Of frugality, thrift and poison

In the MediaCorp tribute to Dr Goh Keng Swee broadcast over the its channels yesterday, three words stood out prominently to describe this giant of our founding fathers. He was known to all as an economist and steep in the values of thrift and frugality. He was saving cost everywhere and in everything, even in his own personal ways. He was said to prefer to walk several blocks to save a couple of dollars which people may find it amusing in a time when spending tens of thousands for a cooking class in Paris is just a weekend past time. Maybe the country had underpaid him at a time when money was not easy to earn. Maybe he too did not see it right to pay himself as much as he would want it to be. Maybe when he was around, extravagance was frown upon to the extent that permanent secretaries were spoken highly of for driving around in a small Japanese jalopy. That was the ethos of the years of Goh Keng Swee. He spoke about watching out for poison in investment and economic enterprises. Would he be worried looking at how we invited hedge funds and big investment banks to steam roll into our financial industry, adopting controversial systems that the Americans knew were dangerous and have started to curb these practices? Would he be angry with the poison that the people were fed in the forms of toxic notes and worthless papers called derivatives? Would he allow these to go on through repackaging and not called poison but something else, and let the people have it as long as they know the danger, that the danger is explained to them? With the passing of Goh Keng Swee, would we be bless with another careful thinker to guard our national interests and remove or keep poison out of our system? The unfortunate thing is that history does not throw up great men too often for the benefit of human beans. Often, after the passage of a blazing meteor it is followed by a long interval of darkness. Singapore has the exceptional good fortune of having a cluster of good men during its early years of independence. With the passing of Goh Keng Swee, we have yet to find another equally able and gifted group of individuals of their calibre to sustain our good run into the future.

Dr Goh Keng Swee

Dr Goh passed away this morning at the age of 91. He was famed for being the architect of Singapore and for laying a sound economic foundation that allowed Singapore to be what it is today. And many people now can claim credit when the tough part was done by Dr Goh and his generation of leaders. He was a great mover of people and resources. One minute silence for this grand old man of Singapore.

Paying more in advance

So the Medisave minimum sum will be raised from $32k to $37k. The reason, Singaporeans are living longer and healthcare cost are going up. So who wants to live longer? What this Medisave thing is about is that Singaporeans who are strong and healthy will have to pay first, to the amount of $37k. Whether they use it or not is a separate matter. Any statistics to say how many will use it? But this is a good policy. No one will know when they will fall seriously ill and need money to pay the expensive and ever increasing medical bill. I would like to recommend that the amount in the Medisave be raised to as high as possible. Then no one will complain that they cannot afford to pay their medical bills or that hospitalisation is too expensive. With a big saving in the Medisave, hospital bills will definitely be affordable. No need to worry about how medical cost keeps going up. Just make sure to top up the Medisave Account.

More kicking around

Asia Media Journal, 13 May 2010 Hong Kong – Singapore’s future as a regional media hub is under threat as a result of new government rules for the pay-TV industry, said the Cable & Satellite Broadcasting Association of Asia (CASBAA), which represents the interests of 130 content producers, pay-TV platform operators and equipment-and-service suppliers across 16 Asian markets. The above extracts showed how a stupid decision could snowball to bigger problems and requiring ever bigger intervention by the govt. And this thing is not going to stop and the international players are not going to say, 'Enough, let's move on.' Maybe the three telco should be merged into one to avoid more problems coming our way.

Before Utopia

The communist ideology talks about an utopia in the horizon waiting for the workers. All workers will be paid almost equally in that place where the fruits of labour will be equally shared by everyone, from the top to the bottom. But such an utopia will never happen given the fact that human beans are flawed and will never overcome the seduction of power and greed. What would happen before utopia was not explained in the communist bible. It just assumed that utopia will be next. We have seen how China and Russia and other communist states are progressing. What Marx could not imagine is that before utopia, the greed and power crazy communist leaders would have usurped power and wealth for their own benefits, and more shocking is that they will take to the path of capitalism. The worker leaders will still boast of their humble working class background, to give the impression that they were workers too, before. What they did not say is that they are now rich beyond the workers imagination. They have actually turned themselves into rich capitalists and landlords, the very people that the workers chopped their heads off during the revolution. Before utopia is capitalism where the capitalists and landlords will amass wealth and fortune as in a capitalist system. Income gap will continue to widen to a point of no return. And this will set the stage for another communist uprising and head chopping. And the cycle will go on and on. Utopia is only an ideal state that is never achieveable given the nature of humankind. Communism will lead to capitalism and capitalism to communism. It is a vicious cycle.