Nobody can begrudge the government its moment of glory over the signing of Smart City. It looks like a great coup, one that was worked and sweated over. Even l-orizzont, which is appearing more moderate, gave it front-page prominence, as it should do. Perhaps we can hope that all partisan papers will now tackle their circulation problems and start to become a little less boring and a little more readable.

And yet, somehow, I do not think Smart City has moved one voter more in favour, or more against the government. Almost everyone agrees it is a good thing, but nobody is really sure yet how they will be affected, how they will benefit. And in Malta, voting wise at least, we go for where we can see the benefit, at least our emotions do.

And in this benefit/pocket money culture country, who are the really smart ones today? Those who work in the declared economy or those who don’t? And where is the new poverty to be found? Those on benefit, or increasingly among those who work?

One can perhaps broadly classify Malta’s income earning voters into three, though there are obviously some strong income variations in these three groups. The first are Malta’s rich and super rich, who generally speaking are getting and have gotten richer and richer over the last few years. These include the established wealthy, the new wealthy, those who can hide their earnings, as well as the most successful of our professional classes. There is however a lot of overlap between these distinctions. Then you have all those who earn a declared income, the largest group of all, some of whom are quite comfortable, but many of whom are living on Malta’s terribly low basic wages.

And last but by no means least, a very significant group of tens of thousands of people who live off benefits of one form or another. They are often much better off than those who work, and they know it, and the latter are more than mad about it. These vary from pensioners who have more than earned their pension, to those who genuinely cannot work, to a frighteningly large group (which includes all those we are banging on about being in danger of poverty, the 15 per cent instead of the much more realistic five per cent who do not receive enough benefits); those who have never and will probably never work because, quite simply it does not pay them to do so. Their life is an endless round of benefit fraud of one form or another and, since there are so many of them pretending to be unemployed or unemployable, they are a very hard group to target.

But it is worse than that. These benefit fraudsters, thousands of them, are in a sense right. It does not pay you to work in Malta today. Many of the news jobs being created are in contracting, services in general and tourism in particular. Most of the jobs on offer have the most basic of wages. If you are young, single, and have been brought up by parents who have instilled a work ethos in you, you will try to work, and it pays you to start on that ladder.

However, anyone who is a parent is much, much better off not working than working. Things have come to a pretty pass when it is better to have a baby and stay home rather than go out to work. And let us please not put all the single parent mums in one group and castigate them all. First of all, all of Malta’s errant or not declared dads have to take their fair share of responsibility, which many don’t.

Is it a question of wages being too low or benefit being too good? It really is both. Wages in Malta are too low to access housing, food and all the other basic necessities. So if you do not have a father, husband or a boyfriend supporting you, and you are a mother, you need to go on benefit to survive. Not only because you need the benefit, not only because there aren’t enough childcare facilities, simply, and mainly, because you are worse off working.

People will have to start working for their benefits because we cannot go on as we are, failing the really poor and giving pocket money to those who are making the smarter choice not to work. Voter dissatisfaction among those who earn all their daily bread and have watched their childcare allowance disappear, their electricity bills zoom up while those on benefit get automatic vouchers without any checks, standards at government schools deteriorating so fee-paying schools become a new necessity, our two-tier health service and on it goes. People look at those living off benefit and wonder what is going wrong They also look at government and wonder what they are paying taxes for.

Just follow the news and see how much is being offered to those who work. Where is the good news for those who work and pay their taxes? The government amnesty for cash stashed under the bed lately may have been necessary, but it was just another nail in the coffin of the working poor. Do you feel you are one of the working poor? Many many disgruntled voters do.

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