"And the GOLDEN RULE OF POPULIST POLICY MAKING IS TO GIVE AWAY WHAT DOES NOT BELONG TO YOU OR WHAT DOES NOT COST THE POLITICIANS ANYTHING".
- new employment law next year
- cost employers additional RM111b per yr
- says Malaysian Employers’ Federation (MEF)
- raising minimum wage from RM1,200 to RM1,500
- reduced working hours
- bigger overtime pay coverage
- too much for employers to handle
- MEF: sudden increase in costs will burden employers
- many employers will lay off workers to avoid going out of business
most employers struggling with cash flow problems
2023 to be difficult year
- Malaysian Hotel Owner Association’s (MAHO) urged govnt to postpone
- amendment will increase costs of operations in the absence of workers
- We cannot afford the cost
- cost of employment will increase
My Comments:
The biggest problem is the monkeys we have pretending to be politicians do not understand jack shit about economics, finance or business. It does not matter Barisan Perompak, Pakatoon or whoever they are all the same. The worst are the lebai monkeys.
Lets digress - do you all recall that new Tenancy Act (Akta Sewa) they were floating early this year. The mamak thambi from Penang was pushing the psycho tenancy act. Under the proposed Tenancy Act if your tenant does not pay the rent you cannot kick him out. You will have to go to a new rental arbitrage department to get a decision.
Do you know how many people do not pay their rental every year? Hundreds of thousands. Maybe millions. And for each one of these cases the landlord has to go to some arbitration unit to kick out his defaulting tenant?
That will not happen. In no time the rental industry will collapse. No landlord will want to rent his property to anyone. The real estate and property sector will collapse. There will be more unemployment. The economy will collapse.
That psycho Tenancy Act has now been cold storaged - this blog OutSyed The Box was the only media which highlighted and strongly criticised the proposed Act. But you can save your thank yous. There is more disaster coming.
Before I go further - in this country everything is about race. And stupidity or BODOH.
The Malays who form a large portion of the population are mostly workers. Their participation in the economy as entrepreneurs, business enterprises is still minimal. Most of their enterprises are SMEs. Hence by volume of business and sales their contribution to the economy is even less.
They are largely a wage earning community. They either work for the non-Malays or they work for the government and the GLCs. The government employs about 1.6 million Malays and the GLCs employ another 1.3 million of them.
The monkey politicians are well aware of this. So if you want the Malay vote you suggest populist ideas that any working class will like : extra public holidays, shorter working hours, more salary, higher minimum wages, dont pay rental you cannot get kicked out of the rented premises, dont pay electricity bill they cannot cut the power supply etc.
Do you all know that for about the past 20 years if a home resident does not pay the electricity bill YOUR POWER SUPPLY WILL NEVER GET CUT? It was an "unwritten policy" under the Badawi regime that has carried through Najib, Dr M 2.0 and every other prime minister since then. If you want to test this just dont pay your electricity bill. See what happens. Or does not happen. You will still get power.
(I have a very long personal experience of unpaid electricity bills that went on for about 15 years - for a luxury bungalow which I had built and sold to someone else. Finally I had to send a Legal Notice to the CEO of the power company to terminate the power supply. Maybe I will explain another day.)
If they cut the electricity for defaulting users there will be tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of houses with no electric power. They will all be dark at night. And the huge bulk of these defaulting power users are Malays.
Meaning it can become a very embarrassing political issue if every other electricity defaulter who has his power supply cut off is also a Malay.
So they do not cut off the power supply for houses / homes who do not pay their electricity bills. It is politically too sensitive.
This is yet another example of "populist" policies to appease the Malay people. In Malaysia everything is race, race, race.
And the GOLDEN RULE OF POPULIST POLICY MAKING IS TO GIVE AWAY WHAT DOES NOT BELONG TO YOU OR WHAT DOES NOT COST THE POLITICIANS ANYTHING.
90 day maternity - employers suffer. Workers rejoice.
Paternity leave - employers suffer. Workers rejoice.
Shorter working hours - employers suffer. Workers rejoice.
Higher Minimum Wage - employers suffer. Workers rejoice.
Rental Act - landlords suffer. Tenants rejoice.
Extra public holidays - employers suffer. Workers rejoice.
And the huge bulk of the working class, the tenants are Malays. If you want their vote you give them freebies.
Free this, free that, more of this, more of that with no quid pro quo. With little or nothing in return. There is no return 'consideration'.
What happens? Unemployment increases. The economy suffers. Higher costs for Malaysian employers means more factories will shut down and move to indonesia and Thailand or Vietnam. Our country will become poorer.
Do the politicians care? Do the monkeys care? No. They are only looking at the next elections. As long as they can win their parliamentary seat and become a minister or chairman of a GLC who cares what happens to the economy?
Coming back to the Minimum Wages have you been to Perlis, Kedah, Perak, Kelantan, Terengganu or Sabah lately? The people there still sit and listen to the grass growing. There is not much of anything going on there. And yet an 18 year old, just out of school or sekolah agama, who will not know anything about anything has to be paid RM1,500 minimum wages !!
What is the 18 year old child's productivity or output or skill set that can warrant a wage of RM1,500 a month? He is being grossly overpaid.
As a result he has sudden purchasing power without the incremental output in productivity to justify his sudden increase in purchasing power.
In short he will have money that he did not fully earn through his productivity.
He will be able to buy goods and services that he otherwise would not be able to afford. So there will be inflation - because productivity has not increased but disposable income has gone up.
So in no time the higher Minimum Wage will be neutralised by higher prices. Which is what has happened in this country.
Employers will also layoff more workers because without an increase in productivity the employers cannot afford to pay the higher minimum wages. Jobs will be lost. Unemployment will increase.
The economy is going to die. This is Club of Doom.
Simply because the politicians want to be populist. Because they want the Malay vote.
The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.
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