From the past 40 plus years of Government there is no doubt that this has been a government which taxes and hoards monies from whatever way it could from the people.
It does not motivate its people to apply knowledge in every field nor create technology start-ups to secure more jobs for its citizens.
It worship foreign investors and foreigners instead of encourages its own citizens or local companies to survive or compete in the world. Many years ago, I happened to take part in some international construction project bidding and found that while the big Japanese and Korean firms were always bidding with their government and institutional supports our local firms were left entirely on their own and unable to put in competitive bids and compete with such government-assisted foreign companies.
Yet our government will offer all kinds of assistances and incentives to foreign companies bidding in our projects for the slighest reason and consider them foreign investors worth helping under doubtful dubious policies of all sorts.
Our government is seen as interested only in taxing, withholding spending of taxes on basic services to the people and even if it does so, it will charge for all costs of such basic government services. Such a system of governing the country only runs down the
economy.
Luckily, for some strange reasons people remain robust despite all such
draconian taxing and back-charging and hoarding of monies and profiteering of the government to claim its own limited selfish success.
Probably it is our strategic location which so far still allows us to have some advantages in manufacturing and services so some of these economic activities still stay here because they could save time and transportation costs.
Government does not seem to bother with promoting applications of knowledge or innovations and continues to take and take without creating some benefits for its own businesses or people treating them as suckers or money trees for the shaking.
The only skill government has is to take monies rather than helping the people or its own businesses like lowering costs of doing business or creating competitive facilities and environment to help
businesses grow. Of great urgency is the cutting off of all the double
charging in transportation like excise, COE, Petrol tax, ERP etc. and profiteering by HDB, LTA etc which kills the businesses.
If the government really wants the businesses to grow and become
competitive, the first priority should be to do the right thing to grow
start-ups and not keep taxing and charging and making monies from all the lands
and people's owned infrastructures for that is the fastest way to run down the coutnry. It is the monster government that kills the goose that lays the golden egg.
Such watch again. It will not admit its taxing and hoarding system is a mistake because the old man is too proud as a presumptive world leader.
If there is another recession, Singapore economy
will again be the first to be fit and it will go down more and worse as compared with other Asian dragons
because of lack of resilience in such a
take-all-never-give monstrous governing system because of one man.
Only luck in finding a motivating new leader will give us another break. IR may not save us from doom or give us the chance as such a take-all-never-give dictatorship will just kill the goose again.
... more Frugal Years ahead...
... vote them in again, and you all will get another half decade of even more Frugality, while you watch them jack up their own salaries, and petting themselve on their own backs for being so ingenious in Frugalizing your lives ...