Most of the 20 measures proposed are quite laudable and seemed to have been well received by the public; nothing wrong with most of these measures ! We could even extend these measures to include, à la Macron-to shore up support among female voters -a pledge to fight toxic masculinity and force absent fathers to see their children. (Macron’s measures include the attempt to halt a slump in the birth rate, including a three-month leave for which mothers and fathers will receive welfare payments of €1,900 a month. This is on top of the standard 16 weeks of maternity leave and 25 days of paternity leave. A fertility check-up for all 20-year-olds and improved facilities for women to have their eggs frozen besides the setting up a parliamentary committee on menopause….)
The issue is that the attempt to graft the welfarist measures on a neoliberal economy is emblematic of the deepening toxicity of the present economic model and the alternatives. A model that cannot extricate us from our current inegalitarian low-growth, low tax economy (relying mainly on indirect taxes and CSG contributions) because it encourages a highly oligopolistic private sector ’s connivance with the public sector(the political elite) resulting in rent-seeking activities, restrictive markets and crony capitalism.
Our international consultant and researcher , Nalini Burn describes it as such · “….. notre modèle économique est un modèle surtout financiarisé et voué à la consolidation des grosses fortunes dans la chaîne de valeur d’appropriation ; pas de revenus « peanuts », mais de la richesse accumulée. Il faut savoir que la gestion du Wealth Planning dans le circuit de Global Wealth Chains profite en « local substance » à nos gestionnaires locaux d’actifs et de portefeuilles, de Global Business, de « shell companies », à des avocats d’affaires, notaires et comptables. À nos super riches qui achètent dans les PDS huppés exclusifs aussi. C’est pour cela que l’immobilier et le foncier, nos « financial Wealth mountains ridge to reef » sont des secteurs les plus porteurs de notre Investissement Direct Étranger”
For our top economist, Sameer Sharma, our economic model …….” makes the rich richer and increases income and more importantly wealth inequality. Given that the rich oligopolies run the country, the tax system in Mauritius remains inconsistent with government spending patterns. This leads to higher and higher debt levels and the need to use inflation in order to inflate budget revenues and pay for everything. Inflation in turn makes the poor poor and perversely the poor are the ones paying the inflation tax to make them poor. The poor are getting handouts but they are paying for it while the rich are not and not a single political party in this country is willing to have that conversation because most of them are bought by the oligos “
The timid efforts of incremental welfarist measures without pushing for more progressive robust reforms will make the system much more convoluted in the sense that the implementation of the measures will mean more of expansiv
e spending, taxing, and regulatory measures resulting as described above -a vicious circle of higher debts, higher inflation, higher inflation taxes …reflecting the deeper sickness of our present economic model which we need to supplant for the latter tends to deteriorate into welfare capitalism, becoming an impossible straddle fiscally and vulnerable politically, and gets eroded over time.
e spending, taxing, and regulatory measures resulting as described above -a vicious circle of higher debts, higher inflation, higher inflation taxes …reflecting the deeper sickness of our present economic model which we need to supplant for the latter tends to deteriorate into welfare capitalism, becoming an impossible straddle fiscally and vulnerable politically, and gets eroded over time.
For example, the increase in the aggregate tax rate born by the citizens in some of Western democracies and Scandinavian welfare states has gone hand in hand with the decline in their ability to individually control their economic destinies.
These contradictions have provided the grist for the policy debate about optimizing social welfare introducing neo-liberalism to counter welfare-state expansion, thereby attenuating social program growth. As funding for public assistance programs came under scrutiny, they would apply tax expenditures, developing refundable tax credits like the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) for low-income households, reducing the size of the bureaucracy cutting out any wasteful non-welfare expenditures and so on ….these are not the real choices that ought to be on the table, it only provides anodyne solutions within a rigged system.
The present economic model is not capacious enough to include all the reforms that we need. We are thus skeptical that these welfare measures grafted on a neoliberal economy can make much of a difference to our lives.
“ The Myth of Sisyphus, you will recall, has Sisyphus condemned to push a rock up a hill, only to have it roll back down. His every effort is futile. Reflecting the undertow of our woefully outdated and inequitable model of development, the best we can expect is that the rock may stay where we’ve put it for a long while, as the struggle continues."
Saving democracy, protecting our environment and ensuring decent lives for our people requires moving beyond the present economic and political system not accommodating with it.
