GOPAPGOPAPGOPAP ...

Now why won't the GOP learn something from the PAP ? Or was it the other way round ?

Diary of a Singaporean Mind : PAP MP : " Cutting GST does not help the poor ..."

You know how far down the standard of debate has fallen when an MP stands up and argues that cutting the GST does not help the poor. GST is a regressive tax that penalises the poor the most because they spend most of their income. If you're Wee Cho Yaw or Peter Lim you spend maybe 2% of your income and invest the rest, so you pay 0.0014% of your income in GST. Why was GST implemented? Before our income gap ballooned to what it is today, the PAP govt openly admitted that the purpose of GST is to cut corporate tax and the income tax of high income earners. This is seen from the 2003 budget statement by the then Finance Minister Lee Hsien Loong:

"4.3 From YA 2003, I have decided to cut the corporate income tax rate from 24.5% to 22%. This 10% reduction will save businesses $700 million a year.

4.4 Also with effect from YA 2003, the top marginal personal income tax rate will be cut from 26% to 22%, with corresponding cuts in all income bands. This will reduce the tax payable by most taxpayers by 13% to 16%, saving them $620 million every year.

4.5 I have decided to raise the GST rate from 3% to 5% from 1 Jan 2003. The increase in GST is expected to raise an additional $1.3 billion of tax revenue per year."

If you total up loss of revenue from the corporate tax cuts and the tax cuts for highest income earnings, it is equal to the amount gained from the increase GST. This means that the poor who did not pay income tax had to fund the cuts for the rich through GST increases. In 2007, many Singaporeans became concerned about the income gap and the poor among us, the govt used this as the reason for GST hike ("gst hike to help the poor"). As they do this, they slashed corporate taxes again by 2%, that alone would take away more than half the amount raised by the increase

in GST....so before any help got to the poor more than half the GST hike went to fund corporate tax cuts[Link]. To date we have not seen govt figures of how much help eventually got to the poor - according to Leong Sze Hian ..not much[Link].

What I'm very sure of is our poor are worse off today than they were before the 2007 GST hike. The combination of rising cost of living and stagnant wages means much more needs to be done. If you look at the escalation in the cost of medical care, housing, transport, utilities and food, they simply overwhelm the meager help from the govt. We are all frustrated with govt dithering, bogus intentions and dubious arguments - Tharman actually came up with numbers to show the govt helped the "generous subsidies"[Link]. The true measure of whether the poor are really getting sufficient help is their quality of life...has it improved in the past 4 years? Find me a person who dares to say "yes" and I'll show you he's a liar!

02 March 2011

Joseph Heller was here

Musings from the Lion City : Strange New Rule

 Ever since Workfare came into being, there had been a lot of criticism from Singaporeans. Now I have to add my voice to it.

I know someone who earned about $800 a month. The way Workfare work is that if he managed to find work for 3 straight months, he is entitled for the Workfare. Seem easy enough right? It used to be, but not now.

According to him, his Workfare didn’t come in this month and when he called the CPF, he was told he is now considered a self-employed person. Why? The CPF say he is a self-employed person because he has a bus-driver vocational license. As he only speaks mandarin, I thought he made a mistake. I don’t have the exact numbers but there must be at least 50,000-60,000 people in Singapore who has a taxi or bus license, surely the CPF can’t consider all of them to be self-employed!

So I made a call on his behalf to CPF. Ho and behold, he was right! The CPF do consider him a self-employed person because of his bus-driver vocational license. In fact I was told he had to go to LTA and get a letter from LTA stating he is not self-employed.

That is just weird. How is LTA supposed to do that? LTA is in charge of roads and stuff like that; how are they supposed to know a man’s employment history? What’s even stranger is that this guy I know can’t own a bus. Buses can only be owned by a company or business in Singapore, it cannot be under a person’s name. So even if he is using his bus license, he can’t be self-employed because he cannot own a bus! He must be working for someone.

Why does the CPF think that just because a guy has a bus license, he is a self-employed? I know of many people who get a taxi or bus license as a “just in case” policy. They get it, they renew it, but they don’t use it. Are they ALL self-employed?

That’s insane! Why is the CPF making it so difficult for people to get Workfare, a scheme that isn’t really well-loved in the first place! Who in the CPF thought up this special insane new rule? The CPF should get rid of this new rule as well as the genius who thought it up.

02 March 2011

How Low Will You Go GOP ?

Paul Krugman : Leaving Children Behind

Will 2011 be the year of fiscal austerity? At the federal level, it’s still not clear: Republicans are demanding draconian spending cuts, but we don’t yet know how far they’re willing to go in a showdown with President Obama. At the state and local level, however, there’s no doubt about it: big spending cuts are coming.

And who will bear the brunt of these cuts? America’s children.

Now, politicians — and especially, in my experience, conservative politicians — always claim to be deeply concerned about the nation’s children. Back during the 2000 campaign, then-candidate George W. Bush, touting the “Texas miracle” of dramatically lower dropout rates, declared that he wanted to be the “education president.” Today, advocates of big spending cuts often claim that their greatest concern is the burden of debt our children will face.

In practice, however, when advocates of lower spending get a chance to put their ideas into practice, the burden always seems to fall disproportionately on those very children they claim to hold so dear.

Consider, as a case in point, what’s happening in Texas, which more and more seems to be where America’s political future happens first.

Texas likes to portray itself as a model of small government, and indeed it is. Taxes are low, at least if you’re in the upper part of the income distribution (taxes on the bottom 40 percent of the population are actually above the national average). Government spending is also low. And to be fair, low taxes may be one reason for the state’s rapid population growth, although low housing prices are surely much more important.

But here’s the thing: While low spending may sound good in the abstract, what it amounts to in practice is low spending on children, who account directly or indirectly for a large part of government outlays at the state and local level.

And in low-tax, low-spending Texas, the kids are not all right. The high school graduation rate, at just 61.3 percent, puts Texas 43rd out of 50 in state rankings. Nationally, the state ranks fifth in child poverty; it leads in the percentage of children without health insurance. And only 78 percent of Texas children are in excellent or very good health, significantly below the national average.

But wait — how can graduation rates be so low when Texas had that education miracle back when former President Bush was governor? Well, a couple of years into his presidency the truth about that miracle came out: Texas school administrators achieved low reported dropout rates the old-fashioned way — they, ahem, got the numbers wrong.

It’s not a pretty picture; compassion aside, you have to wonder — and many business people in Texas do — how the state can prosper in the long run with a future work force blighted by childhood poverty, poor health and lack of education.

But things are about to get much worse.

A few months ago another Texas miracle went the way of that education miracle of the 1990s. For months, Gov. Rick Perry had boasted that his “tough conservative decisions” had kept the budget in surplus while allowing the state to weather the recession unscathed. But after Mr. Perry’s re-election, reality intruded — funny how that happens — and the state is now scrambling to close a huge budget gap. (By the way, given the current efforts to blame public-sector unions for state fiscal problems, it’s worth noting that the mess in Texas was achieved with an overwhelmingly nonunion work force.)

So how will that gap be closed? Given the already dire condition of Texas children, you might have expected the state’s leaders to focus the pain elsewhere. In particular, you might have expected high-income Texans, who pay much less in state and local taxes than the national average, to be asked to bear at least some of the burden.

But you’d be wrong. Tax increases have been ruled out of consideration; the gap will be closed solely through spending cuts. Medicaid, a program that is crucial to many of the state’s children, will take the biggest hit, with the Legislature proposing a funding cut of no less than 29 percent, including a reduction in the state’s already low payments to providers — raising fears that doctors will start refusing to see Medicaid patients. And education will also face steep cuts, with school administrators talking about as many as 100,000 layoffs.

The really striking thing about all this isn’t the cruelty — at this point you expect that — but the shortsightedness. What’s supposed to happen when today’s neglected children become tomorrow’s work force?

Anyway, the next time some self-proclaimed deficit hawk tells you how much he worries about the debt we’re leaving our children, remember what’s happening in Texas, a state whose slogan right now might as well be “Lose the future.”

01 March 2011

Feudal Capitalism

Reading the TodayOnline : Nation or Hotel Singapore ? You decide.

Came across this comment -

" ... The Chinese imperial examinations always has a top scholar, and that man has always been the most intelligent. He deserves the abundant wealth that comes with that post, and it is his right to live of the taxpayer's money. If you are still unhappy, it is not the PAP's policies that needs to be changed. It is the order of nature that you seek to change. " - Sigh @ 09:57 PM February 24, 2011

i have no doubt that not quite a few people here think like sigh. What does the world think? It will be a sad future if such idea goes unchallenged. China is feeling her way and engineering an attempt to feed not only its people but the world with an alternative worldview, a confucius consciousness. With her status of a rising power, nothing less than a tetonic shift of the Judea-Christian worldview, shaken to its core, to that of an alternative is imminent. Not withstanding the merits of Confucius thought, whom i admire for his tone of peace and harmony of man and nature, the signal of an iota of promoting this two-thousnad-five-hundred year old sage is enough to give fits to the above "ideology".

Maybe China don't have to look so far back in her history to justify taking her place not too far from now. Least she has forgotten that a great people has already transcent feudalism and was on the road to emancipation. Please don't go back when you become rich.

China has a right to prosper and seek "progress" for her people. China can rise for all i care. But with her rise ...

Meanwhile in the land-of-the-free

NY Times: Paul Krugman

"It's like Cairo has moved to Wesconsin."  &  Will you sign this employment contract ?

" ... “Notwithstanding ss. 13.48 (14) (am) and 16.705 (1), the department may sell any state-owned heating, cooling, and power plant or may contract with a private entity for the operation of any such plant, with or without solicitation of bids, for any amount that the department determines to be in the best interest of the state. Notwithstanding ss. 196.49 and 196.80, no approval or certification of the public service commission is necessary for a public utility to purchase, or contract for the operation of, such a plant, and any such purchase is considered to be in the public interest and to comply with the criteria for certification of a project under s. 196.49 (3) (b).” "

Someone told me: " ... but this is how the world works... "

No. The world is changing. And it is not for the better.

If God cannot help us, then we have to help ourselves, and pray (oxymoron me) that this NEW WORLD ORDER never arise.

26 February 2011

The rise of Feudal Capitalism

No Country For Old Man ?

Straits Times: Libyan uprising a 'foreign plot': Gaddafi's son



i like the way he point his finger ...



 CAIRO - SAIF al-Islam Gaddafi, the son of strongman Muammar Gaddafi, said on Monday that Libya was on the verge of civil war and branded the unprecedented protests against his father's rule a foreign plot.

Blaming Arab and African expatriates of fomenting unrest in the country, he said the violence was aimed at installing Islamist rule, in a speech on television.

'At this moment there are tanks being driven by civilians in Benghazi,' Libya's second city and an epicentre of the unprecedented protests against Muammar Gaddafi's iron-fisted rule for nearly 42 years.

'We have arms, the military has arms and the forces which want to destroy Libya have arms,' he said. Mr Gaddafi, speaking in Arabic, also pledged a new constitution and new liberal laws saying the north African country was at a crossroads.

In the tough-talking, finger-wagging speech, Mr Gaddafi's son blamed foreign media of inflating the death toll, which he repeatedly put at 84, and warned that any uprising would be ruthlessly suppressed.

'Libya is not Egypt, it is not Tunisia. There are no political parties in Libya,' he said. 'We will take up arms... we will fight to the last bullet,' he said. 'We will destroy seditious elements. If everybody is armed, it is civil war, we will kill each other.' Mr Gaddafi said his father would lead the fight against the protesters, adding: and 'we will win.'-- AFP

Well, at least in a democracy ( or a semblance of it ), there is room to step down and avoid bloodshed to the people.

But in an authoritarian regime, it will be bloody and a fight to the death...

21 February 2011

New World Order II

NY Times: When Democracy Weakens

By Bob Herbert

As the throngs celebrated in Cairo, I couldn’t help wondering about what is happening to democracy here in the United States. I think it’s on the ropes. We’re in serious danger of becoming a democracy in name only.

While millions of ordinary Americans are struggling with unemployment and declining standards of living, the levers of real power have been all but completely commandeered by the financial and corporate elite. It doesn’t really matter what ordinary people want. The wealthy call the tune, and the politicians dance.

So what we get in this democracy of ours are astounding and increasingly obscene tax breaks and other windfall benefits for the wealthiest, while the bought-and-paid-for politicians hack away at essential public services and the social safety net, saying we can’t afford them. One state after another is reporting that it cannot pay its bills. Public employees across the country are walking the plank by the tens of thousands. Camden, N.J., a stricken city with a serious crime problem, laid off nearly half of its police force. Medicaid, the program that provides health benefits to the poor, is under savage assault from nearly all quarters.

The poor, who are suffering from an all-out depression, are never heard from. In terms of their clout, they might as well not exist. The Obama forces reportedly want to raise a billion dollars or more for the president’s re-election bid. Politicians in search of that kind of cash won’t be talking much about the wants and needs of the poor. They’ll be genuflecting before the very rich.

In an Op-Ed article in The Times at the end of January, Senator John Kerry said that the Egyptian people “have made clear they will settle for nothing less than greater democracy and more economic opportunities.” Americans are being asked to swallow exactly the opposite. In the mad rush to privatization over the past few decades, democracy itself was put up for sale, and the rich were the only ones who could afford it.

The corporate and financial elites threw astounding sums of money into campaign contributions and high-priced lobbyists and think tanks and media buys and anything else they could think of. They wined and dined powerful leaders of both parties. They flew them on private jets and wooed them with golf outings and lavish vacations and gave them high-paying jobs as lobbyists the moment they left the government. All that money was well spent. The investments paid off big time.

As Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson wrote in their book, “Winner-Take-All Politics”: “Step by step and debate by debate, America’s public officials have rewritten the rules of American politics and the American economy in ways that have benefited the few at the expense of the many.”

As if the corporate stranglehold on American democracy were not tight enough, the Supreme Court strengthened it immeasurably with its Citizens United decision, which greatly enhanced the already overwhelming power of corporate money in politics. Ordinary Americans have no real access to the corridors of power, but you can bet your last Lotto ticket that your elected officials are listening when the corporate money speaks.

When the game is rigged in your favor, you win. So despite the worst economic downturn since the Depression, the big corporations are sitting on mountains of cash, the stock markets are up and all is well among the plutocrats. The endlessly egregious Koch brothers, David and Charles, are worth an estimated $35 billion. Yet they seem to feel as though society has treated them unfairly.

As Jane Mayer pointed out in her celebrated New Yorker article, “The Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry — especially environmental regulation.” (A good hard look at their air-pollution record would make you sick.)

It’s a perversion of democracy, indeed, when individuals like the Kochs have so much clout while the many millions of ordinary Americans have so little. What the Kochs want is coming to pass. Extend the tax cuts for the rich? No problem. Cut services to the poor, the sick, the young and the disabled? Check. Can we get you anything else, gentlemen?

The Egyptians want to establish a viable democracy, and that’s a long, hard road. Americans are in the mind-bogglingly self-destructive process of letting a real democracy slip away.

I had lunch with the historian Howard Zinn just a few weeks before he died in January 2010. He was chagrined about the state of affairs in the U.S. but not at all daunted. “If there is going to be change,” he said, “real change, it will have to work its way from the bottom up, from the people themselves.”

I thought of that as I watched the coverage of the ecstatic celebrations in the streets of Cairo.

If not, God help us all ... NEW WORLD ORDER

21 February 2011

No One Washed A Rented Car

TodayOnline: Out of touch, out of time

by: Thomas L Friedman

Watching President Hosni Mubarak addressing his nation on Thursday night, explaining why he would not be drummed out of office by foreigners, I felt embarrassed for him and worried for Egypt. This man is staggeringly out of touch with what is happening inside his country. This is Rip Van Winkle meets Facebook.

The fact that the several hundred thousand Egyptians in Tahrir Square reacted to Mr Mubarak's speech by waving their shoes - they surely would have thrown them at him if he had been in range - and shouting "go away, go away", pretty much sums up the reaction. Mr Mubarak, in one speech, shifted this Egyptian democracy drama from mildly hopeful, even thrilling, to dangerous.

All day here, there was a drumbeat of leaks that the fix was in: Mr Mubarak was leaving, the army leadership was meeting and Vice-President Omar Suleiman would oversee the constitutional reform process.

The fact that this did not turn out to be the case suggests there is some kind of a split in the leadership of the Egyptian army, between the anti-Mubarak factions leaking his departure and the pro-Mubarak factions helping him to stay.

The words of Mr Mubarak and Mr Suleiman directed to the democracy demonstrators could not have been more insulting: "Trust us. We'll take over the reform agenda now. You all can go back home, get back to work and stop letting those foreign satellite TV networks - i.e., Al Jazeera - get you so riled up. Also, do not let that Obama guy dictate to us proud Egyptians what to do."

This narrative is totally out of touch with the reality of this democracy uprising in Tahrir Square, which is all about the self-empowerment of a long-repressed people no longer willing to be afraid, no longer willing to be deprived of their freedom and no longer willing to be humiliated by their own leaders, who told them for 30 years that they were not ready for democracy.

Indeed, the Egyptian democracy movement is everything that Mr Mubarak says it is not: Homegrown, indefatigable and authentically Egyptian. Future historians will write about the large historical forces that created this movement but it is the small stories you encounter in Tahrir Square that show why it is unstoppable.

I spent part of the morning in the square watching and photographing a group of young Egyptian students wearing plastic gloves taking garbage in both hands and neatly scooping it into black plastic bags to keep the area clean. This touched me in particular because more than once in this column I have quoted the aphorism that "in the history of the world no one has ever washed a rented car".

I used it to make the point that no one has ever washed a rented country either - and for the last century Arabs have just been renting their countries from kings, dictators and colonial powers. So, they had no desire to wash them.

Well, Egyptians have stopped renting, at least in Tahrir Square, where a sign hung on Thursday said: "Tahrir - the only free place in Egypt."

So I went up to one of these young people on garbage duty - Mr Karim Turki, 23, who worked in a skin-care shop - and asked him: "Why did you volunteer for this?" He could not get the words out in broken English fast enough: "This is my earth. This is my country. This is my home. I will clean all Egypt when Mubarak will go out." Ownership is a beautiful thing.

As I was leaving the garbage pile, I ran into three rather prosperous-looking men who wanted to talk. One of them, Mr Ahmed Awn, 31, explained that he was financially comfortable and even stood to lose if the turmoil here continued but he wanted to join in for reasons so much more important than money.

Before this uprising, he said, "I was not proud to tell people I was an Egyptian. Today, with what's been done here" in Tahrir Square, "I can proudly say again I am an Egyptian".

Humiliation is the single most powerful human emotion and overcoming it is the second most powerful human emotion. That is such a big part of what is playing out here.

Finally, crossing the Nile bridge away from the square, I was stopped by a well-dressed Egyptian man - a Times reader - who worked in Saudi Arabia.

He was with his wife and two young sons. He told me that he came to Cairo on Thursday to take his two sons to see, hear, feel and touch Tahrir Square. "I want it seared in their memory," he told me.

It seemed to be his way of ensuring that this autocracy never returns.

These are the people whom Mr Mubarak is accusing of being stirred up entirely by foreigners. In truth, the Tahrir movement is one of the most authentic, most human, quests for dignity and freedom that I have ever seen.

But rather than bowing to that, retiring gracefully and turning over the presidency either to the army or some kind of presidency council, made up of respected figures to oversee the transition to democracy, Mr Mubarak seems determined to hang on in a way that, at best, will slow down Egypt's evolution to democracy and, at worst, take a grass-roots, broad-based Egyptian non-violent democracy movement and send it into a rage.

The new York times

12 February 2011