Everyone's greed is our undoing

Salaries and Remuneration Chairperson Sarah Serem PHOTO: STANDARD

Supposing by policy, all workers earned between say Sh40,000 and Sh60,000 a month? Everybody from the house help to the President. Would this step down the intense clamour for 'better' pay? The current salary disparity craze makes everyone want a hike. It is obviously unsustainable. But exactly what is a 'better pay'?

'Better' is relative. It is only when others earn more than us that we start the comparison game, triggering the maddening demand for more and more pay. It is human nature.

I posed this question to colleagues. "Who then will pay watchmen and gardeners?" was about all I got in response. Yet this was in the background of an animated debate over the clamour for higher pay by dons and the pervasive din by all in this republic of ours for more salary.

Goodness knows I need a pay rise - nay, a hike in the league of a triple, or if boss is in good humour, quadruple.

Then I could buy an SUV like the one my chama friend recently bought. Who said I am condemned to a life of jump-starting a Probox (which my SUV-owning chama friend thinks runs on bicycle pedals...)?

And I will probably move to a 'better house' where akina nani stay. And oh dear, I will want also to become something called a 'sponsor'. God forbid!

Seriously, I would love a holiday in Monte Video or Chuchikatawangatana (somewhere in New Zealand...!), and later in space! So I will want to demand more and more pay.

I need a pay rise. I am sure you do also. But what's a better pay?

My take on the subject is that the fight for 'better pay' is a vicious circle. We naturally feel inadequate and left out whenever others earn more than us.

This is more so in a society where you are defined according to the type of car (not house) you have. Your worth is judged according to the type you hobnob with, not the quality of children you raised.

The reason we clamour for higher salary is largely because of that. You want to graduate from Prado to Porsche, Premio to Jaguar, and so on.

Economic theory 101 says one can never have enough money due to inadequate resources and limitless needs. Knowing well the eventual social chaos of huge salary disparities, responsible governments harmonise salaries.

In most welfare EU countries, majority of workers earn between Sh100,000 and Sh130,000. It means, in terms of remuneration, there is little difference between the house help and the teacher.

The traffic policeman earns more or less what an MP earns. This has important implications on social-economic interactions.

In Kenya, the traffic cop will stand alert and salute at the approach of a big SUV even if it is carrying a bomb. But let a small car ferrying St Maximilian Kolbe approach and guns will be cocked.

If cops, teachers and watchmen could afford the same car model as an MP, and there is rule of law, the likelihood of the big man (mama) syndrome could be much lower.

The problem is that we have come to believe that it's natural for some people to earn 300 times more than others. Over time, our economic system has defined socio-economic classes; Classes solely shaped by how much money one has. Everyone wants to earn more and be accepted in the class above.

Once achieved, we acquire the material icons to show we have 'made it'. But sooner than later, the allure of the next class above becomes even stronger and the race begins once more. Sociologists call it 'the rat race'.

Without a coherent salary policy, pay rise depends on special interests groups. My union, UASU, Knut, Cotu, are all interest groups. Their leveraging tool in salary negotiation is their ability to cause social pain if they withdraw their services.

The most lethal special interest group is of course the Parliament. MPs' power to hold the Government at ransom over pay is now legendary. Extorting pay rise from the Government is a serious economic problem in unequal societies. Eventually, salaries become incommensurate to economic productivity.

Without a strict relation between economic productivity and pay, the percentage raised in salary hikes is nothing more than rent. That is, money earned without supporting economic activity.

Since salaries become a function of class not economics, extra personal incomes are not employed in production of goods, but on imported consumer goods. And the easiest way for the government to raise funds for the rising wage bill is more taxation.

No money is deployed to stimulate economic growth and no one gives a damn. Result: imported toothpicks, match boxes, toilet paper, water and cement.

With everyone thirsting for everything foreign, we are one huge supermarket for Asian goods. We are heading for big socio-economic trouble unless the Government injects some political will on the salary harmonisation.