A new amazing tooth

I woke up this morning to face a new tooth. It is splashed across the front page of the ST that $2.8 billion a year over the last 5 years 'to fund grants and top ups that benefitted all Singaporeans, especially the lower income.' And a typical lower income household received $136,000 worth of basic grants, which helped to build up their retirement savings! Now why am I feeling so poor. Maybe I don't qualify for the $136k of grant. That would make those who qualified richer than me, for I don't have $136k! Am I feeling shortchanged? And all those lower income households must be beaming a wide smile or they are secretly happy but not telling. And with so much money going to them, especially 'to build up their retirement savings' why is it that they did not have enough for retirement? Where is the money? Oh, sorry, this is a dangerous question to ask. Erase this question. Let me ask another question. If so much money have been spent for the benefit of the people, and the people could not feel it, could not appreciate it, then something is drastically wrong. It may be the method, the spread, or not publicising it enough in the media. The PR part is failing. I think a more simpler and effective way to make the people feel the generosity and the weight of the subsidies is to put the money directly into their pockets. Then they can feel the bulge, touch the money and smell the money. The people will kneel down and pray to the govt like god. Unfortunately so much money have been spent on them in a way that the people don't even know. It is a big wasted effort, and a big waste of money spent. You ungrateful people! But can't blame them. They are simple minded people that can't think and didn't know what is happening. They don't even know that they have received so much money.

Fascist thinking comes under the spot light

Thomas Koshy wrote a letter to ST highlighting the risk of a well meaning govt deciding to take away more money from the CPF because it thinks it is good for the people. If we do not question this and address it now, we will lose our CPF money in no time. We must stop this brazen thinking of deciding how to use our CPF money against our will. It is our money. It is not just a CPF fund.

Singapore needs more reserves

This is the view of Goh Khee Kuan who wrote to ST forum. In his view he felt that the current reserves will not be enough especially when the Artic ice melts. We need billions to built dykes to keep out the water. And more, if no ships come a calling, we need more reserves to develop new infrastructure and new businesses. He forgets to add what if a meteor strikes the island. We need to built a defence shield against the meteor strike. In the same kind of thinking, the CPF savings by the members are not enough. What happen if they are struck by life threatening illnesses and need to be hospitalised? The bills will come in hundreds of thousands. And the artic ice will mean that their lower floor flats may not be liveable. And inflation risk! They probably need to set aside something like a million each for year 2050. We need to plan for the future and save even more.

26,000 age 85 and above

This is a good piece of information. Now what we want to know is the breakdown by age group to give some idea of the spread and the probability of reaching 90 and beyond. It will also be very useful to know how many are destitutes and needed public assistance. The official figure of people under the public assistance scheme is only about 3000. Now this is way too small. If this number is true, then there is no real need for a compulsory annuity scheme for the whole population. It is too insignificant an amount to warrant such a massive exercise.

Phenomenal growth in population

We are now 4.68 million! Another 1.8 million and we are there, 6.5 million. Not bad. Think we can be there in two years. And we don't even feel the squeeze. Maybe 10 million is a reasonable target.