Government has the power to change perspective of any problems
to make what are basically wrong look right and what is basically
right look wrong.
Why is this the case ? Because perception of problems are different
from different angles.
From one point of view, Durai can look right - he is doing a great
job in fund raising.
Looked at from another angle, people are being short-changed. Our
government has denied medical and other help to the people because
of its fundamental policy to avoid welfarism.
It charges all fees at the fullest to recover costs and sometimes
as in the case of selling HDB flats to make exceptional profits by
way of creative accounting.
So what is wrong with charging fees at market values? Taxes paid by
citizens become surpluses and surpluses are used for overseas
investments which do not create jobs for its own citizens. There is
nothing to stop the government from using the surpluses for its own
purpose like using it as goodies before election to win
votes.
Because the government cannot change its past policy of taxing and
recovering full costs or market prices, it cannot afford to admit
mistake in NKF case. The lower rung people are just their own
trusted lietenants who will finally do an about-turn of the NKF
finding to look it look like the NKF reserve of 3 years or 7 years
was not wrong.
But how does the government come to the 7 years' figure. Very
simple, by taking the development costs and business infrastruture
costs incurred by NKF in the past into the equation. If NKF uses
patient treatment costs as measurements of its needs, why should
they need more monies and more reserve?
So it is a matter of creative accounting again that is the devil.
This habit of using creative accounting to solve problems is the
real problem.
The Singapore national reserve if properly worked on people's needs
for jobs and medical cares and other necessities should have been
more than enough if there is no creative accounting to include all
the infrastructural extravagants. Just use the $150 billions as
endowments to generate certain portions to sustain basic needs of
people in medical and jobless reliefs or tie-over, why should we
continue to build more and more reserve.