Overloading is dangerous and illegal

Our private cars have a legal limit on the number of passengers it can seat. Going above the approved number is illegal. The school buses or private buses, tour coaches, pickups and commercial vehicles too have a legal limit as well. And there is a very good reason for it other than graciousness. It is safety.
 
Often there were reports of ferries or boats sinking because of overloading. Our lorries and trucks also have loading limits and speed limits for safety reasons as well. Funny thing, why are public transport buses and MRT trains not having limits on the number of people they can carry on each bus or train carriage? Why are they allowed to squeeze as many passengers as they like into the cabins? And they have been suggestions to hire pushers to push more people into trains like it is the right thing to do.
 
Would overloading of public buses and trains affect the safety of the passengers? No? Not sure? What do you think?

Managing the people’s life savings

HDB prices are affordable based how the ability of the buyers to pay. Now the affordability is a couple’s monthly CPF contributions for the next 25 years. This means that whatever that goes into the CPF will go out the other way, to pay for the affordable HDB flat. The couple would likely to start to save a little 5 or 10 years after buying a flat when their incomes rise. How much savings could that be to go into their retirement account?
 
Then there is the Medisave Accounts to fill up and at current rate, more than $100k will have to be set aside as untouchable in the Medisave Minimum Sum Account. Technically there could be nothing left to be set aside for the Retirement account at least after the flat is fully paid in 25 years time.
By the age of 55 or 65 the CPF Life Scheme will kick in and whatever money left in the CPF would be compulsory acquired to pay for their retirement annuities. Luckily the Medisave Account is still untouched by any compulsory scheme, but not for long. The money in the Medisave Account will be compulsorily acquired too to pay for Medishield Life once the scheme is finalized.
The net effect of the two compulsory schemes means that the Govt has decided for you how your money must be spent. In the CPF Life which is an annuity scheme, there is still hope of getting something back if one lives long enough.
 
In the case of Medishield Life, it is paying and nothing is coming back except when one needs hospitalization or is seriously ill and provided the illness is covered by the scheme. Read the fine prints and the exclusion clauses carefully.
 
The Govt effectively has a hold on the CPF savings of its citizens through a monopoly public housing scheme that will feed on the savings of its citizens for the first 25 years and a CPF Life for the next 30 plus years. As for the Medishield Life, this is still work in progress and the payment into this scheme could come very early, maybe from the day one starts working and contributing to the CPF.
 
The best part, the Govt can decide as and when how much to raise the premiums and compel the people to pay. There is no opting out. Resistance is futile. You earn and save and the Govt will be the recipients in a way, helping you to spend your savings.
Your money is not your money anymore. The Govt knows how much you have and can afford to pay and the three items will effectively absorb practically every cent there is available or affordable with hardly anything left. This is a very efficient system to manage the people’s income/savings by the Govt, with compulsion, and the people are literally left with no choice of their own.
 
The Govt is caring for the people, to their last day and managing their last cent without having to ask the people for their consent. Our CPF savings are now absolutely safe with the Govt.

And one good thing, there would not be any more scheme to manage your CPF savings after this.There is nothing left to be managed anymore.

Economic suicide biggest threat to China

Economic suicide biggest threat to China

Global Times | 2013-8-14 19:28:01 By John Ross

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Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

China cannot be murdered, therefore it must be persuaded to commit suicide. This summarizes the geopolitical situation as seen by Western anti-China circles.

It encapsulates that China's national revival has now reached a point where no external forces are strong enough to prevent China's rise. The US remains militarily stronger, but China's strength is sufficient that US losses in a war would be so great even neoconservatives do not advocate it.

US authorities can try to murder Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, and possibly in the future Latin American countries, but China is too strong.

This does not mean Western anti-China circles have given up. If it is impossible to murder China, perhaps it may be possible to persuade it to commit suicide? This idea might appear ludicrous, but actually the US has already succeeded twice, with Japan and the USSR.

From the 1970s, confronted with dramatic Japanese economic growth, the US persuaded Japan to overvalue the yen, cut investment to slow growth, and implement ultra-low interest rates after the Wall Street crash in 1987, allowing Japan's capital to flow to the US and safeguarding the latter's financial system, while Japan itself suffered the "bubble economy" which exploded in 1990.

In the 1990s, the West persuaded the USSR not to follow China's successful economic reform, but to undertake "shock therapy" - total privatization of state companies.

The result was the greatest peacetime economic collapse seen in a major country in modern history. Russia's GDP fell by 40 percent, male life expectancy dropped by seven years, and Baltic and Central Asian independence movements destroyed the USSR, reducing Russia from leading a state of 288 million people to one with a 143 million population. Vladimir Putin accurately described this as "the greatest geopolitical disaster of the last century."

China is harder to persuade to commit suicide. Unlike Japan, it cannot be blackmailed via military dependence on the US. Unlike the USSR, China is not pursuing an economically adventurist policy of seeking military parity with the US on the basis of a GDP only 40 percent as large.

But the West understands its leverage points. Ordinary Chinese citizens are economically tied to their motherland, but the rich can take wealth abroad.

The fate of State-owned enterprises and many productive private companies is tied to China's economic revival, but some financial groups can get rich even amid chaos, while certain professionals can be offered jobs such as well-paid professorships at US universities.

Therefore, a comprador bourgeoisie exists with support among those Chinese professionals whose highest ambition would be a US green card. If China cannot be murdered, these may be used to persuade China to commit suicide by adopting policies damaging itself.

After experience with Japan and the USSR, the US government knows accurately which policies those are.

Investment is the most important factor in economic growth, so China's economy should be slowed by reducing investment, as was Japan's.

An overvalued currency slows an economy, so constant pressure should be exerted for the yuan's exchange rate to rise excessively.

China's State-owned companies are its economic core and key to its ability to calibrate macroeconomic policy, so they should be weakened or destroyed, as with the USSR.

Moreover, to attempt to conceal that China's rise in living standards is the fastest ever seen in a major country, billions of propaganda dollars should be spent exaggerating out of proportion every real problem inevitably arising in China's rapid development.

It is therefore to radically misunderstand the situation to imagine the biggest threat to China is US aircraft carriers in the Pacific.

The biggest threat to China is forces within it trying to persuade it to commit suicide by adopting policies inevitably derailing its national revival.

Such processes can easily be followed from outside China. But while murder involves another person, suicide is a personal decision. The world's most important question is whether China can be persuaded to commit suicide or not.

The author is former director of London's Economic and Business Policy and currently a senior fellow with Chongyang Institute, Renmin University of China. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn

Children need solution

It is bad to tell children all their faults and mistakes without telling them why and what they should do not to repeat their mistakes and to better themselves. Children do not often have the intellect to think out solutions and answers. Pointing out their mistakes would not make them become better. They are children after all and are at the bottom of the learning curve. Children need guidance and hand holding.
 
Adults are slightly different. Adults, even those who have average intelligence, are able to work out their problems without much difficulty unless it is beyond them. Just tell them where they have gone wrong, their mistakes, and that would be good enough for them to work things out in most cases, unless they are really dull or recalcitrant, refusing to change for the good.
 
Then there are very intelligent adults. Actually such intellects should know what they are doing and should not be making mistakes or simple mistakes or obvious mistakes or silly mistakes. Super talents are not called super talents for nothing. But being human, it is forgiveable that sometimes they do make mistakes, intentionally or unintentionally, or because of greed or vested interests or due to group think or whatever.
 
Mistakes or bad decisions are made by super talents now and then. And very likely they know what they are doing, that they are doing wrongs. The people, the cynics, the concerned citizens, often spent long hours trying to tell the super talents that some things are not right, not necessarily wrong. I think, given the fact that they are super talents, a little prompting should be more than adequate for them to work out better solutions. Is there really a need for the daft, the average and the not too talented to offer solutions to the super talents? If this is the case then something is seriously wrong. It is like those who can see asking the blind how to cross the road.
 
And why should the daft offer free solutions to those who are paid millions to do their jobs?
 
Often we heard from the super talents and the pretenders demanding the average Sinkies to not just complain, but to come out with solutions. Is this a reasonable expectation? Is it not enough to point out the faults, the flaws and the mistakes for the super talented to move on? They are super talents you know? Are the super talents expecting to be spoon fed by the daft? It is crazy, right?
 
The super talents should be very grateful that the daft are kpkb everyday about their daft policies and decisions. The only reason why they are not coming up with better solutions and demanding solutions from the daft is likely that they knew that the better solutions will not be what they want or what they think is right. The daft should not be patronizing to think they know better than the super talents. And the super talents should not act daft to demand the daft to offer their daft solutions.
 
As for the many pretenders, please, there is no need to be the spokespersons of the super talents to parrot and demand the daft to offer solutions instead of criticism. The criticisms are good enough for the super talents to pick up from there and come up with better solutions if the intention is there. Think about it.

Excuse me, take your hands off

Excuse me, take your hands off my money! It is a bad habit to dip your hand into other people’s piggy banks or savings to help yourself. Even if you are the govt, you have no damn right to do so. Tio boh? Even if you go to Parliament and vote to use my money, it is still ‘illegal’ and immoral. The Constitution, without even looking into it, must have provisions to protect the people from any one thinking he can help himself with the people’s private property, including money. And the savings of the people in the CPF, in the Medisave, belong to the people, the individuals who put them there as their savings for their retirement. Is there anyone with the audacity to decide how the money should be spent for the rightful owners?

Who is arrogant enough to think he can do what he likes with the people’s money without asking for their consent? This bad habit is now second nature, it seems. The Govt is now so bold as to think that it can suka suka take liberties of the people’s savings as if it is the owner of the money. How outrageous can it be?

Any constitutional lawyer or human rights lawyer could care to explain why this is so? Or does the whole legal profession believes or agrees that the Govt has all the right to do so and that is why no one is willing to stand up to be counted, to say otherwise? If that is the case, then I will take my words back and can understand why the Govt is doing so.

The Govt must know that it has the legal right to take the people’s savings to buy life insurance, medical insurance and even to keep it for the good of the people for as long as it deems fit. It must have been rightly advised that it can do so by the best legal minds in this island. Short of something similar to the Land Acquisition Act, the Govt’s action to use the people’s CPF savings is kinda like a de facto Savings Acquisition Act.

So silly of me. I shouldn’t have wasted my time writing this. If the legal profession does not think it as a wrong, no one in this city thinks it is wrong, then it must be right. I rest my case.

Excuse me, please do whatever you like with my savings, and feel free to do so anytime you feel convenient and the need to do so. You have the right to decide what to do with my savings and how to spend my savings for my own good.

Thank you very much. We are so bless with such a caring Govt.