Originally posted by kenhor:
Now, we see also the Malaysian government spending on health,
education, sports, transportation etc. They have created a middle
class that is better off than us (car, house and golf club is no
problem for them)
and what, may i ask is the percentage of their middle class
against their total population? i don't have statistics (yet) but
it all seems a little bottom-heavy to me...
they would either be Chinese (who've always been slightly better
off) or bumis (who've been sponging off the gov't) and among the
bumis, the number isn't increasing as quickly as it should
considering how much money's been spent on them over the past 2, 3
decades...
In fact, statistics in AWSJ show that 60% of the vehicles sold in
ASEAN is in Malaysia. Not to mention that house sales are at all
time high, interest rates are low. They are just not improving
their military but their whole quality of life. Our government are
not keeping up on our other factors of our society as the same
level as our military. Hence I feel that the military has been
getting too much of our budget pie and hence the rest of the
economy will suffer as a result.
vehicle sales are high because it has become cheaper in real
terms to own vehicles there while it has become prohibitively
expensive to do so here, not necessarily (solely) because the
people are getting a lot richer. its both a demand and a supply
issue.
house sales are up because the malaysians are not the only ones
buying houses and those buying them are not buying them to live in
them. u are looking at real estate speculation, not real demand
patterns.
interest rates are low because they need to stimulate spending to
make up for falling investments and external demands. the long run
result result of such a policy is inflation... there's never a win
win situation in economics...
However, in my expirence in dealing with them, their number one
piority is to get kickbacks. Their government may have to cough up
1 billion (500k cash and 500k oil palm) for 2 subs, but lots of the
money will be diverted to a contracting company, it will also be
used to get jobs. So in other words, their arms purchases are used
not only for defence, but also to sell oil palm to new markets and
also to create jobs (their new sub base in sitiawan definately
employs lots more people than we think)
you actually think that kick-backs help the economy by providing
more jobs?????
ST employs more people than u think too... so whats wrong with Sg
having a healthy defence industry and the gov't spending what it
always has on it?
So I disagree with you that we are spending the right amount. i
think we are overspending and that some of the budget can be
diverted to provide better facilities to the poor, aged and
needy.
that is a social responsibility, not a political one. u want the
government to take care of your parents for u when they grow old???
its not a perfect world and declaring war on poverty only opens up
a bottomless pit.
everyone does what they can for the less fortunate, but the best
thing u can do for the poor is not to become one of them!
Of course, if the Malaysians don't make noise when we spend the
big bucks in OUR arms purchases, you know that we are dancing to
their beat.
more like they dancing to our tune 
... when on earth did we announce a major arms
acquisition in reaction to one of theirs???
