it is not about the MIW, you moron...
you asked about it..
if you want to do without the CPF, your employer will be most
happy to not pay you that extra amount he's dumping into your
account...
you will get that amount you are also dumping in there too.. in
all probability, you'd spend it immediately... good for the economy
you know?
but when you're retired.. if you have any fruit of your loins,
you'd become a burden to them...
anyway, whatever country you're in, you abide by the laws.. you
don't like it, you can do a few things... go do them...
sitting here grumbling and trying to push your agenda with
arguments which hold water as effectively as a sieve is not one of
them...
When a ‘Drama Queen’ performs it is done with so much
emotion that the essence of the drama gets lost with all the
language of shock and awe for effects.
Somehow it seems to be lost amongst Singaporeans that the
Employer's portion of the CPF contribution is part of the
Employee's Monthly Wage.
Is it generosity on the part of the Employer to contribute his
share into the Employee's CPF - as the Employee already has 20
percent lopped off from the monthly wage ?
The Singapore’s Central Provident Fund scheme
was started by the British Colonial Government in early 1955, and
was not depended as a source of funding for national
economic growth until the PAP took over the reins of
Self-Government in 1957 - (from Chief Minister Lim Yew Hock,
who left behind an empty State Treasury).
The PAP had since then seen the CPF as a source of cheap
funding for the many infrastructural development in
Singapore, and the amounts collected monthly was increased
even as more Singaporeans entered the workforce and
had their payroll properly accounted.
The original CPF in 1955 had the contribution amount
fixed at 5 per cent by each party - the Employer and the
Employee; and over the decades, the amount was
gradually increased to save for the retirement age of 55 years.
Even as the amount of contribution was being increased
through the years - the PAP Government in 1984 had
commissioned a study headed by a retired PAP Minister Howe Yoon
Chong to look into the future prosp of the CPF.
Following this study, the withdrawal age was recommended to be
delayed in two stages, from age 55 years to a later age
60 and the next to be paid out by age 65.
Subsequently, more features were added to the CPF in which the
Account is divided with funds held back into different accounts and
in order of priority - the Special Account (SA), Ordinary
Account (OA), and Medisave Account (MA).
Today, we have also included Medishield, Medisave-Approved Integrated Shield Plans,
Medifund and CPF Investment Scheme - in which the
monthly or annual premiums are deducted from the approved CPF
account portions.
While the preceding CPF added schemes are put in
place – tinkering the new CPF Life continue and are
debated.
How has the CPF scheme affected Singaporeans and their
retirement ?
Have we not been hearing that Singaporeans are ‘asset rich but cash poor’ ?
With 90 per cent of Singaporeans living in public
housing properties - that are over-priced to start with,
what will be the real value of these properties when
these reach closer to the end of the 99-year lease period ?
How Singapore’s CPF fares in Social Security and
Social Policy ?
An abstract from the above study is quite telling and done so
with less drama:
Singapore's Central Provident
Fund (CPF) has served well in the old economy as a macroeconomic
stabilisation policy. It finessed the developmental state and
created socio-political stability with home ownership extended to
health, education and asset enhancement schemes. However,
structural changes with globalisation, information communication
technology (ICT) and the new knowledge-based economy (KBE), plus a
series of crises and downturns since the Asian crisis have
undermined full employment as the lynchpin of the triangulation and
CPF model. Announcements made in August 2003 are germane to this
paper's discussion of the reinvention of the CPF model. Profound
and creative reinvention to balance between neo-liberal
market-based solutions without losing the socio-political control
enjoyed by the ruling regime, however, remains a political choice
as in delinking the CPF–fiscal process, CPF serves members or
state.
All in all, can the CPF scheme sustain itself in an environment
when the birth rate is declining, and for the CPF to succeed - it
will require either a growing entry of CPF contributors to make up
the size of withdrawals from a growing number of retirees; or the
management of the funds will have to supercede the amount that is
expected to be withdrawn by the retirees at the approved ages.
Will the continuous plans to delay the withdrawal age, or new
schemes to spend the CPF savings on dubious approved plans help
Singaporeans in any ways ?
If at all the CPF is operating in an environment that track
close to a Ponzi scheme - requiring more and more participants into
the Provident Fund, that will require the ever
increasing new migrants into Singapore to begin work,
contribute their CPF payment and with sufficient numbers of
immigrants to balance the books of the growing withdrawal
amounts by retirees and Singaporean migrants
going overseas.
Will it surprise anyone that the PAP Government will ignore the
major parts of the recommendation - made by a Third
Economic Review Committee – Sub-Committee on
policies related to taxation, the CPF System, Wages and Land – 15
July 2002 - when two earlier ERC had submitted their reply
after the Economic Crash in 1987 and the next in 1997 ?
What constructive contribution can the resident ‘Drama Queen’ in this Speaker's Corner offer
except cynical venom dispensed with all the characteristic drama
?
Even a retired Civil Servant Ngiam Tong Dow has expressed his more
potent views with less drama - does he have to take a hike too
?
