I had wanted to note this in my blog for sometime but keep putting it off: the unjust legal-moral gap in our laws and regulations.
Apple hasn't cheated on taxes but how it planned and paid it taxes is making US law makers and the public see red. Over time the US government had responded to various forms of special interest pressure to craft the tax code to produce the one today. Like many MNCs, Apple just duly took advantage of all provisions which most in the present Zeigeist would call loopholes, and loopholes must be closed. Small firms are not positioned to enjoy them. It was just unfortunate that Apple has been singled out because they are the most successful. This is now starting to publicly begs the question: Where is the justice of it all? The whole arrangement stinks and looks immoral but completely LEGAL. Today there are countless laws and regulations that smell as bad. We have ours too and the most egregious is the GST. But I accept it not because it is fair but as recognition that we are price takers. We have failed to compete on innovation and superior value propositions, so the GST and other freebies to employers are just cutting prices in disguise. This government has decided to take the easy road because it is less risky to their performance and hence electoral security than the risky high road. We will never enjoy superior outcomes because they exist only as counterfactuals. Most people are not able to understand this and what voters cannot understand, government can get away. In fact I am also not being helpful to visiting readers either. I have failed to make myself clearer as that would take some planning and a more lengthy post. Good for you if you are following me thus far. Separately I would be explaining to my kids but with many words and examples.
One of the shrewdest remarks by any politician on the WP was made by LKY when he toured Aljunied GRC. I can't remember the exact words but he was basically warning voters about the nature and motives of WP contesting in the GRC. He might be off about Aljunied residents having five years to repent afterward but he could very well be right if WP forms the government some day. I can tell because I was looking for WP to bring up the courageous possibilities for Singapore which the PAP playing safe failed to entertain.
The PAP is at its best when the easy road is not available. From that we have our SAF, Bilingualism, exchange rate monetary policy, CPF, HDB, New Water etc., But if they could avoid risking it, they would and send delegations overseas to study what others have done (risk management 101) and adapt it back home. I am still waiting for WP to propose their moral equivalent of CPF, HDB, Bilingualism etc., when there is SEEMINGLY (i.e., there are) no pressure to do so. It is because we failed to continuously act with courage until our backs are against the wall that we ended up becoming a price cutter in order to stay competitive. Over time, like in America but not as perverse it shows up with regulations and laws that with wide legal-moral gaps. Laws and regulations become unjust favoring the desirable successful mobile people because they would otherwise make camp elsewhere. The burden on the majority of Singaporeans must keep getting heavier to keep this place attractive to the global rich, connected and talented until a brick wall in the shape of a backlash at the polls happen. Now a frightened PAP is trying to take back from Paul what it had earlier stolen from Peter.
Fortunately the global winds are reversing and what Apple and MNCs are facing in America and Europe could give us the needed respite, but I am guilty of gross over simplification. We just cannot survive against cheaper alternatives under the present global rules. Let this be a lesson to us to always avoid easy roads. We know we could be getting better when our laws become less hypocritical and more just provided they are also sustainable. We must narrow the legal-moral gaps.
We must always play fair but we must be even more shrewd than fair. And Hazel Poa from NSP gets it when she admonished us to "Never Fear". Of course this doesn't mean I have thrown my support behind them. No need to make up one's mind so quickly. Be open minded.
Why am I suddenly thinking about Section 377A? Because I am watching hypocrisy and looking for courage.
Update: 10:30pm
Some gung ho but repressed beyond their limits to bear bus captains went on strike a few months ago. It takes two fists to punch each other but the other more powerful side got away. Some of the striking bus drivers went to jail. Now what is the take away for the rest of us observing all these? Don't make trouble, don't bother with justice. Bear with it as it is only for a while. We do that in school, in NS and also at internships. If you are already working, you change jobs until you can't and may be you will develop some stress related chronic illness.
You can get away with all these if only a small number of people are affected, but those numbers have been growing. Now we have a problem with no easy solutions. We use the WP as a cane and not an alternative to the PAP. WP's Low is shrewd to publicly accept that role. It will win him support until he is ready to go to the next level.
Why are we in this situation? Because we have been selling ourselves cheap or looking at it from the economic point of view, cutting prices to remain in business or just to fatten profits - the latter will accelerate the wealth gap faster than you can narrow it. First we cut taxes to business and the rich and finally we depress the pay of workers and worsen the terms of employment. Oftentimes they get the boot. And it is all legal but starting to border on the immoral. They have started to redress this for the cleaning workers but there is a long way to go.
We are on the road which workers will if not already see the employment laws as unjust. No wonder NTUC chief Lim Swee Say is so unpopular.
Like 377A, they are afraid to touch the laws and regulations. Naive of them to think that they can get results talking softly without swinging a big stick. I know what the government retort would be. We all know. I also know how to respond but I am not telling yet. To them anytime is a good time. I know now is the wrong time, just as WP Low also know. Just as they knew when to reveal this ghost called AIM.
Update: May 27 12:55pm
The fight to get more tax money out of successful MNCs will continue. This is storming strong fortresses and unless there are easier pickings elsewhere, it will go on.
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