Thoughts on the Budget

Having listened to the Budget Speech in its entirety over the radio yesterday, I came away with the feeling that there was very little new thinking in it, apart from what I believe is a structural shift towards greater welfare spending, the latter being an acknowledgement of the inevitable reality of our aging population, the magnitude of which most Singaporeans seem to have yet to grasp.  The government appears to be giving what the people wants - more welfare.

While there were targeted measures to help the poorer segments of the population cope with inflation, nothing was done to address the fundamental causes such as the rapid growth in M3, reliance on real estate speculation to create the illusion of wealth and the impact of such speculation on rentals and other overhead costs for businesses.  Furthermore, I could not find anything in the Budget that was aimed at preparing the country for the energy transition that will be coming our way within the coming decade.  But on this point, I am less disappointed since the awareness of an energy crisis is not mainstream.

SDP's so-called Shadow Budget

Notwithstanding the above, I also found the SDP's attempt at gaining credibility rather amusing.  Based on what I saw on my Facebook news feed, SDP supporters were busy hailing its budget proposal as a breakthrough in thinking.  There were even claims that it must have caused considerable distress to and panic in the PAP government.  So I went to the SDP website to have a look, and came away thinking that SDP supporters must have been drinking too much of their own Kool-Aid, just as they have accused government supporters of the same.

The idea that “[o]ur re-prioritized spending is to benefit the people rather than the PAP” is nothing more than the stale idea of welfarism that has been practised in the West for the past 60 years.  There was absolutely nothing original in the SDP's shadow budget.

As much as the SDP harps on about the tyranny of the PAP government and how it will offer freedom, the fact that it has proposed a budget similar in size to the government's last budget show that the party has no understanding of the concept of freedom, since it feels that the need to maintain the power to allocate the people's wealth as it feels fit.

The idea of bio-fuels as an alternative industry shows that the SDP's energy literacy is very low.  If it had done a simple search on websites like theoildrum.com, it would have discovered that bio-fuels is a total waste of time.

Furthermore, its proposal to cut defence spending shows that its geopolitical sense is very poor, unable to see beyond the pleasant rhetoric of the diplomatic pronouncements of countries in our neighbourhood to discover all the undercurrents in foreign relations.

Paying you with your own money

The other irony in all these is that while the critics of the PAP government accuse it of using an 'election budget' to buy votes, opposition parties such as the SDP are basically doing the same thing with their emphasis on greater social welfare spending.  They should perhaps read 'The Law' by Frederic Bastiat to see the beam in their own eyes, rather than harping on the speck in the PAP's.

If you are interested in learning how politicians of all stripes strive to bribe you with your own money, I'd suggest reading this article: The Sad Road to Socialism.

Beware of politicians bearing gifts, especially dumb ones.  Otherwise, regardless of how much reserves we have, we will be voting ourselves into national bankruptcy in our love for welfare handouts.