Good news to HDB owners

The tax department has confirmed that the annual value(AV) of their flats have gone up because the values of the flats have gone up and also, these flats can now fetch higher rentals. And the increases were very small given the huge increases in the resale prices of flats. Compare to increases in values of tens or hundreds of thousands, a hundred dollar increase is chicken feat really. I am sure all flat owners would not mind paying more taxes if their flats can be sold for a million or two. And good news for the smaller flat owners. They don't have to pay for the higher property tax. There is a one year rebate! Only the bigger flats need to pay, and the bigger the flats, the bigger the tax increases except for bigger executive flats. But the statisticians will have reasons to be argumentative when they look at the percentages of increases. A 3 rm flat will have to pay $72 more from $2.17. Now how many hundred percent increase is that? Every $2.17 is 100%. The number is too big for my calculator. A ball park number is like 3,600% increase! 4 rm flat will pay $97 more from $46.96. This is easily 200%! 5rm and executive flats have smaller increases of about 100%. I am not going to split hairs on these increases and why the smaller and obviously poorer flat owners should be hit with that kind of percentage increases. What I am looking at is that the majority of HDB flat owners are living in their own flats, their homes, not for letting and also there are many rules prohibiting them from renting their flats. The AV can shoot to the sky, but many HDB flat owners cannot benefit from them. No renting, cannot rent. Only those who need the money or those who have many properties can benefit from the high AVs. Why lump all HDB owners into the same category and make them pay higher taxes when the benefits of high AV is academic and perceived, unreal? For those who are waiting for the flats to hit $1m, no problem. Let the AV go higher. When the $1m target is rich, just sell and get out of the property ownership trap. Oops, 99 year property leasing trap to some.

Asian deference to power and authority

When I saw Obama bowing to the Emperor of Japan, I was kind of, 'What the hell is he doing?' Didn't he learnt from the same mistake when he bowed to the Saudi King? Didn't his advisors gave him a debriefing that being the President of the USA, he is first among all equals. No king or president is above him or on par with him. But he had to do it again. Many Asians would not notice the significance of that bow. But the Americans are incensed. Hey, the days of kings, dukes and princes are over. The concept of royalties or people who are more equal than others by birth is no longer acceptable, especially in republics, democracies and socialist/communist countries. The days of royalties will be a thing of the past in a matter time. However there are still Asians who are disturbed by the outburst of Americans at Obama. They find it perfectly respectful for a president to bow to a king. I think if the Queen of England or Prince Charles were to visit Singapore, many Singaporeans will willing and instinctively bow to them. For the commoners, maybe it is more a polite way to greet someone who is richer and more powerful than them. After all they are royalties, queens are beautiful, kings are clever and princes are charming. It is all written in the books of fairy tales and fables. In reality, many of these royalties can be quite idiotic or simply nasty creeps. Time has changed, and with universal suffrage, universal education, equality, the mindset of fairy tales should be cleansed in the education system. What is a king or prince if not of the inherited wealth and glory?

3 admissions of mistakes in a day - LKY

This is simply unbelieveable. For more than 45 years in power, there was no mistake. The record was a clean sheet of paper. Yesterday I heard it in the news that LKY admitted he made a mistake in the bilingual policy. Quite shocking news really. Today, reading the media reports, he actually admitted making 3 mistakes in a single day. Mistake number One, teaching the wrong way 'by insisting on ting xie(listening), moxie (dictation).' I will put it as spelling and dictation. Ting xie ie listening and writing, is spelling. Mistake number Two, 'insisting on bilingualism in the early years.' And mistake number Three, 'equating intelligence to language ability.'PS. Moxie is not dictation but writing from memory. Having realised his mistakes, he made it his lifetime pursuit to make it right. And he 'wasn't helped by the ministry officials, one English speaking, one Chinese speaking.' So he took on the task of thinking, on how to overcome this situation. He is no educationist, and he is also a very busy man. He thought through the problems and came out with more solutions. Finally he is putting them right. I can't imagine the consequences if he is not around to think through all the problems for Singaporeans. Why are there no other thinkers to complement this thinker in our country? Our country cannot depend on just one thinker to solve all our problems. The universities must start a course on thinking national issues and solving national problems.

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Geithner invites bloggers

NY Times: From Treasury, an Invitation to Financial Bloggers The Treasury Department opened its doors to economic bloggers this month, and the meeting was productive in at least one respect: as John Jansen of the blog Across the Curve concluded, “After meeting them, I feel I cannot refer to them as Timothy Geithner and his minions” anymore. Mr. Geithner, the Treasury secretary, was among the senior officials who talked with bloggers at an outreach session on Nov. 2. The two-hour round table was held on background, meaning that the bloggers could describe the sessions, but not attribute quotes to specific officials. Lengthy posts about financial system reforms — and the bloggers’ disagreements with the Treasury’s strategies — ensued. New-media scribes have gradually made their way inside most governmental institutions over the years, but the meeting was the first for bloggers at the Treasury. Tyler Cowen, an economics professor at George Mason University who has written at the Marginal Revolution blog for six years, said it was the first time he had heard from any Treasury official. The meeting “shows that the Obama administration is working very hard on outreach to a lot of different media sources,” he said. The Treasury invited about 20 bloggers. Eight attended — at their own expense — including some ardent critics of the department. Michael J. Panzner, who writes the Financial Armageddon blog, said the invitation “was totally out of the blue.” Andrew Williams, a spokesman for the Treasury who assembled the event, said that Mr. Geithner had “long valued the blogosphere” and mentioned that during Mr. Geithner’s tenure as the president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, he had requested a daily compendium of relevant blog posts. Another reason for the outreach, Mr. Williams said, is that the blogs are influential, especially because they are read by reporters at more traditional outlets. For the Treasury officials, it was a break from the ordinary, as well. “I think we were much better informed than the groups they’re used to talking to,” Mr. Cowen said, citing politicians who visit and “ask for the impossible.” Mr. Cowen, also a regular contributor to the Sunday Business section of The New York Times, said that one of the senior officials remarked that the bloggers were a “welcome change of pace.” Some of the bloggers were acutely aware of the effects of being welcomed inside “the brain trust,” as Steve Randy Waldman put it on the blog Interfluidity. “The mere invitation made me more favorably disposed to policy makers,” he wrote in his summary of the event, even though he abstained from eating any of the cookies at the meeting, “on principle.” The above article was posted in www.singaporeanskeptic.blogspot.com