. All of whom go on to buy more and more stuff, which in turn speeds up the wheels of commerce (‘idawru r-rota’).
Only not all construction workers have it so good. The sector employs many hundreds if not thousands of migrant workers, for example. Spinning wheels of commerce notwithstanding, I’m not sure their pay and conditions are anything to be particularly proud of.
Women, too, can find themselves seriously lagging behind. I happen to know a man who works as a plasterer, together with his three sons who took up the family trade in their mid-teens. As expected, they have no formal qualifications and are, in fact, barely literate; which is not a problem money-wise, because competent and hard-working plasterers – and they are – make stacks of cash.
They also have a sister who, like them, has little formal education, but who, unlike them, struggles to make an independent living. As a woman, she was disqualified from the family trade and had to look elsewhere for work. Her job requires her to stand for several hours a day, to the extent that she has serious back problems at 19. She takes home a miserable few hundred euros a month. Like her brothers, she too is part of the booming economy.
It’s a malady the construction industry has no monopoly over. iGaming, for example, is commonly thought to be another miracle of the booming economy; for good reason, too, because it employs thousands in considerable comfort. But it also employs cleaners who work many hours a day – just not enough hours to qualify them for the privilege of the minimum wage.
My second point is that the boom-for-some and bust-for-others may be and often are related. People do not always struggle in spite of a booming economy; on the contrary, they often do so because of it.
This diabolical transaction is at its best in places like London, where the City and its global financial glitter are fetishised and worshipped at the expense of other, less glamorous, sectors. Madly enough, the more boom the City experiences, the more bust for swathes of the rest. One of the reasons is that the financial bonanza pushes up the cost of living in general and property prices in particular. It turns out City traders are not the only ones who need food and shelter.
Property’s a good one to latch on to. In the first three months of this year, the Property Price Index in Malta was 2.6 per cent higher than that in the equivalent period last year. The price of maisonettes, for example, increased by 3.5 per cent.
Which is a splendid boom, just not for the daughter of a plasterer or a cleaner with a private contractor. For these and many others, the soaring price index simply means a greater struggle to keep body and soul together under one roof.
The Alliance Against Poverty are quite right in saying that the mantra of the booming economy is deceptive. First, because those who are good at making money tend to be equally good at keeping other people’s hands off it. Second, because the more the former group perfects its tricks, the more the latter suffers.
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