3/31/2007

The choice of where to peg

The choice of where to peg Would it be nice if the top govt official's salary is pegged to a middle civil servant's salary? I can immediately see the advantage of such a pegging. It is likely to benefit the salary of all civil servants, at all levels. As with the present formula, pegging to the top earners, almost to the top, would only mean that the income gap will get wider and it becomes a case of 'cannot be helped' even if everyone knows that it is undesirable. But if we pegged it at the middle civil servant level then the income gap may not widen that fast. But it still could, and the final amount could still be very large, depending on how many times is seen as decent and acceptable, and that it will not lead to them running to join the private sector or to prevent corruption from taking place. Then again, the reality is that no amount is enough. Long long ago, $5000 pm for minister is enough. Then $50,000 is considered very good. But if time permits, the number can keep going up, $100k pm or maybe eventually $1 million pm. It is all relative and depends on human greed. No one is humble enough to ask how many bowls of super grade rice he can eat a day, or how many bungalows he can sleep in a night, or how many limousines he can drive at one time, or how many pretty lasses he can sleep with in one night. Hey, that reminds me of what Einstein said about limits. The difference between a genius and an idiot is that a genius knows his limits.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Clearly, there is no "fair" way to peg public sector salaries.

The Swiss, with their direct democracy system, came close:

when the state wants to spend any money, they have to go to the people to ask for it. The people vote on the amount to be paid to their government officials, and the reason is simple—because the TAX used to fund the salaries come directly from the people. In other words, the people decide how much tax they are willing to pay for their governance.

However, S'pore has long lost the Swiss model and now it's a fascist German model instead.

The other way of course is to privatise the whole island. The people who run it will thus be paid by the rate determined by the free market.

Anonymous said...

Singapore government promotes obscenity