Chris K: PAP MPs talked cock in budget debate about "sustainability" etc

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An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:

Remember in school days, that 1 or 2 classmates nodding off at the back of the class room? Suddenly woken with a jolt from the irate teacher … only to ask or say the wrong things?

This was what the writer thought when he perused MPs’ responses to Budget 2015. The main theme of the responses were worries over the good ship Singapore becoming a welfare state and yet more worries of spending the reserves. But the MPs’ speeches display an unsurprising lack of proportion and some were outright products of sheer ignorance.

Becoming a Welfare State

An example of MPs’ concerns of becoming welfare state can be read in speeches by Liang Eng Hwa (Holland-Bukit Timah GRC) and Jessica Tan (East Coast GRC). He questioned “Will we lose our economic dynamism and soon descend into the sorry state that some European countries presently find themselves in?” She cautioned against “a mindset of dependency where citizens come to expect a continued increase in expenditure”.

Here’s the question: are those European countries in the sorry state because of the welfare system? If so, then why is it that 13 European countries with even bigger welfare systems remained as competitive as and more prosperous than Singapore according to the Legatum Institute? The writer will be charitable and assume that Mr. Liang is ignorant rather than flogging half-truths dressed up as intelligent Parliamentary discourse.

Of more local relevance is this “danger” of a dependency mindset. Perhaps Mrs Lim should first consider how much, if any, mandatory social entitlements were received by Singaporeans even under the generosity of Budget 2015. Last year’s Pioneer Generation Package was headline grabbing $8b or 2% of GDP because it was expensed in the budget in a single year. But dispense in installments of $500m per annum over 20 years is only going to be 0.10% of GDP. This year’s much-trumpeted Silver Support Scheme is a mere drop in the ocean at $350m or, again 0.1% of GDP. A sense of dependency from such miserly crumbs? Remember these are discriminatory, not universal benefits.

Mind you, most of the other stuffs are one-offs rebates and top-ups which can and will be withdrawn at the sole discretion of the ruling government since they were not mandatory. To show the complete lack of proportion, the OECD data for social expenditures averaged 21.6% of GDP while Singapore, using the writer’s estimates 2% (no, not that 8% reported by the Business Times – they confused social development spending, e.g. constructions of roads, airports, facilities for social expenditures and transfers which under OECD definiton are direct and in-kind spending on individuals).

Spending the Reserves

25 MPs heroically rose to voice concerns over the budget shortfall and the application of the expected long term real rate of return rule to Temasek which will provide more revenues via the Net Investment Returns Contribution. And yet from the looks of it, many did not seem to know what they were pontificating about since none of them appeared to have done their homework.

For example, MP Tin Pei Ling wondered “Can we be certain that they (Temasek) will continue to perform well? Are we in danger of becoming overly- dependent on uncertain and unassured sources of revenue?”

Well if she did the minimum homework of reading the budget statements, she would see that over the years there had been a steady rise in the Net Investment Return Contribution despite reported poor returns from GIC and Temasek since 2009. Why so? It need not take a flaming genius to figure that the delivery of off-budget surpluses were so huge, the earnings from reserves increased despite poor returns.

No Truth Telling

The writer can go on but just to conclude, a couple of speeches told all one needed to know about the self-serving nature of Parliamentary discourse,
http://www.tremeritus.com/2015/03/09...ing-mps-speak/


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