For past 41 years has the government really been caring to its
people.
It would seem that we have a government which is only interested in
monies and has been trying to levy all kinds of taxes, fees and
charges despite taxing the people S$500,000-S$800,000 per family
over the life cycle for housing and vehicle ownership.
Originally citizens have already paid taxes for services like
medicare, utilities and transport and housing. Yet after collecting
these taxes the government has progressively in the name of
avoiding welfarism been corporatizing these public services into
GLCs which allow the government to raise fees and charges on the
assets and infrastructure already paid and owned by the
citizens.
Under the HDB Act, it was back in 1962 after the Bukit Ho Swee fire
HDB was originally set up to provide low cost housing to the
people. But HDB has been quietly using creative accounting to raise
the prices of HDB Flats from construction cost pricing to market
pricing since 1970s.
Since SIT and HDB had been formed to acquire lands and resources
cheaply using people's tax monies why on earth is HDB allowed to
charge the flats at market price?
Is the change of charging HDB flats at market price legal ? Is such
charging not contrary to the spirit and substance of the
establishment of HDB and the Land Acquisition Act?
After lands were accordingly acquired under the Land Acquisition
Act was it not acquired for the purpose of providing low cost
housing by the HDB ?
Why must such lands be transferred to the Singapore Land Authority
only for HDB to have to buy back the lands from SLA to build
housing. Is not such transfer of acquired to the government land
stock meaningless and contrary to the purpose and intent of
providing people with low cost housing under the HDB Act and the
Land Acquisition Act?
Should citizens be entitled to refund of public taxes should public
services be later corporatised to the GLCs in order to allow the
government and GLCs so set up profit making operations and to
charge lands and assets and infrastructure once again and levy
people ever-increasing higher fees to fill up their own
surpluses.
The corporatisation of public services from medicare to utilities
and public housing has resulted in regular taxes being redundant
and accumulating into surpluses.
What is the purpose and objective of government ? Is it to use the
taxes collected to provide maximum of benefits to the citizens or
is it an organisation to accumulate taxes as surpluses to allow GIC
or Temasek to spend them foreign projects which benefited the
Thaksin or Souzhou industrialization.
Why were not the surpluses used to benefit the ordinary citizens
especially the government has refused to provide any safety net or
welfare or medicare and is seen to be dispensing with any public
services to the corporatised GLCs and allow them to charge higher
fees by sheer creative accounting and legalistic
gerrymandering.
Should the heavy taxes through HDB housing sale and vehicle
ownership levies amounting to $500,000-$800,000 per family be
allowed to benefit the people or should such surpluses be claimed
as government success and be used as rationale to pay the ministers
higher salaries and lifelong annuities rewards after two
terms.
Isn't it rather harsh to splash the surpluses on projects like
Souzhou, Shin Corp or Optus resulting in heavy losses of taxpayers'
monies while many citizens remain unemployed and unable to make end
meet with a number of committing suicides.
Singapore is unique and it has to persue its own brand of
development, suitable for its own conditions. For instance human
resource development and meritocracy, which is falsely termed as
elitism, and immigration policy to sustain its dwindling birthrate,
which is falsely termed as too many FTs.
It can no doubt be confirmed that people have given many
feedbacks on the above-stated wrong policies in double taxing the
citizens through creative accounting and corporatisation but has
the government any willingness or intention to make changes to such
policies?
Citizens have paid heavy taxes on housing and vehicle ownership
levies of S$500,000-$800,000 per family. Surely they are entitled
to be provided with affordable medicare, safety nets in the event
of unemployments with their own monies.
So is it right for the government to claim success of building up
such surpluses which are citizens' own monies. Is it not rather
harsh for the government to keep raising fees when citizens have
been paying heavy direct and indirect taxes towards the national
surpluses.
Why keep denying problems and making it look like the people are
asking for welfare when they have paid such heavy taxes into
building their own surpluses.
Under such circumstance, has the government any right in regarding
such surpluses as its own monies to entitle them to pay higher
salaries and life-long retirements and rewards to their MPs and
ministers?
If you are in charge, what will you do?
Most likely anyone rational will end up more or less doing what the
present government is doing.
Just look how the ministers have been telling the parliament
half-truths to deny the NKF's lack of accountability for years
before the true problems were spilled out in the court case between
SPH and NKF,
Has the government been open and willing to look after the people's
needs and aspirations all these years in good time and bad. It
would appear that the ministers are only interested in taxing and
recovering all costs to benefit the government and make their jobs
easy without any burdens.
The auto-piloting of past autocratic policies has been pointed by
no less distinguished ex-civil servant like Ngiam Tong Dow and
respected citizen Dr. Catherine Lim without any tacit disagreements
or by the government. It is clear that the government has not been
caring or willing to change their past wrongful and outdated
policies which have caused many problems.
It will take a huge leap of faith and courage on the part of
younger ministers and post 65 MPs to stand up to the truths and do
some real works to persuade the old guards who thus far have been
unwilling to change outdated past tax-and-recover-or-corporatise
policies which did not benefit the people.
Now we are living in a different world, we are living in a
globalized world. Singapore is unique, but it cannot hope to always
be on the top. Even USA is declining. No nation can always be
having roses and always prosperous, without any challenges.
We are living in a vastly different era where China is growing
rapidly and taking away the juices which used to flow to South East
Asia. Several years ago leaders in South East Asia have recognized
this phenomenon and said that the era of 6% or 7% growth is in the
past.
With economic and societal challenges facing Singapore, a tiny
island nation of 4 million people, the government has tried to
bring about adjustments, such as immigration and work-retraining.
But if these measures has not born full fruit which satisfy you, I
hope you recognize that these are society issues/ people issues,
which take time to change and re-orient.
Instead of always critizising the government who tried to steer the
ship a different direction, why cant you and the rest of the
passengers give support and encouragement and constructive
suggestions. If I were the ship captain I would be very
disappointed and confused with all the negativity coming from
certain sections of the passengers. [/b]
Granted the world has changed rapidly over the past ten years
but are ministers entitled to make selective comparisons with the
worse off examples just to avoid facing the truths about serious
problems due to past wrongful tax-and-recover policies.
But sadly many of the post 65 MPs do not seem to be willing to
acknowledge problems or be courageous enough to take the necessary
actions to solve serious problems of high costs and structural
unemployments faced by the educated as well as the ordinary
citizens.
They have the tendency to call names of those who give feedbacks on
problems as grousers or whiners or quitters telling them not to
expect free lunch whenever they try to bring up problems and make
constructive suggestions.
Actually the ministers might be the ones who have expected free
lunches when they insisted on paying themselves over-inflated
million-dollar salaries without the corresponding abilities as
shown during the recent recessions to solve the high cost and
structural unemployment and many problems.
If they claim to be the world best they should have restructured
the economy with broad-based education and mass practical knowledge
application as posted at www.managefranchise.blogspot.com.
So if the president can see the above-state larger perspective of
nation building he should have seriously used his elected executive
authority to set a firmer tone to his ministers so that they will
play ball and not give any more hypocrisy, selective comparison
about their wrongful policies which resulted in perpetual raising
of fees through creative accounting and wrongful corporatisation to
make more surpluses from which to pay themselves higher salaries
and lifelong rewards.
Ministers could certainly do something about the inequity in double
charging of assets and lands already owned by citizens so that
government will be able to provide affordable essential basic
services without any more NKF type of creative accounting and
deprivation of needed services.
Surely HDB, JTC, SLA, URA can be funded by citizens' taxes of
S$500,000-$800,000 per family instead of being used as vehicles to
suck more monies from the citizens.
The government so far has not listened or taken actions seriously
to address the above-stated issues and problems. There is a limit
the people can bear as seen by the increased cases of suicides and
bankruptcies.
The double charging on assets and infrastructure by the GLCs
through creating accounting and corporatisation has caused PSA to
lose out iin economic competitiveness but quietly PSA has lowered
such double charge and avoided losing more customers to port
parepas.
But has any ministers the courage to admit the above-stated
problems caused by their wrongful policies of double charging the
citizens or customers ?
For now it would appear that the it is the government which needs
to change in order to meet the many challenges of globalization you
have mentioned.
