The first principle of government is to serve the social, moral,
physical and economic needs relying a system of taxing to fund for such
services in order to help citizens to live their meaningful lives in
this world.
To serve the people in meeting such needs government will raise monies through taxes and provide services to meet these desires.
The more the services to be provided to the people the higher will be the tax burden.
If we want government to provide all the services like medical,
housing or utility services etc then we can understand government must
tax and collect as much taxes as possible.
If it is the reverse, say the government succeeded in telling and
convincing the people a welfare system is no good then what must the
government do with the taxation and service provisions?
Over the past 40 plus years we are constantly told of dangers of
welfarism but has the government ever once told us that since we are
not being provided with basic services like medical and utility or
transportation we should not be taxed so much or charged so high.
So fair enough there should be no-welfare. But is it still right if
little or no welfare is provided government should be using all our
common lands and assets to make untold profits of the proportion like
S$6 billions last year (2007) while increasing GST from 5% to 7%.
Where is the morality or justice in such a "no welfare" system
where the government still keep raising taxes and making profits from
our common lands and assets.
Something is fundamentally wrong and this wrong is up to the people
now to address as they will not be able to survive in such a "no
welfare but government has every right to increase taxes and cream off
more and more monies from the lower and middle income earners.
Is it fair for a government to say it does not want to provide
services and yet keep taking more and more fee increases through HDB,
URA, LTA and GLCs to no end.
Mah Bow Tan is probably thinking there should be no free lunch but
he could take any millions of free lunches from people monies as his
own salaries without showing results in our public housing which is a
total and miserable failure since so many citizens are impoverished and
lost their retirements because of this kind of public housing to enrich
the elites.
He is using lands belonging to the people and making double the
profits by telling lies about subsidy when he is now selling the latest
5-room flat at $500,000 - $700,000 under such a "no welfare" system.
In other word, in a "no welfare" system the government is now having
every right to make double and triple profits for themselves and their
elites to serve their own claims and glory at the expense of the
people.
No wonder the great majority of citizens cannot make ends meet and Singapore economy keeps going into deep recessions
requiring NEH to give more excuses about foreign talents with opening of doors to all kinds of bangla and sri lankan foreign workers to
replace the long-suffering knocked out oppressed and struggling citizens.
I agree with you on the part about no welfare but high tax.
For the past 40 odd years, in the name of "we need surplus for raining days", the government has been coming up with various creative ways to tax the citizens. How much of a surplus is enough? It seems greed knows no limit.
These are ppl money but the govt chose to keep silence over them. Only OTC dared to qury the govt on its spending and was ostracised.
Our god-govt always know what best for us. We have to listen to them, never mind if they sounded like north Korean propaganda. Like LKY said, we need a strong govt to survive. To stand shoulder-to-shoulder against our bullying neighbours.
True in words but in substance? The last trip to Jarkata, looked how he came fuming back - a beaten man.
The reality is this - as little red dot, strong is relative and subjective and not given state which sg voters can choose.