New kinds of entrepreneurship

While touting is raising its head among taxi drivers, don't blame them entirely. It is a way of living, to earn that extra $2 to feed the rising cost of living. Look at it positively, it is entrepreneurship. Not everyone has millions of dollars in their war chests to fight in the big league. The small guys have their own turfs to play with. Look around the kopitiams and MRT stations and you will notice a new kind of buzz. More entrepreneurial people are setting up shops, as buskers and beggars. Very lucrative and low capital. Tax free also. These different kinds of talents need an outlet to earn a living. Can't just dump them behind bars. Too costly. And they need to survive in this very costly city. The GST of 7% is eating into their bones. Shall we support such entrepreneurship? Shall we give them a chance to earn a few dollars?

PSLE, communication gap?

Tan Yap Kwang, Executive Director of the Singapore Examinations and Assessment Board replied to the recent furore on the difficult PSLE Maths Paper. What he was saying was that there was no difference between this year and last year's paper. The questions were set from a blueprint by experienced teachers and examiners. I tend to agree with his comments. The only possibility, if there is an increase in difficulty, is for someone to try out something new. Given the constant change in policies recently, this cannot be ruled out. Otherwise, given the regularity of the examinations over the years, they are unlikely to err too far away. From a different angle, some parents may feel that their children are geniuses and are expected to get 100 marks. And some will see anything less than 100% correct as bad. What may be of concern is to set too high a level of difficulty that frightens or stresses out the young minds. But if this was explained to them in advance and they know what to expect, then it should not be an issue. The children and parents must expect some of the questions to be beyond them. Is there a communication gap?

Greed in Corporate America

80% of the public, including 2/3 of the CEOs interviewed, agreed that the salaries of American CEOs were too high. Only 2.2% said it was too low. Understandable. The high salaries of American CEOs have been going on for too long. It is the worst kind of robbery, robbing minority shareholders of their real worth and the latter cannot do anything about it. What they need to do is to sack all of them across America and pay half of their existing salaries to the next in line or those young and eager beavers to take over. Corporate theft in the American style has been going on even in our squeaky clean island. And they did it all legally and legitimately by getting the boards to pass all the resolutions to grant them more shares, bonuses and higher pay. Oh, they will not call this robbery but legitimate rewards for their talents.

How much do you pay for your water?

1 Cu M is $1.17 Waterborne fee is 30c Water conservation tax is 30% of $1.17 GST is 7% The final cost to a user is $1.948 per Cu M. Cost, is it still 3c? How much is processing and administrative cost? Water conservation tax is 35c. GST is 8.2c. Total tax is 43.2c.

Good acts and good intentions

When too much goodness turns bad. That is how mankind will eventually destroy itself. That is how Singapore too will follow the same road. Today we praise the great achievements of medicine and technology to extend life. We live with great hope and exciting anticipation of life at 100. Thanks to our high standard and quality of life and health system. All these means one thing. We are defying nature, the law of nature in self renewal. Nature must wear. Nothing is forever and must not be kept forever. By extending life, apparently a good thing, we are creating more stress to our system. All these lives must be supported. They consumed energy, space and resources. Can our system take it? The world is dying, as they say. Climate change due to a growing population that only consume and destroy the earth's resources. How many people can the earth sustain before it finds it unbearable anymore? The world will not be able to cope with an incessant increase in population. Man has lengthen the self renewal process of life. And the world is fighting back. Natural disasters are sweeping across the earth to destroy what it cannot afford to sustain. We as a small country, will face the same fate as the earth when we over populate our island and burst at the seams. That is how we will end up if we keep on gourging ourselves. The success and big strides forward will quicken our own demise.