Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Ministers pay suggest what we are

Political  history is  made today from something very simple: Ministers Pay.

Mr. Brown was on the money when he said, "No one cares about your pay cuts if you don't solve their problems". This reminded me more brutally what Hitler said to his generals,

“If you win, you need not have to explain...If you lose, you should not be there to explain!”

Hitler was an evil man and no role model, but on this he got it right. For a while, until Hitler made some fatal mistakes, the German military machine was formidable and unstoppable. It was achieving the impossible.

Our present conditions are not revolutionary conditions. Normal life is more complicated. You need to balance, which is the PAP favorite way to view any issue. So the PM asked a bunch of wise people had to figure out how to pay our political leaders. They came up with a formula, which is obviously more politically acceptable than the one before. This will naturally get more support than the old formula, but there will always be some who are not happy. For the people to be truly happy, you must out perform like the Old Guard had. Of course, this is asking for the impossible. The times of our lives define its risks and opportunities. We are not back to 1965 circumstances.

Actually I don't care how political leaders are paid as much as what it says about their values and the people's values. I just can't helped thinking that we are have been and continue to be commercial in the way we select and keep them. We are reducing everything to a commercial transaction but pretending that it isn't. This hypocrisy will return to haunt us.

Where are the political ideals? There must always be ideals for us to aspire to, values to guide and help us choose. If we don't have them, we will eventually become a failed nation.

As we have placed the cart before the horse, we must naturally find it hard to agree and be happy with how to pay our leaders.

Americans want to be free, the Chinese want to be proud but I think we only want to stay in business and have a better living. Good grief! Everyone wants a better living, but that is only the baseline. We are breathing but not living. No wonder survey after survey suggest that we are so unhappy.

Since money is indispensable to fund a better living, so our political leaders must receive the highest salaries in the whole world. That pretty much sums up how philistine we are.

1 comment:

  1. You logic is flawed for the following reasons:
    1. It is the PAP govt which made it this way. It started virtually on a clean slate - the majority of Singaporeans were with the govt because the govt were for the people. The trouble started when the PAP started to DEVIATE from its original manifesto and objectives for no other reasons than personal greed and aggrandizement. The means turned into ends in themselves because the govt has abandon its original compact with Singaporeans. The pursuit of a good life and a minimum standard of living for Singaporeans from all walks of life perishes with the govt's ambition to shine for its own sake in the world stage.

    There is a fundamental difference between a govt whose objective is to build up its resources in order to provide a good level of economic well being, health care and security for the people and one which accumulated huge amount of wealth at the expense of the people's economic well being in terms of basics like housing cost, health care cost and general cost of living.

    The state's coffers is bursting at the seams with virtually untold and unaccounted for riches while the people, irrespective of economic standing, are taxed and made to pay sometimes hefty prices for even everyday essentials. The poor and struggling are not spared as even basic necessities are subject to tat (GST).

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