As Egyptians marked the second anniversary of the toppling of Hosni Mubarak yesterday, the man in the street feels betrayed as his daily ‘torment' to make a living has intensified. Citizens, who can barely keep a roof over their heads, wonder what has changed. ‘Bread, freedom and social justice' were the basic demands of the January 25 Revolution. Enormous dreams, but the poor cannot survive on aspirations alone, as a young man put it. “This is a nightmare. Prices have gone wild. The increase in wages can never keep pace with the skyrocketing prices. Two years after the revolution and there's still no minimum wage," Yasser Gamal, a 28-year-old engineer, told the Egyptian Mail. Labour unions demand a minimum wage worth $8 a day for each four-member family, stressing that the maximum wage should never exceed LE50,000 ($7,400) per month. The Constitution has set a framework for a minimum wage, but left leeway for exceptions regarding a maximum wage, according to Article 14. The country's Islamist-dominated Shura Council (the Upper House of Parliament) is working on a wage bill conforming with the Constitution. In 1952, the then-Government set the minimum wage at 18 piastres per day. At that time, 18 piastres would buy 1.2kg of beef, bringing the monthly wage to 34kg of beef. A kilo of beef sells for an average LE60 today. Hypothetically, the 1952 minimum wage therefore equals LE2,040 today, at the current prices. “Social justice is a must to maintain social peace. Socio-economic stability will ultimately lead to political peace," says Ramez Mamdouh, a member of April 6 Youth Movement. “Minimum and maximum wage levels are the most fundamental things we need to bring about sustained social peace," he adds. Economists cast light on income disparity in the most populous Arab country. They reiterate John Maynard Keynes' theory that we need to have a strong middle class, able to push demand by higher consumption rates. “Egypt needs the middle class, which has been weakened over the past 40 years, to come back. Millions of citizens now have to do two or even three jobs to fend for their families," Mamdouh continues. The socio-economic backcloth in Egypt has been changing over the past 35 years or more, ever since the Open-Door Policy was launched by late President Anwar el-Sadat in 1974. In the 1950s and 1960s, successive governments were the sole employer, dominating the labour market. From the 1970s until today, the private sector has been taking a bigger slice of the labour supply. There are roughly 6 million civil servants, in addition to around another 373,000 people working for the public sector out of a workforce estimated at 26 million, according to the State-run Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS). The private sector accounts for more than 70 per cent of the labour market in Egypt. There are no official reports, but it's said that nearly half of civil servants do extra jobs, according to unofficial sources. Most of the Egyptian family budget is spent on food, education and rent. Food alone takes around 43 per cent of a family's monthly budget, according to CAPMAS. “It is a must to put an end to income disparity in Egypt. Citizens should feel social justice. If such an objective is achieved, the President and the Cabinet will be considered as heroes by the man in the street," Mamdouh explains. In their book Modern Labour Economics, Ronald G. Ehrenberg and Robert S. Smith outline the causes for income disparity in an economy. "One possible cause of growing earnings inequality is the destruction of middle-income jobs and their replacement by both higher- and lower-paying occupations. "A second possible dimension for growing inequality is the increased disparity in earnings among those who remained in high- and low-paying jobs. This disparity could result from either an increase in the disparity of wage rates or from an increased disparity in hours worked."
