Here is how I understood (I hope well) the argument developed in the media by the Chamber of Commerce President: Though the wage subsidies given by government to SMEs are helping them to survive the Covid-19 pandemic, they give rise to new dangers. Our enterprises could have become too flabby, too reliant on government aid and not sufficiently active with efforts to face up to the arising challenges by adapting to new circumstances.
So they end up losing the skills they need to maintain competitivity.
The claim makes sense but then it would need to signal some different policy formula to the one that has been followed. Perhaps a better option to have followed would have been that adopted in the US, where government money was directly chanelled to citizens and families as a “supplement” to their personal income, so that they could then be better able to absorb say, a wage cut?
However, the US followed this strategy because in their situation, social protection is much weaker than in Europe. To maintain people’s living standards, as well as – possibly more – the consumer power that keeps a capitalist economy running – they had no other alternative but to turn to direct “subsidies” to citizens.
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Do we help them evade taxes?
To date, controversies still turn to a criticism of Malta’s financial services sector... linking it to the taxation levels we attach in Malta to company profits... or even to the income of individuals who live abroad. Other more serious claims also surface.
How true is it that the Maltese financial system is designed to allow tax evasion for those who come to register companies here?
I said it a number of times but got little attention – we just cannot continue to ignore these claims as if it were “evident” that they have no basis in truth.
We have been adopting this attitude ever since financial services were first launched in this country as a new economic sector during the first Fenech Adami administration between 1987 and 1992. Even then, few outside these islands were prepared to take our claims at face value.
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Russia, Saudi Arabia
According to US President Biden, the President of Russia Putin is a “killer”.
The problem with this way by which to describe a foregn leader has little to do with whether you are correct or otherwise.
Rather, it revolves around how one is to deal with him after having described him in such terms. Should you introduce sanctions against his country? If yes, how far should they go? If not, what signficance is there in having issued the “killer” label when in practice, nothing will seem to have changed?
On the other hand, if measures are taken against the leader and/or the country he leads, should the same treatment be extended to other leaders?
Consider for instance the case of Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince bin Salman. The US’s own CIA has stated that no doubt, he “knew” beforehand about the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi that was being organised at the Saudi embassy at Ankara. So would this not be another killer? And how should he be dealt with?