These criteria are to screen out (exclude) families which have at least one parent who is from any one of the following categories – person for whom a company is contributing to the Social Security Organisation (Socso), civil servants, the 1.8 million individuals who paid income tax in 2019, and civil service pensioners with a pension of more than RM1,000. These are persons with an adequate and stable income who do not require the assistance of the UBI to meet essential needs.
The rationale for income support is this: none of the two or three million people who are going to end up unemployed can be held personally responsible for their predicament. It is not because they are lazy or that they refused to go to work.
Their predicament is due to a failure of the market economy. And those who lose their jobs will find it difficult to land alternative jobs until the world economy emerges from the recession, and that will take one or two years.
We cannot let them and their families go hungry or be unable to avail of the healthcare they need. A caring society with a slogan of “shared rosperity” must make sure that no one is left behind. It’s high time to walk the talk!
The UBI scheme should also be extended to all single individuals above 21 using the same exclusion criteria outlined earlier. These singles eligible for UBI could be paid RM300 per month. This isn’t a huge sum, but would help these individuals manage in these difficult times until they get a job.
A UBI payment of RM1,000 per month for a family is just enough to buy provisions for a simple diet for the family. But it may not be enough to meet other basic needs such as rent.
We need a separate programme to handle the issue of rent for families in cases where breadwinners are laid off. (The Socialist Party of Malaysia or PSM statement released on 30 April 2020, sketches out the features of a rent support programme.) We also need to consider a rebate for the first RM30 of the water bill and the first RM100 of electricity charges.
This UBI scheme will pump in RM2-3bn into the Malaysian economy every month. The families assisted would tend to buy foodstuffs with low import content (as they are cheaper) and this will expand the market for the food supply chains in the country.
This in turn will help preserve the jobs of Malaysian farmers, workers in Malaysian factories processing food, workers involved in the transport and distribution of food, and petty traders in our markets and night markets. The UBI will serve not only as an emergency lifeline to retrenched workers and their families but will also help arrest the fall in employment.
How we deal with widespread unemployment isn’t an abstract academic issue that can be debated in a leisurely manner. The Bantuan Prihatin Negara scheme paid out RM1,000 to close to four million families from the bottom 40% of households in April and another RM600 to these families in May. It was a great help to the families which received it.
But this scheme ends with the RM600 payment. June is only two weeks away and many families are staring at the prospect of retrenchment of their wage earner(s) in June.
The luckier ones, who work in the formal sector, would benefit from the Employment Insurance Scheme, which will pay them a monthly stipend on a reducing scale for the next six months.
But those in the non-formal sector or those returning from overseas will not have the benefit of this scheme and will be in dire straits by the middle of June.
Malaysians all over the nation rallied to collect money and arrange emergency rations to families in need over the past two months. This is laudable and it shows there is an underlying spirit of solidarity among the people.
But private initiative will not be enough to tackle need at the scale we will witness. The government has to step in and implement a comprehensive income support scheme for all those families who find themselves without a job.
PSM believes that a modified UBI as sketched out above is the best way forward, and we hope more Malaysians will come forward to lobby for this and other programmes that flesh out the principle that we should handle the Covid-19-induced recession on the basis of solidarity and ensure no one is left behind.
HO ho HO Free income for such long period will have negative effect in the form of inflation. An assistance of up to 6 month may be desirable to kick start the economy and get it rowing. At the end of the day any economic improvement MUST be backed by substance which is productivity.
Universal Basic Income is not a desperate measure, it is common sense in normal times, and should be a no-brainer in desperate times. The antithesis of UBI is means-tested benefits. You highlighted how people fall through the cracks when we means test, but the worse effect is that the money can be an incentive to stay poor, disabled or unemployed.
Nonetheless, it is important to highlight how it should be funded. Consumption tax seems to be a sustainable way to go about it, as well as export revenues.
It's not a UBI unless it's recurring, unconditional, and delivered to all on an individual basis. If it's only going to be for 2 years, it's not technically a UBI.
It was a monkey see, monkey do situation which saw the introduction of economic stimulus packages, a sheer waste of money. The sheer waste would not have happened had the economy been kept open.
The economy is more important than the novel Corona virus.
Viruses come and go. There are no vaccines for viruses. SARS and MERS came and went. There are still no vaccines for these viruses which were Corona viruses.
What makes the novel Corona virus any different except that it became a pandemic, being more contagious?
This is a contagion spread by movement.
It was locals from Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, who initially carried and spread it throughout the country and the rest of the world.
China could have prevented the virus from spreading to the rest of the world. It was the first country to have 80K infections long before the next country.
It was a grave strategic error to shut down the economy to flatten the curve of infections i.e. keep hospitalisations for Covid-19 related causes at a level which would not result in the public healthcare system collapsing and imploding.
The curve should have been flattened with the economy open. That would have given the people the chance and the experience in exercising the necessary self-discipline i.e. ensuring the virus has no place to go and dies out at least in the country for a start.
If the curve could not be flattened, many of those who in fact needed hospitalisation would have to recover at home. If they fail to make it, their families should take them straight to the crematorium after informing the police.
Now, when the economy finally re-opens, there may be any number of red zones as the surges -- V-shaped, W, U, and reverse L i.e. _I -- bring 2nd Waves, 3rd Waves and God alone knows how many other surges.
The economy cannot be shut down again, virus or no virus, vaccine or no vaccine, unless the gov't wants to risk irrelevance. The idea of central control, a top down control freak approach, has failed. The economy may collapse and implode if shut down again.
The number of reported novel Corona virus infections has caused public scare, shock, panic, rumour-mongering, disorder, disorientation, confusion and chaos.
Blame outfits like the hysterical CNN which was screeching every minute of the day on testing, contact tracing, treatments, ventilators and vaccines. They misled the world with virtually fake news.
This was a case of carrying journalism, being based on the idea of reporting bad news, to the extreme and the height of lunacy. Such journalists should be shot on sight, hung, fried and fed to the pigs.
There are no specific tests for the novel Corona virus, at best only for Covid-19 related causes which may also be non-Covid-19 related. Tests, unless specific, are invariably inconclusive.
WHO misled the world by introducing a flawed code for Covid-19 related deaths. They may have been cahoots with China, vaccine promoter Bill Gates who appears to suffering from a obsessive compulsive disorder, the failed Big Pharma model of one size fits all, and dangerous men like Anthony Fauci and those at the CDC and FDA, among others.
About 8K people die daily in the US, for example, of non-Covid-19 related causes. Less than 2K people in the US die daily, assuming the cause of death is correct, of Covid-19 related causes.
The focus of public healthcare authorities should be on the cause of death, whether Covid-19 related or otherwise, not on infections.
When we are finally rid of the virus, no one will remember all this worldwide talk about the so-called New Norm.
The New Norm BULLSXIT would collapse and implode. We would go back to the good old days -- endless mugs of teh tarik kurang manis kaw kaw at the mamak shop -- until the next pandemic comes.
This time, those who do predictive modelling studies on epidemics should be referred by a court to the nearest hospital for an evaluation and institutionalised for life to keep the public from harm.
Mathematics and physics are the nearest to God. We know how God thinks. God is about a little self-discipline. It's the universe that is chaos, it's only predictable property. The universe is an illusion. It does not exist. We only perceive it exists because we are limited by the five senses in a gross body which we inherited and went on to gather the energy of the sun through Mother Nature on Earth.
A good government has to ensure that the basic necessities like food, shelter, medicine and education are easily accessible to all the people in the country. This can be done by providing affordable public housing, national healthcare system, controlled prices for essential food items and medications, public schools and universities, etc. Once the basics are taken care of, people can pursue their higher goals without being burdened by basic survival. If the basics are well taken care of, cash handouts are unnecessary. However, the government can assist further by providing free upgrading of skills and knowledge training for people so that they are well equipped for employment.
It's clear today that "the basic necessities like food, shelter, medicine and education" are not sufficient for people to be "well equipped for employment".
Money is a basic necessity. Just like how we provide education and healthcare to everyone indiscriminately, we should provide money to everyone indiscriminately.
Ahli tongkat should earn your own money and not expect free money from others. After the govt has helped to provide the basic necessities like food, shelter, medicine and education, you have to work hard if you want your life to be better. We cannot afford to be a nation of free loaders and our money doesn't grow on trees.
MDEC to make Malaysia global IR 4.0 hub, says newly-appointed chief Rais Hussin
Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) is proposing a designated hub interconnecting Fourth Industrial Revolution (IR 4.0 or 4IR) players in Malaysia to the rest of the world.
Newly appointed chairman Datuk Dr Rais Hussin (pic) is mooting the initiative, saying a solid regulatory framework and strategic oversight were needed to set the direction.
"It will be aligned to the government's Prihatin package (implemented to help people, companies and country weather the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic) and Penjana (short-term economic revival plan) programmes," he said in a statement Tuesday (June 16).
Covid-19 had accelerated the migration of society from physical infrastructures onto digital infrastructures, he said.
"At the cusp of IR 4.0, we are blessed with the chance to re-engineer the human experiment using technologies that decentralise authority and de-emphasise divisions along the lines of colour, creed and country – what the Japanese have coined as ‘Society 5.0’.
"And Society 5.0 holds the promise to converge these environments together through the use of IR 4.0 technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain and fintech (financial services technology).
“I envision MDEC as playing a leading role in catalysing this transition for Malaysia and Malaysians," he said.
On June 12, the Communications and Multimedia Ministry announced Rais’ appointment as MDEC chairman for two years, effective June 15.
He has been for some years a strategist at Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia, and together with blockchain expert Dinis Guarda, had recently co-authored a book titled 4IR: Reinventing a Nation that was launched during the global Frankfurt book fair in October last year.
"The book was designed as a blueprint of sorts to assist governments of developing nations in their digital transformation agenda.
"Digital transformation presents both challenges and opportunities to us all. Those who succeed can use IR 4.0 technologies to create a better life for all, including new and more meaningful jobs, reskilling of the workforce, better health and education, and smarter and greener cities," he said.
Rais added that companies and households were now in a recovery mode after months of living under the movement control order (MCO), implemented since March 18 to curb Covid-19 infections.
"We are now emerging from the crisis," he said, adding that the ensuing recovery would rely largely upon a managed digital transformation towards establishing “Malaysia 5.0”, which he described as a new narrative for Malaysia as an “innovation economy” that can compete in a disruptive technology world, serve as a springboard into Asean (the Association of South-East Asian Nations), a bridge between Asia, the Middle East and Africa, and interconnect with the 1.8 billion Islamic population worldwide.
MDEC would play a leading role in introducing the emerging technologies that were essential tools in the new Malaysia 5.0 digital economy, added Rais.
“With or without the crisis, if we were to migrate into a high-wage, knowledge-based economy envisioned in the Shared Prosperity Vision (SPV) 2030, then we must give more than lip service to encourage innovation, retrain the workforce, and incentivise investment," he said.
His digital delusion is just ANOTHER chapter in a long running Malaysian saga of issue avoidance
Don’t get me wrong. I’m no Luddite, but I firmly believe that Malaysia has an unlimited number of social and technological issues which must be addressed before we can fully indulge in digitisation
A classical example of a digital misfit is the Covid digital tracking systems that have failed just about everywhere they have popped up simply because of a lack of trust in governments
Second most overused word in malaysia. The first being integrity.
Digital is not just about spending millions on IT system but being able to harness all tools to do better and faster work including automatically generating reports bills etc
Malaysian govt have yet to master the basic digital tool which is email and internet. Our govt website is all over the place and not cordinated or combined. For ref see uk .gov website. All govt website is in one big Mama set up and linked well
Thought you were part of madey gang...another one who fell for the GLC post...Your predecessor the indian gentleman in MCMC was taken out as he had the wrong race..how do you sleep at night and tell your children what is wrong and right?
Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) chairperson and the president/CEO of Emir Research, an independent think-tank focused on strategic policy recommendations he can only involve in “syok sendiri”. The author is no fool to know that there will be no serious domestic and foreign investment will ever come to our beloved land as long as this racist regime is in place.
Why so? The product of the digital economy is colour blind. The activation and trade of digital products are based on invisible digital technology that has no preference for race, religion, culture, se.xual orientation but to meet certain digital steps. We can confidently assess that Malaysia is not the place where any real investor gives any importance as the place of gainfully involved in investment when ASEAN has vibrant economies such as Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, and Cambodia seamless for the digital economy. So as Chairperson, the author can Sit back and goyang kaki till someone knocks the door as a replacement. In the meanwhile, nothing going to happen in our digital economy by appointment.
As in any other flourishing trade in Malaysia, the importation of digital products would flourish, destroying nascent digital economy as the result of the racist regime formed to escape the jail time for the corrupt elements in the society.
What a wistful fairy tale of Malaysia's grand future--like Mahathir's failed Multimedia Corridor. In any case, 5.0 or Gen 5 has become a promotional catch phrase to describe just about any electronic product or, in the case of this article, grand strategy. In other words, a dubious advertising gimmick. My router connection says "Netgear 5G" but it's got nothing to do with a bona fide 5-G network. It's a 4-G (albeit fiber optic) network.
HO ho HO The puffed up imbecile speaks again. Rais don't you get that there will never be change with people like you? From violating the MCO to betraying Mahathir and jumping over to be appointed chair of MDEC. No no change wont come from people like you who only promote their self interest in an ugly bid to take what should rightfully belong to all Malaysians. Not only will your stay at MDEC be short, it will be uneventful save any scheme you implement in an effort to siphon off money. You cant write, you can barely read and you are promising us digitization? A monkey at a typewriter would produce better results but alas our backdoor, backside PN gomen is filled with your type. Change will come from our country's enthusiastic youth, not from tired old grubby racists like you. Its been forever since you spoke on the Rohingya or even the Ughyur but then again your side is pushing the anti refugee narrative now so might as well follow the wind right? Easy enough for a bloated-gasbag such as yourself.
A “Romware Covid Radius bracelet” beeps every time a Tata Steel Ltd. worker in the U.K. or a docker at Belgium’s Antwerp port is within virus-catching distance of someone. At Bouygues SA construction sites and in Sanofi and Schneider Electric SE offices in France employees enter after thermal cameras check their temperatures. Invisible lasers manage crowds at shopping malls and transport hubs in Spain and France, and some firms use infection-tracing lanyard devices.
As Europeans head back to work, they’re entering a world very different from the one they left. Workplaces from banks and offices to e-commerce warehouses, factories, sports clubs and airports are trying out or installing fever-testing thermal cameras, mask-detection systems and tracking software to prevent a resurgence of the coronavirus that has claimed more than 167,000 lives in the region.
The virus has opened the doors to surveillance and monitoring technologies that many fear are here to stay. While such systems have been creeping into people’s lives across the globe — particularly in Asia, with China’s facial-recognition points system and South Korea’s invasive infection-tracking software — the trend runs up against Europe’s much-vaunted privacy culture. Europeans trading in privacy for safety now may find the longer-term consequences unacceptable.
“The use of mass surveillance infrastructures can lead to a normalization of these highly intrusive tools, and the hasty introduction of apps, devices and cameras will, in the long term, lead to a dissolution of trust between employers and employees,” said Ella Jakubowska, a researcher at internet rights association Edri.
Businesses are walking a fine line between keeping people safe and protecting their privacy. The absence of clear guidance from European regulators is forcing companies — who could also be on the hook if they don’t sufficiently protect workers — to make “extremely difficult decisions,” according to Daniel Cooper, a partner at law firm Covington and Burling, who advises clients on tech regulation.
“The exposure of companies collecting that information goes up because it’s sensitive,” Cooper said. “They also have to balance the privacy rights of the people whose data they’re collecting and get that balance right and not break the law.”
About 23 percent of companies surveyed globally are considering workplace tracking or contact tracing to transition back to on-site work, according to a study published this month by tax and consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, which is testing its own contact tracing tool in its Shanghai office.
Providers of such technologies tout them as a safe way to get people back to work and revive economies crushed by lockdowns. While many acknowledge the systems aren’t foolproof, they say infection risk can be capped.
“Our bracelets are tools to keep workers safe and to increase performance,” said John Baekelmans, the chief executive officer of Rombit, the Belgian company whose 100-gram bracelets will add a tracing feature in June to allow Antwerp port doctors to keep track of a possible spread of the virus.
Rombit sees the bracelets outlasting the virus as companies use them to track employees’ health and performance. The company says it will supply such devices to 300 companies in the coming weeks.
Like Rombit, Poland-based Estimote Inc. is selling social distancing devices to factories, research centers and hospitals, which also let them trace contacts made by any infected staffer.
The devices, attached to lanyards, buzz when workers have spent too much time near a colleague. Employees developing symptoms or testing positive can press a button on the gadget to notify the company, allowing it to trace all the people they’ve been in contact with.
“It’s in our DNA to come close” to other people, said Estimote CEO Jakub Krzych, adding that the devices alert users to those habits, keeping the spread of the virus in check.
Herta Security in Barcelona is developing both mask-detection technology and facial recognition for touchless access in workplaces, including for a global retail company that’s considering using it in its offices in Europe and Latin America, according to Laura Blanc Pedregal, Herta’s Chief Marketing Officer.
Shopping malls and major transport hubs in Spain, France, Israel and the U.S. will be using Paris-based Outsight’s laser technology to ensure social distancing, its president and co-founder Raul Bravo said. Aeroports de Paris, which manages the French capital’s airports, is testing Outsight lasers to monitor passenger flows.
Fever-checking thermal cameras are also starting to become ubiquitous. In Madrid, University Camilo Jose Cela is setting up a Chinese camera system that simultaneously measures students’ temperatures and checks if they’re wearing masks. Airports including London’s Heathrow and Paris’s Charles de Gaulle are testing thermal cameras.
“We sell more cameras every week,” said Guenther Mull, CEO of German biometrics company Dermalog Identification Systems GmbH, which offers mask detection as an add-on to its software. “The demand is currently very high.”
Privacy advocates are alarmed. Thermal cameras could be seen as an invasion of privacy, said Rob van Eijk, managing director for Europe at the Future of Privacy Forum, a nonprofit think tank.
“It would pressure individuals with relatively higher body temperatures to disclose or divulge, likely against their will, their personal health information that might be unrelated to COVID-19 or other respiratory viral infections,” he said.
In Europe, where breaching data protection laws can result in a fine of as much as 4 percent of annual global revenue, companies typically wouldn’t link temperature readings to names or store the information. Still, fever readings wouldn’t be difficult to trace back to an individual, said Covington and Burling’s Cooper.
For now, the checks are being taken in stride. Consider the employees of Bayer 04 Leverkusen, the German soccer club, which invested in five Dermalog thermal cameras. When the Bundesliga became the first major soccer league to resume playing last weekend, the club was ready. It had been scanning its players when they came in for training.
In late April, while much of Germany was sheltering in place, professional soccer player Leon Bailey stood at the entrance of the club’s training facilities to have his temperature taken. The camera zeroed in on his forehead to read a temperature of 37 degrees Celsius. No fever. He passed through the arena’s gates and joined his teammates for practice.
“They see it’s for their own safety,” said Dr. Karl-Heinrich Dittmar, Bayer Leverkusen’s medical director, in an interview. “Nobody wants to become ill.”
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This book is the result of the author's many years of experience and observation throughout his 26 years in the stockbroking industry. It was written for general public to learn to invest based on facts and not on fantasies or hearsay....
FancyMe
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Posted by FancyMe > 2020-06-18 13:14 | Report Abuse
These criteria are to screen out (exclude) families which have at least one parent who is from any one of the following categories – person for whom a company is contributing to the Social Security Organisation (Socso), civil servants, the 1.8 million individuals who paid income tax in 2019, and civil service pensioners with a pension of more than RM1,000. These are persons with an adequate and stable income who do not require the assistance of the UBI to meet essential needs.
The rationale for income support is this: none of the two or three million people who are going to end up unemployed can be held personally responsible for their predicament. It is not because they are lazy or that they refused to go to work.