Sunday, April 15, 2007
there are many things we cannot afford to be apathetic about and that includes our dear ministers' pay rise. there's so much brouhaha about it.
"wah how can like that? they have so much money already leh!"
"the GAH-MENT is taking our money!!!"
Ok, so the (main) reasons for pay rise, according to PM Lee are:
1) To prevent corruption
2) To retain talents in the civil service
Alrights, the first reason for a pay rise is to prevent corruption. i have misgivings about such a stance. look at durai. he was paid well in nkf but he was still greedy (ie corrupted). come on, big bathrooms and gold taps?! this man is incorrigible! thus it proves that having a high pay doesn't necessarily stop the greed of man. but then again, perhaps,a competitive pay could do the bare minimum of resisting corruption. actually, i'm pretty divided over this reason the State gives.
ok, moving on, the second reason... the government needs to retain talents that can help spur and run the economy that's worth a few hundred billion dollars. minister teo chee hean argued that ministers are paid according to the heavy responsibilites they have to handle to keep the economy booming.
ya, so all you care about is the economy booming.
if we are paying for talents, can you give us a talent who can ensure there is less income disparity in singapore?
rather than have only ministers who can help us have a bigger economy, can we also have ministers who can ensure income distribution is fair ? in other words, the poor do not get poorer.
this is a pressing problem in the force of globalization. ministers and officials cannot afford to be busy earning more and more capital and then neglect the poor and desolate. a restless and dissatisfied society can be detrimental too. look at paris' ghetto chaos - you see youths living in the outskirts of the city burning cars in resentment and the city's image suffered.
if they can stabilize the Gini coefficient (a tool to measure income distribution with a scale of 0 to 1 - 0 being the most equal distribution) at around 0.2, it would be excellent.
show me this talent.if they can produce fair income distribution, their pay, to me, would be justified.
*****
phew i finally have the time to say a big hello to all of you in my blog!
i havent been updating my blog because i was sick. down with a persistent evil flu for a week and i only feel better this morning.
i watched a wind instrumentental concert at esplanade's concert hall today. FREE. FREE. haha!
and the music's good with the likes of medleys from beauty and the beast, the little mermaid, prince of egypt and spirited away. brings back fond memories of me watching walt disney movies.
most of my childhood is made up of walt disney stuff. my mom would buy cassette tapes that recite walt disney stories and i would MEMORIZE and read out the stories just like the voice in the tape. young children always have a lot of time to do such stuff, i guess.
i am now preparing for my end year exams and this marks The END of me being a freshie. yay!!!
Life is short, especially when i am in varsity.
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