Emotional Economics

Colin Beckingham | Mar 18, 2020

The decision of the Chief Librarian in consultation with the Kingston Frontenac Public Library Board to continue to pay salaries during closure of libraries due to the virus health issues does not sit right.

I'm sure that teachers are in the same situation. Payment for work is one thing, payment for no work is another. I was also surprised to learn that the libraries serve as some kind of warm up centre. This maybe is so in Kingston city but hardly applies in rural branches, where traffic is quite low compared to the city.

We already have a welfare system which is designed to catch and help out those in need. Then payments are captured in the "economic transfers" classification while salaries are captured as payments for work; the difference being that in the second case the payment is for wealth created, while in the first case no wealth is created, but rather existing community wealth is used up or redistributed.

Favouring librarians and teachers, already very well compensated for their efforts, in a manner different from the support of the vast majority of the working population involuntarily set aside for the duration of this health event smacks of differential treatment and maintains a privileged group. This could backfire in the future. They may be convenient to some but are not an essential service.

I think we taxpayers will need to see evidence of what they (librarians and teachers) have been doing to earn such high payments and such delightful privilege. Maybe now is the real time for online services:

require the teaching staff to confront the possibility and usefulness of centralized instruction and tease the librarians away from books to PDFs and require specialized buildings and staff to provide warm up services.

Colin Beckingham