The road to welfarism is a slippery one - sounds familiar?
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Finally a nation has come to its senses for after decades of preaching the danger of welarism, $1 billion of pure monies will soon be handed out in another name - workfare.
Whether welfare or workfare to the dependency paradoxically climbing up the less-sliippery non-welfare slope it is time to get some dough to survive.
A nation that has gone from riches to broke just have to learn how to coin new words and phrases to bypass the dirty words like welfarism. To the practically minded citizens a rose smells just as good in any other name. -
I don't know robetteh,
but I have always been given this impression that "welfare" from our government is hard to get, given their barrage of creterias put up like an obstacle course.
I mean look at some people who wishe to downgrade their HDB flats so that they don't run into the red-line in financial status; HDB's policies makes it impossible for them to do so, rendering these self-helping people STRANDED and their financial situation rapidly going down hill!
Why don't the government also help people who are trying to help themselves from getting into a desperate situation by allowing them to downgrade?? HDB is always blindly upholding their blinking POLICIES protecting and preserving their own rules, oblivious to people's unique circumstances? -
they are proposing the $1b workfare only, haven given it out yet. Wait until they really do it then comment about it. Afterall, this year is the election year, no? They can say alot of things, but if they win the election then doing it is another matter......
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All the problems happening to our society e.g. high costs, unemployments due to foreigners being allowed to compete for jobs against citizens, and class discrimination and elitism siphoning away opportunities only to the upper echelons and a few rich people are all problems genuinely affecting our citizens whether they see them or not.Originally posted by ShutterBug:I don't know robetteh,
but I have always been given this impression that "welfare" from our government is hard to get, given their barrage of creterias put up like an obstacle course.
I mean look at some people who wishe to downgrade their HDB flats so that they don't run into the red-line in financial status; HDB's policies makes it impossible for them to do so, rendering these self-helping people STRANDED and their financial situation rapidly going down hill!
Why don't the government also help people who are trying to help themselves from getting into a desperate situation by allowing them to downgrade?? HDB is always blindly upholding their blinking POLICIES protecting and preserving their own rules, oblivious to people's unique circumstances?
These problems are attributable to a system where government collects the highest direct and indirect taxes using creative accounting method while stinging on spending to benefit the people e.g. their high costs of living or doing business.
Such a system is basically wrong and immoral - shylock-like sucking of monies from the people through creative accounting in selling of HDB flats and recovering every cost to the fullest extent and triple-taxing on vehicles using the fear factor about traffic congestions.
All the above-stated problems are causing great sufferings to the people.
Yet, given these problems were brought about by the making of decision based on assumptions of all kind which as events have shown, were fallacious and attributable to self-centred top-down wrongful governance.
Yet, the leaders even with the latest NKF revelations, refuse to see or understand the problems and their causations.
The leaders still try to keep a false front of having done no wrong in the NKF to refuse to see the causations in NKF. They are still claiming success through the media presentations of justifications and hypocrisy.
The latest relenting on their over-reactive anti-welfarism stand proved one point - such a policy was wrong. By going to the extreme of recovering costs to avoid welfare, all the taxes got accumulated into reserves which at the end did not benefit the citizens and only resulted in high costs created by various creative accounting and witholding of spending the monies to give some returns back something to citizens.
The most hypocritic attitude of all is while it will avoid welfarism at all cost, the leaders will not hesitate to splash on extravagance or accumulate them as reserves or spending extra billions on politicians' own salaries and bonuses.
Yet, despite such big problems being created through propaganda on all sorts of hypocritic policies, it still wants to pretend there is no problem by refusing to acknowledge problems.
In other words, welfarism is now not being practised but only workfarism. Reserves are not used for benefits of citizens but investments overseas to benefit others and not our own citizens. That is the gist of my post - that hypocrisy about dangers of welfarism is simply a hypocrisy as monies accumutated will be spent on something totally out of line with aspirations and needs of people.
Now the latest Workfare is being used as propaganda to win votes but while we welcome help to the needy and citizens as a whole, the way it is being done is questionable and citizens must know the difference - sincere or not sincere or was it another hypocrisy just to win votes. -
i seriously doubt they are going to give away $1billion. it is just a recommendation.
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The correct thing to do for the government is to use the one billion wisely to reduce over-inflated charges on utility(network and land costs) , HDB flats (to exclude land charge), medicares, all unnecessary stamp fees, administrative fees and creative triple-charging on vehicles, licensing fees, and charges imposed by LTA, URA, BCA, all the government departments and ministries.Originally posted by dragg:i seriously doubt they are going to give away $1billion. it is just a recommendation. -
we can rave and rant but it will never happen.Originally posted by robertteh:The correct thing to do for the government is to use the one billion wisely to reduce over-inflated charges on utility(network and land costs) , HDB flats (to exclude land charge), medicares, all unnecessary stamp fees, administrative fees and creative triple-charging on vehicles, licensing fees, and charges imposed by LTA, URA, BCA, all the government departments and ministries. -
I agree with your prediction. We can now only give our views to nail lies and hypocrisy.Originally posted by dragg:we can rave and rant but it will never happen. -
Even if they DO spend $1B, it would probably be recovered gradually through increased costs of living over the years.
In fact, what robertteh mentioned was right; government should reduce some basic living costs so that the low income earners are better able to cope. But I doubt they'd want to do that - it would cost them much over the long run.
But what the heck can we all do besides biatching about it in here?? -
I agreed with Shuttlebug that the only thing we can do is to bickle about the matter in a forum.
If the high cost of Singapore is reduced, it will directly affect the high cost of the Million dollar salary system that the Government have set up.
Just as NKF, as long as the government is collecting more reserves for future unknown disaster, there is not wrong is charging high living cost.
It would "drive" the high moral ministers to corruption if they cannot continue their goal session and pay off their condo and BIG CAR. -
they will take out template xyz, change the date and reply - we will have a deficit. on top of that we will give investors and singaporeans the wrong impression.Originally posted by ShutterBug:Even if they DO spend $1B, it would probably be recovered gradually through increased costs of living over the years.
In fact, what robertteh mentioned was right; government should reduce some basic living costs so that the low income earners are better able to cope. But I doubt they'd want to do that - it would cost them much over the long run.
But what the heck can we all do besides biatching about it in here?? -
I like the idea to channel the funds to help the poor directly. But on the other hand, I am afraid that the society based on meritocracy may erode and people might get overly-relay on the government when times of uncertainty arises. The point I am trying to make here is not for the government to shrink responsiblilty and neglect the citizens during these time but instead to point out certain flaws of doing that.Originally posted by robertteh:The correct thing to do for the government is to use the one billion wisely to reduce over-inflated charges on utility(network and land costs) , HDB flats (to exclude land charge), medicares, all unnecessary stamp fees, administrative fees and creative triple-charging on vehicles, licensing fees, and charges imposed by LTA, URA, BCA, all the government departments and ministries.
We can no longer have the luxury of a stable markets and currencies in today's society. The plummeting of one's country stock market is now a global affair. Hence, changes is the only thing constant. During such times, when the economy grows stagnant, the next best immediate measures, beside to reduce taxes etc, would be to aid the unemployed to maintain a living. Netherless to say, in turbulence times, the jobs market will be hit the hardest and people will be scabbling for jobs worldwide. The fight for livelihood will now be on between two citizens, one armed with the relevant workskill and one who is not. Who will has the edge?
Hence, it is still a better and safer bet to use the funds to aid the poors and uneducated by upgrading theirs skills through subsidies for education, jobs investment that generate employment or through one-time bonuses. The long-term life skills learned is a better bet to a brighter future in my opinion, than to offset the miscellanous charges/taxes which on the other hand may promote another problem - a widen gap between the rich and poor.
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Lets put it in simple language....
Red Tape Red Tape Red Tape + wayang wayang
We need more than just scissors to cut the red tape
chainsaws anybody? -
The situation of high costs of living is a serious one. It is so serious thatOriginally posted by TooFree:I like the idea to channel the funds to help the poor directly. But on the other hand, I am afraid that the society based on meritocracy may erode and people might get overly-relay on the government when times of uncertainty arises. The point I am trying to make here is not for the government to shrink responsiblilty and neglect the citizens during these time but instead to point out certain flaws of doing that.
We can no longer have the luxury of a stable markets and currencies in today's society. The plummeting of one's country stock market is now a global affair. Hence, changes is the only thing constant. During such times, when the economy grows stagnant, the next best immediate measures, beside to reduce taxes etc, would be to aid the unemployed to maintain a living. Netherless to say, in turbulence times, the jobs market will be hit the hardest and people will be scabbling for jobs worldwide. The fight for livelihood will now be on between two citizens, one armed with the relevant workskill and one who is not. Who will has the edge?
Hence, it is still a better and safer bet to use the funds to aid the poors and uneducated by upgrading theirs skills through subsidies for education, jobs investment that generate employment or through one-time bonuses. The long-term life skills learned is a better bet to a brighter future in my opinion, than to offset the miscellanous charges/taxes which on the other hand may promote another problem - a widen gap between the rich and poor.
(a) Lower income families cannot pay utility, public transport, housing and medical not to mention the meals. Smaller assistance will not help this group to tie over current subsistence-living problems.
(b) Middle-income families cannot make ends meet usually incurring credit cards debts and will have to downgrade. Smaller assistance will also not help this group tie over problems.
The urgency to help the lower-income group is there. The middle-income group too is in a quandary.
To the first group, the proposed $1 billion workfare assistance will help.
To the middle-income earners who are squeezed by dropping assets and the high costs of living due to double-charging on land, triple-charging on vehicles, etc, help will be welcome if there are not at the expense of creating a deficit.
How to collect just the necessary taxes and fees without burdening the middle-class with exorbitant excise duty on vehicle even after it was agreed that COE and/or ERP would be the final measures to cope with road traffic congestion.
We need leaders who can understand how the economy works and who will realize that by over-taxing and over-recovering costs in all kinds of fee increases, there economy will not grow and there will be no jobs.
Our great leaders, who keep trying to claim themselves as world best, our Ministers, MPs, grassroot leaders, who are supposedly scholars and our oppositions should fight for the citizens and not hide behind some hypes about welfare or wrong assumption that paying our highest ministers' salaries will prevent or reduce corruptions.
Many past assumptions behind our major government policies such as pointed out remain assumptions. I am sure Singapore can do with less and less extravagant spendings on concrete arches or more rain shelters or other big projects unhelpful to job creations to be scaled down or stopped.
I am sure given the will be many good solutions e.g. not to over-spend and collect only the necessary taxes without bankrupting the middle class.
The middle-income group is presently suffering from severe drop of asset values due to bursting of asset bubble caused partly by government's own mistakes in pushing up public sector salaries under Dr. Goh Keng Swee's doctrine...which is a doubtful doctrine on hindsight.
Citizens may argue ceaselessly and uncertainly among themselves on a lot of issues because of pros-and-cons and cannot come to conclusive views but leaders must surely have the larger perspective and visions to see larger picture and not use citizens' dilemma over necessary help to the middle class.
Solutions lie in not over-taxing the people, over-paying the public sector salaries or over-spending on extravagance. Both lower-income group and middle-income group stand to benefit if costs of living are not pushed up unnecessarily by these past wrong policies which should be corrected fast..if economy is to grow again. -
S$1 BILLION VOTE BUYING STRATEGY ???!!!
Who can say that Singapore Politics is clean ?
After the recent 2002 economic melt-down, with mass retrenchment, there was the other fund that was supposed to help the Lower Income Group, which they found out that a large portion of the Lower Income Group were not aware of the existence of the fund, or that they did not understand that they are qualified for receiving, or that they do not know where, who and how to approach the Fund .
It was found that less then 30% of that allocated 2002 Funds were PAID !!!
All the hoopla to gain political mileage from the supposed generosity FIZZLED OUT through the bureucratic red tapes.
The ANNUAL WINDFALL in collected taxes has allowed this Singapore Government a.k.a the Ruling Party to transfer surplus into TEMASEK and the GIC, which enable them to make their obscene BILLION DOLLAR INVESTMENTS OVERSEAS that only BENEFIT FOREIGN NATIONALS.
In the recent Temasek purchase of P & O for a sum of $10.7 BILLION, it was loudly announced of the success of Temasek in the tussle to mannage Dubai Port; BUT it was not announced that an additional sum of S$600 MILLION was supposed to be paid to the P&O Employee Pension Fund.
How many is on the list of the P&O Employee Pension Fund to benefit from the S$600 MILLION payout ?
If Temasek can pay S$600MILLION into some foreigners PENSION FUND, what is the beef in paying S$1 BILLION into the CPF account of TWO MILLION WORKING Singaporean ?
The "S$1 BILLION WORKFARE" should have been returned to hardworking Singaporeans irregardless of INCOME GROUP LEVELS - as the amount of DIRECT and INDIRECT TAXES collected has resulted in ANNUAL WINDFALL for the Government.