9/10/2012
Of prudence, prudence and prudence
This funny word seems to be appearing more often on the lips of people in authority. Prudence is taking on the image of a good word. It used to be a good word to the old and wise. Prudence or being not wasteful, careful in words and money, not extravagance, is an old value of goodness.
Prudence can be practiced by the govt, by organizations and by individuals. Prudence in the layman’s view is not overspending, or spending within one’s means. Extravagance is just the opposite, spending beyond one’s means, spending without a care of tomorrow or spending every cent one has.
How is this word prudence being practiced here? Are the govt’s policies based on prudence? Is the govt extravagant, encourages over spending instead of prudence in its own spending and in policies dictating to the people to over spend, or to be prudent?
Think of hospitalization and mean testing? Are they policies of prudence or extravagance? I think they are of extravagance than prudence. Any disagree?
Similarly, housing policies, despite all the crap calls about affordability and buying within your means, it is all about extravagance, buying at max with what one has in the CPF or according to one’s income. See the hypocrisy? The pricing of public housing cannot be prudence, and the income ceilings dictating one to buy more and more expensive flats according to one’s income, are all about extravagance.
Prudence, anyone talking about prudence? If prudence was the intent and purpose, why are people now finding that they savings are not enough for retirement? It must be the result of extravagant spending. It cannot be otherwise. If the people are prudent in their spending, they must have a lot of savings for retirement. What has gone wrong? Prudence? Yes it must be prudence that has gone wrong.
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13 comments:
throw that word back to them when they talk about increasing their million dollar pay again.
It is only prudent to have more Opposition MPs in parliament.
To carry out a National Conversation on an on-going basis in the parliament.
An ad hoc, crisis instigated, national CONversation does not inspire.
PM and Minister of Education had spoken. Before the conversation can start, walls had already been built to define the boundaries. Why bother to talk.
PM and Minister of Education had spoken. Before the conversation can start, walls had already been built to define the boundaries. Why bother to talk.
The problem is not high property price per se. Its high property price relative to income. As a rule of thumb, reasonable house price should be 2x family annual income. Anything greater than 6x family income is considered bubble.
Today, given a median income of Singaporeans around 3K (young people are much lower), a HDB flat can go up to 1 million, 30x our income. And most HDB flat are priced at 10x or 20x median income of citizens.
The evil of such system is that it forces couple to work and has few or no babies. So PAP deliberately create the fertility problem.
And worse, HDB actually transfer financial risk to couple. Today many couples take 30 years loan to pay for a roof. What happen if they got sick, got fired, interest rate rise, parent got sick, children got congential diesease...etc within these 30 years?
Clowns like Mah Bow Tan can only come and harp "live within our means"...etc
'Live within our means."
And truth is, we can't afford these Leeders anymore.
Time for a regime change.
Prudence is spending $2,200 on each bicycle when the same can be bought for $128. Han Fook Kwang even attempt to legitimize this prudence by looking at the total life-cycle cost. Without even having 5-year guarantee for the cheaper bike, I can confidently say that the total life-cycle cost will still be lower for the cheaper bikes. Assume that the Brompton bike can last 10 years each, and assume that the cheaper version can only last 1 year. Over a 10-year cycle, the Brompton will cost $2,200 whereas the cheaper bike will cost $1,280. Moreover, I am sure the cheaper bike can be used for more than 1 year.
Prudence is buying $600 chair for civil servants' backsides. And they have the cheek to say that the old chairs were already more than 10 years old. Just shooting themselves in their behinds. By saying that, they are confirming that the old cheap furniture can also last very long.
Prudence is paying yourself more than the combined salary of President/PM/Chancellor of USA, UK, Japan, Germany and France.
Prudence means getting a govt at a price the people can afford and value for money.
What is politics and social control without throwing around "weasel words".
Afterall, when was the last time the word "prudence" was used in political speech?
Everyone order one of these, carry it around and use it whenever you see a Straits Times or any SPH publication lying around.
You want national conversation, then you'd better be quick to call BULLSHIT! to the fuckers who fancy themselves as "the authority".
Got temper?
In the Money World, prudence is no good for GDP.
What prudence with the kind of numbers of foreigners flooding our shore and the price of housing? and the price we pay for the things that are luxuries to many people?
I so love anon@10.10's comment.
As for prudence, i am wondering redbean if we are a tad late in being prudent. We have certainly been most imprudent regarding the number of foreigners in this country, and the short space of time in which they were shovelled in.
Definitely, we have been imprudent in not having the infrastructure to accomodate all the extra people. Heck, it would have cost us a lot less to have built the stuff back then, when the invasion began.
There are some recent purchases which will certainly raise the eyebrows of the truly prudent. Like those $8million dinosaur bones. Like those $2million/yr pandas who need an $8.6million home (and we haven't even mentioned the cost of the land it is on yet!).
I see the billion $ Gardens by the Bay - which cost $53million a year (now) to upkeep - as helluva imprudent. Especially when the govt is removing the country's forests, which cost Nothing to upkeep.
(BTW, if electricity and water is rationed, will it be seen as more prudent to let the pandas and hothouse plants get it before people you reckon?)
How about the encouragement to sell your home en bloc the moment it is built? I guess its prudent to waste all the materials and time in blding it. And the constant destruction of old landmarks, even as you're told to relate to this place as home?
I guess its prudent to go about developing this place as a global city, with all the many probs this entails, rather than as a country.
And I'm sure its so totally prudent to trade in the delicate social fabric of a country that has taken years to carefully weave, for a few million $ and a scheme for growth at all costs.
The govt needs to add another P word to its vocabulary - priceless. Because that is what some things are. Because money cannot buy these things. Only the utterly crass can't see this and cannot diffrentiate.
Prudent was not in the minds of the Trojans when they opened the gate to welcome the wooden Horse.
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