Welfare to Work

 

Check out this Economist article about the considerable success of the Clinton administration's welfare reforms. I'm not sure why some people are surprised that they worked. People are, after all, more or less rational beings. If you offer them clear and good incentives to work rather than stay on the dole, then they will probably work.

I would argue for going a little bit further than simple welfare-reform, however. I think a small negative tax rate for low earners (not a negative income tax, which is a different concept and one I strongly disagree with), together with a removal of the minimum wage, would be a much better way to help the unemployed than simply providing them with unemployment benefits. For example, the state might top up the first Lm100 you earn at a 30% rate, the next Lm100 at 20% and so on up to an established ceiling. This would have the added benefit of motivating some people to move from the black economy into the formal one.

Maybe instead of preventing people who are relatively unproductive from working for lower wages (and then paying them unemployment benefits) we should motivate them to earn as much as they can on their own steam and then reward them for that, while offering them the possibility of paid training if they want to invest in raising their productivity. I think it would be a little bit more dignified than living on the dole.

I don't seriously expect any of this to happen in the foreseeable future, least of all in Malta. But the nice thing about blogging is that even ideas whose time has not come, and that one would not dare express in 'real life', may be freely aired.

less human, more primitively animal, more Lords of the Flies

 

The above is a quote from a true gem of an opinon piece by Dr. Mario Tabone Vassallo, published in today's Sunday Times. It initially caught my attention due to its rather intriguing title, 'Scrap the UN?', but it turned out not to be about that at all. It is in fact a rather run of the mill, if factually inaccurate and logically unsound, critique of the West's relations with the rest of the world. What is interesting about it, apart from the atrocious prose, is the fact that it provides a glimpse of how a Maltese professional with a superficial knowledge of international relations, international law, history etc. might view the world.

In one memorable paragraph, Tabone Vassallo asks:

How can we reminisce with pride on the Churchillian boast that we shall fight on the beaches and everywhere else to reclaim our country and forget that the recruits of Hezbollah are dispossessed and exiled Palestinians that are doing just that? How can we ignore that ever since it was democratically elected, Hamas offered a truce of sixty years if Israel withdrew to the 1967 boundaries (exactly in line with UN resolution 242) and held hope of a permanent Israel-Palestinian peace agreement in the long term?

I think that the best answer to ignorance is education and, if this is so, then we are fortunate that Vince Caruana of Kopin is about to take our political education in hand (see previous post). For that, at least, we have reason to be thankful!

Funds for propaganda...

 

Today's Times reports that one of Malta's NGOs, Kopin, will be collecting 'funds for Lebanese civilians suffering as a result of the Middle East crisis'. The article adds that, however, 5% of the funds collected 'will go towards local education programmes with regard to the development and humanitarian situation in the Middle East'. This sounds very much like Kopin is going to use these donations to fund propaganda, particularly as Vince Caruana (Kopin's founder) is not known to be particularly balanced where the Middle East is concerned.

Caxaru Returns...

 

Thanks to the encouragement of my friends at Gardjola I've finally decided to revive my old blog. During these 5 months I had occasionally posted comments (sometimes rather longish ones) on Gardjola under this pseudonym, and I will eventually either reproduce those on this site or establish links to them. Of course, the link to Gardjola's homepage has been available on this site since February.

So many things have happened since February both in my own life and career and, more importantly, in the wider world. The Danish cartoons crisis, which was all the rage then, has since been almost forgotten. In the meantime, the Middle East is once again in flames and Malta is struggling to deal with what is likely to be one of the highest yearly influxes of illegal immigants ever. There is certainly no shortage of issues begging for comment...