Thursday, May 04, 2006
/8:24 am
I'm getting sick of hearing people complain about CPF, national reserves and a whole slew of other issues that are indeed worth looking into, but all approached from the wrong direction.
Certainly there is no perfect system and I am guilty myself of grousing whenever 20% of my 1K pay disappeared, but just how many people have enough financial sense to keep money for a rainy day? The CPF system lacks the flexibility to allow those who really need the money (for let's say, medical expenses, since what good is tens of thousands in CPF going to do you when you're dead), but that's not justification to scrap the system - it's something to work on. If we switch away from the pension system of CPF to the wealth redistribution (or wealth levelling or wealth transfer) system of Social Security, there are going to be complaints again.
And of course the government can give you every single cent in the national reserves, better still, don't collect taxes from you. And where is the money from public works going to come from? And what happens when the fragile economy faces a financial disaster?
And taxes. Income tax rates are low enough. GST still can't compare to sales tax in some other countries.
Ultimately, it's very easy to complain as always. It's very easy to point to somewhere else and say 'We have it worse than them'. The grass on the other side is always greener. If we were happy with everything, this wouldn't be Singapore. It'd be Utopia.
0 had their say | have yours?
Thursday, May 04, 2006
/8:24 am
I'm getting sick of hearing people complain about CPF, national reserves and a whole slew of other issues that are indeed worth looking into, but all approached from the wrong direction.
Certainly there is no perfect system and I am guilty myself of grousing whenever 20% of my 1K pay disappeared, but just how many people have enough financial sense to keep money for a rainy day? The CPF system lacks the flexibility to allow those who really need the money (for let's say, medical expenses, since what good is tens of thousands in CPF going to do you when you're dead), but that's not justification to scrap the system - it's something to work on. If we switch away from the pension system of CPF to the wealth redistribution (or wealth levelling or wealth transfer) system of Social Security, there are going to be complaints again.
And of course the government can give you every single cent in the national reserves, better still, don't collect taxes from you. And where is the money from public works going to come from? And what happens when the fragile economy faces a financial disaster?
And taxes. Income tax rates are low enough. GST still can't compare to sales tax in some other countries.
Ultimately, it's very easy to complain as always. It's very easy to point to somewhere else and say 'We have it worse than them'. The grass on the other side is always greener. If we were happy with everything, this wouldn't be Singapore. It'd be Utopia.
0 had their say | have yours?
