Votre Coeur: Dollars and Sense

Dollars and Sense

Posted by Mastermind at 10:55 am

There's little much on the news and forum lately other than the fact that our top ranking politicians are planning a hefty pay rise (as much as 80%) for themselves and they (mass media minus internet) are trying means and ways to convince us that it is justified. Singapore Inc's CEO feel that he should be earning the same order of magnitude of money compared to the best of the best in other professions.

The same old arguments were thrown around to justify lining their pockets, including

1.) We need to attract and keep our best talents in politics by paying them millions of dollars
2.) We are "under paid" according to standards drawn out by us
3.) According to our research, we did exceptionally well in managing Singapore (Such as creating jobs for millions of people so we can employ over 1 million foreigners in Singapore while retraining Singaporeans to take up jobs at kopitiams or open their own barber shop.)
4.) "MINISTER Mentor Lee Kuan Yew called for a sense of proportion yesterday, pointing out that the annual wage bill for ministers and all office holders is $46 million - or just 0.022 per cent of Singapore's total economic output." - MM Lee (my favourite, extracted from Straits Times Interactive Online)

Naturally, there exists a counter argument to the official point of view, depending on whether you buy the newspaper's version or not.

1.) The best talents that people want for politics shouldn't work just for money, especially since they are earning millions to start with. They should work for the challenge of the job, to serve the nation and people etc...
2.) Singapore is one of the smallest nation by area and population yet our leaders are paid more than the leaders from USA, China, Japan, India and Russia (Combined?)
3.) Rising GST, increasing medical bills, skyrocketing university fees, strained relations with our neighbours, stagnant lower income wages and all time low birthrate despites all the baby bonus (well, at least some things cannot be solved by money), there's plenty of room for improvements too
4.) If the only figure that will dwarf our minister's pay is the nation's economic worth, then that's a perspective that is scary to me. By the way, going by our messiah Lee's formula, George Bush and his team must earn S$4.26 billion per year given the GDP of USA is more than 12 trillion USD.

The mindset of our country's leaders is another fine example reflecting the great divide between them and the man on the street. For an average Joe like me, 1 million dollars per year is an awful lot of money that many can't even imagine saving that much in our lifetime. There we have our elites telling average Joe they feel that they need an 80% increase in their pay from 1.2 million to 2.2 million a year otherwise they would refuse to work for the country. How insensitive can that be? Average Joes can't understand why our elites can't be satisfied with what they feel as an awful lot of money and now is asking for more? Besides, average Joe's salary rarely see a double digit increase in percentage at any point of time, now the elites are asking for 80%?

Intelligent observers would have pointed out that another old argument used by the politicians, that paying ministers by the millions will prevent corruption, is flawed because we have many examples of (almost) corruption free nations without the millions payout. Others look into the black and white to pick up the problems with the way our ministers are paid.

In a way, there is no denying that deep inside many Singaporean's heart, we feel that our leaders are just trying to bring home more taxpayer's money. They may be good at putting numbers in the news and maintaining economic growth for Singapore. But many of us are not touched nor inspired by our leaders actions. Our textbooks may tell our children of Singapore's "glorious history" about how PAP led the country into the modern era but parents will be telling legends on how political oppositions were "removed" and how our leaders insisted to be the most well paid politicians in the world (and yet wants to earn even more).

The dollars our ministers are chasing after, makes little sense.