Fiscal foolishness

Q: In order to address the problem of the widening income-gap and alleviating the financial pressures faced by the lower-income segment of the population, the Singapore Government will: (choose one of the following options)

A. Impose a minimum wage to strengthen financial security for low income workers. The current S$2.50 per hour that McDonalds pay for their service staff is too high by their standards and should be lowered a statutory mininum of S$1 or S$0.50 per hour to be more reasonable.

B. Draw on our massive reserves to providing benefits to the unemployed jobseekers, retrenched pensioners or disenfrancished elderly on a subsidence level and strengthen current legislative provisions to ensure that the increasingly aging or pregnant workers keep their jobs.

C. Increase the coverage of poverty outreach programmes that currently only applies to 1,900 eligible households since there may be more than 1,900 poor people in the whole of Singapore.

D. Providing free condoms to the needy to be able to enjoy legal oral and anal sex with other consenting adults (of the opposite gender).

E. None of the above. The Government will instead be increasing GST from 5% to 7%.

The correct answer is of course (E).



We're supposed to trust that the Singapore Government is using this measure to finance social assistance programmes with the reassurances that Singapore will not be a welfare state. The additional revenue appears not to be going toward (1) upgrading MRT trains (by reducing seats available), (2) investing in dubious and loss-making foreign companies, or (3) increasing minister salaries.



(Courtesy of My sketchbook)


Remember: Nobody gets left behind.


Guess the poor are just nobodies here in Singapore.