Reform wages now, not later

“THE time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining. We sometimes chafe at the burden of our obligations, the complexity of our decisions, the agony of our choices. But there is no comfort or security for us in evasion, no solution in abdication, no relief in irresponsibility”. This quote was from President John F. Kennedy in his 1962 State of the Union address a year after his inauguration as the 35th US President.

JFK was referring to fixing a problem while the going is good and before it becomes more serious. Take for example the low wages in Malaysia. This is a decades-old problem that needs fixing because of the related issues that go along with it, such as the human impact from the high cost of living, reliance on cheap foreign migrant labour (together with the exploitation) and the longer-term economic impact in not moving up the value chain.