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.

Singaporeans Are Whiners

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry (啼笑皆非) when I saw the following post on REACH Singapore's Facebook page:

Suggestion to school to review their policy to adopt to recent climate changes.

Today I witness outside the primary school:
1. student perform duty in walkway, was caught in rain.
2. students stay in HDB block to wait for rain stop and go to school late.
3. security at school gate leave on dot and those late had to walk to school drive in gate under rain.
4. security not able to react fast enough to open gates when the rain pour suddenly.
5. thunder voice hear from school gate when rain pour suddenly.

I believe the parents need support from the school too and wish to suggests:
1. find out the way to limit the expose to rain when students on duty.
2. take consideration of recent climate changes and have the security stay in duty long enough to takecare those might be late.
3. open the gate when the sky turn dark, so that parents can send their kids to school without get caught in rain.

Going to the extent of asking the government to protect people from inclement weather really takes the cake. I was very much tempted to reply to the author that perhaps we ought to ensure that the SAF issue our kids with umbrellas when they enlist, so that they won't get wet during field exercises.

Freedom and asking for protection from the Nanny State are fundamentally incompatible political arrangements. Unfortunately, many Singaporeans who demand more freedom from the PAP government's control in the same breath will ask that same government to help fix their problems. This is not political maturity - it's more like a bunch of spoilt kids throwing tantrums when things don't go their way.

These are days when preparedness advocates like me feel that we are spitting into a tornado.

Be on Guard Against the Welfare State

In recent years, I have noticed that Singaporean bloggers who write about politics in a manner critical of the government also show a tendency to support increased government spending on welfare transfer payments. There is a similar tendency amongst the opposition parties such as the Reform Party and the Singapore Democratic Party.

That there should be such support of a welfare state amongst Singaporeans at a time when such a system is on the brink of fiscal and social collapse in the US, Europe and Japan is somewhat disheartening to me, a symptom perhaps of a lack of understanding and critical, independent thinking. The underlying premise amongst welfare state supporters such as the Reform Party appears to be that we are smart enough to avoid the pitfalls of the West. Being Singaporean, I think we are not smarter or dumber than the rest of the people in the world, and given similar economic incentive structures, we will exhibit the same kind of bad behaviour that has made welfare states the failures that they are.

As this is not the place to enter into a serious discussion about the ills of the welfare state, let me introduce to you the writings of American blogger Charles Hugh Smith and his oftwominds blog. Charles has done a very extensive analysis of the social ills plaguing the US currently, and I was actually inspired to write this blog post because of his article entitled The Normalization of Sociopathology in America. In this article, he gives examples of how being honest and hardworking actually means being financially worse off in the welfare state.

Now, I am not against helping other people who get into trouble through no fault of their own (I grew up very near the poverty line myself). However, instead of showing the typical Singaporean 'the government should take care of this problem' mentality, we should perhaps ask ourselves this - why can't I do something about the poor myself? As an advocate of preparedness and self-reliance, I believe that the government's role should not move beyond setting the rules so that we the citizens can use our own money to the best of our own judgement, and spend that money on welfare causes that we personally deem are worthy. There should not be a need for the government to act as the middlemen between us and the poor, deciding for us what is good or bad. Working through voluntary welfare organisations is, to my mind, a far superior way of helping the poor than through a likely rule-based, impersonal government bureaucracy.