4/28/2012

Bill Gates does not need a pay rise



After the shocking therapy of Prof Lim Chong Yah and the expected knee jerk defensive mechanism and reaction from you know who, the labour chief said today that the high cost of inflation and high cost of living mean that there is a need to raise the income of workers. It is good that he finally came to know of the problem. He also added that the high income gap must be closed.

Now that the dust has settled down, the good sense and propriety of the real pain are sinking in. The retort against raising salary of the lower income group and the need for a closing of the widening income is indeed a problem that cannot be allowed to run away without a leash.

Rhetoric and political expediency aside, some of the elite truly believe that the bread of the rich should be buttered 3 or 4 times over as they are deserving of the buttering because of their supreme talent. On the downside, the losers deserve to be losers and they should count themselves lucky that their bread is even buttered at all. Count the blessing that they still have bread to eat.

Such line of thinking coming from those who have no responsibility over the whole of the population is understandable. The private emterprises and developers would choose to maximise profits at all cost as they are not in the business of charity. But if they come from the political leaders, it is irresponsible and obnoxious. Political leaders is not there to look after self interest, to protect elitist interest but to spread the goodies, ensure a more equal distribution of wealth and social equality to the people, but not to the extent of all men are equal and all should receive one bowl of rice.

Bill Gates does not need another pay rise. He has so much money that he has to give them away. And so is his pal Warren Buffett. There is no need to reach such a position to distance oneself from the accumulation of wealth. No one is frowning against an entrepreneur or a businessman from acquiring his wealth forever. What is objectionable is to spread public wealth through public offices to those who are bursting at the seams with more wealth. A very good but disgusting example was to raise the President’s salary to $4m when the masses did not think it was justifiable, nor the office justifies that kind of pay. But the existing god in power is always right and would have the final say. It is right today but would be very wrong when the next god comes into power.

Distribution of public money must be measured to serve the majority, to benefit more people than a few yodas who have so much and do not have much time or the need to spend them. This sickness is infected across the industries in the private sector when the top few would grab the lion’s share while the rest, minority shareholders and workers were left with crumbs.

And it is this kind of unequal and unjust system of wealth distribution that is causing the runaway inflation. No amount of small increases at the bottom can catch up with this kind of distortion in the system. In a pure capitalist and elitist system this is cause for celebration, and eventually cause for destruction. Is this what we want, a system where a few elite could buy tens of private properties and tens of luxury cars and with plenty to buy more while living on public money or feeding on the minority shareholders’ money?

And once in a while, when it is politically opportune, to cry for the poor workers, to shout, pay rise for the workers? May Day is around the corner.  

Prof Lim Chong Yah is absolutely right. He must have seen the greed and the amassing of unjustifiable and unnecessary wealth by a few at the expense of the greater good. What is so painful for a few years without pay even if one is not Bill Gates or Warren Buffett when one can live a few life times without having the need to earn a single cent?

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Bill Gates does not need pay rise because he is too embarrassed with too much hell money already.

Anonymous said...

Talent is over rated. If you continue to buy into that crap, you deserve to go round the bush over and over again.

Ⓜatilah $ingapura⚠️ said...

No commercial business is in existence to be "selfless" . You people are fucking nuts if you think that it is a "duty" for private, profit-driven enterprise to serve "everyone". No person, group, political movement,government or enterprise can serve "everyone" -- it is simply impossible.

Business serves its customers. No customers, No profit no business, no point.

Have you ever heard of a business MINIMISING profits?

Don't be a ridiculous ass redbean!

Talent IS overrated. Do you know what is underrated by the blur-blobs who think they wrote the book on "how to pay people"?

PRODUCTIVITY.

Singapore used to kick ass because it was a super-productive place.

But lately because of the "world owes me a living" entitlement junkies, negative attitude assholes, Singapore has slipped in the productivity game.

Anonymous said...

Businesses do not serve customers. Businesses serve money THEN customers - vast difference.

If they serve customers things would have been different.

Lastly, productivity in the economic sense is another word for suicide.

Anonymous said...

A prophetic quote from the new Batman movie "The Dark Knight Rises"?
A warning to Singapore's elite?

"There's a storm coming, Mr. Wayne. You and your friends better batten down the hatches, because when it hits, you're all gonna wonder how you ever thought you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us."
Catwoman/Anne Hathaway to Bruce Wayne/Christian Bale

Ⓜatilah $ingapura⚠️ said...

JUSTICE works when you get paid what you are worth. If you can do better than the competition, and you get paid more, that's JUSTICE.

If you get paid more, that would make you "unequal" to others. But you can do better than what they can...so you, naturally, as expected, earn more than them...and the "inequality gap" becomes bigger, because you're getting better, and more people are preferring you over "the others".

When JUSTICE is working properly in the marketplace, you can expect INEQUALITY.

So get off your lazy asses and improve ;-)

Anonymous said...

You belong to the baby boomers generation when advancement was much slower and the distribution of wealth much equitable. But things have plateau or the inequality has become to wide and for the younger generation to survive in an environment of exponential growth and fast changing events is much harder.

Easy for you to fart when you have benefited before growth mushroomed. Third world nations today will face more social problems than when we ride the wave of growth of yesteryears

Chua Chin Leng aka redbean said...

Matilah does not believe in anything except himself and his own self interest. He has no country and no loyalty, no obligation to anyone except to himself. He can be like Nero. The whole Singapore can sink and he will play his fiddle and enjoy the spectacle.

This is another way to live life and to hell with everyone.

Anonymous said...

i wonder, when pay was being lowered, if people were allowed to do less, take less responsibility - ie be less 'productive' - or were expected to do the same or even more work or put in longer hours.

i wonder how people could be more productive when their increments are a very small fraction of the much larger protis that they help their company reap.

i wonder why CEOs who fail get a Huge goodby payoff.

i wonder how much ministers' and the president's productivity - real productivity, not just GDP figs - rose when their pay soared. how much extra did they actually do?

i wonder how the govt is going about getting back from its MPs, ministers and president all that extra pay they received before their new, slightly lower wage scale kicked in. through instalment, one-off payments, some other way?

i wonder if these people have returned the money they owe and when they did this. and where the money went.

Anonymous said...

Matilah Singapore is a man of the jungle, however, he studies science. And science as partly explained by Darwin is that the fittest survives while the weakest dies naturally. And the not so weak has to be put out by the stronget one.
Lola.....

patriot

Ⓜatilah $ingapura⚠️ said...

Darwin's theory is commonly misinterpreted -- like patriot has just done...in his case, he is being humorous, so I'll give him a pass.

Humans are different from all the other species because they can adapt and learn in ways no other known species yet can. To explain further would take too much time .. I have a massage by a 20-something Korean student due in 30 mins ...

Anyway...back to "human flexibility"...an example:

If you lose a limb, there is a good chance you'll get an artificial replacement (made by humans) and be taught to adapt your mobility and life. That's how wonderful humans are: THE WEAKEST are able to survive quite well.

Time for my hot kimchi...

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