What if?

The Americans and the West are furious that the Myanmese military junta beat up the peaceful protestors, used tear gas and bullets on them. And they are calling for a regime change, saying that the junta is unfit to run the country. Now what if Chee Soon Juan is able to gather a couple of hundreds of people in a public and peaceful protest and forces the police to use the baton and other means of physical force? Would the Americans and the West also call for a regime change? It would be tricky.

EPF outperformed CPF

Read in many blogs that EPF is outperforming our CPF, at least in the interest they are paying. 6% or 6.5% is a lot over a 30 or 50 year period compares to 2.5 or 4%. Compounding them, it is easily 150% to 200% more than what we are getting from our CPF. We must send our ministers to KL to learn from them. Then we can give our CPF members a better return. And if the answer is 'if they are so good, take the CPF and put it there lah,' I will. But don't just talk only and don't mean it. Don't worry about a depreciating ringgit if the money is to be spent within Malaysia and for retirement. It appreciates or increase in value actually.

Balancing greed and passion

I left the civil service because I was paid pittance. How could a bread winner stay on a job that could not provide sufficiently for his family? That should be the basis for consideration in the compensation of a job, especially a higher level job or the equivalent of the Admin Service. At that time, I was told, the head of PSC believed that people should serve in the civil service with passion, a duty to the country. Pay should not be the main draw. Within two years after I left the civil service the pay was revised, and revised and revised. Today, the civil servants are getting a pay no less attractive than the private sector. And many good men were retained to serve in the capacity of public servants. And probably many of these good men will be saying to themselves, am I being over paid? Should there be a question of passion to serve? It is tricky to balance between passion and pay. How much pay is too much? How low pay will dismiss the passion in a man/woman to serve when he is not able to provide his dependants with a decent and comfortable life? This is a million dollar question best left to those who are paid in millions to decide.

Political Justice or Injustice

Singapore is being attacked internationally on two fronts. At the UN, Singaporeans were viciously attacked for their integrity by fictitious charges only to be vindicated later. But that is not the end. In the case of Andrew Toh, they are now accusing Singapore of using its weight to stop the funding of Procurement Task Force which was where Andrew served his term. And in Indonesia, Temasek is found guilty of violating Indonesia's anti monopoly act. So Temasek would now have to spend time and money defending its position in probably a kangaroo court. The verdict of both cases will not be determined by facts but by political expediency. The political force of the day will be the final judge of whether Singapore is guilty or not guilty. This has always been the principles of political justice. There is no absolute right or wrong. The one in power decides who is right and who is wrong.

Illusion of payrise

High inflation Major cause: Restructuring Strong currency cannot offset domestic pressures on prices. DBS analysis. Oct 8, 2007 Singapore exchange rate policy struggles with inflation Commentary by DBS Group Research (source: The Edge daily) SINGAPORE’s CPI inflation hit a 12-year high of 2.6% year on year (y-o-y) in July. While this was partially due to a two percentage point hike in the GST in July, some structural changes in the economy are also at play. Apart from imported inflation, which can be addressed with the exchange rate policy, much of the current inflationary pressure stems from domestic sources. Plainly, exchange rate policy is not very effective in dealing with domestically driven inflation. Policymakers will need to utilise non-monetary policies to complement the exchange rate policy if inflation is to be kept in check. The above is part of an article posted in littlespeck.com. What is actually affecting the people today is that their income is shrinking. Yes, they are getting a huge pay cut without knowing it. And to maintain their same purchasing power, a huge pay rise is necessary just to go back to square on. The illusion of huge pay rise is as good as watching David Copperfield and his magic show. It is all an illusion. There is no pay rise for those who got a pay rise, except those who got a very substantial payrise. Those who got little or no payrise is getting a paycut.