Basket.

Today's article justifying the GST hike has only left me more mystified than before. Our leaders gave some baffling assertions which I simply cannot wrap my mind around, and which seem to defy the laws of both basic economic theory and plain common sense.

For instance, exempting GST on essential items is "not the most effective way" to help low-income families, because "the bulk of their funds is not spent on essentials". "The better-off will save more because they spend more on these items." I am not able to comprehend this reasoning. Even if the bulk of their funds are not spent on essentials, will it not still help them out in some considerable fashion if the cost of these essentials, such as foodstuff, was reduced permanently? So the most effective way of helping these poor is not actually reducing costs and thus the amount of money lower-income families have to spend on getting their everyday goods, but giving them paltry one-off increases and an ethereal financial safety net? Am I missing something here?

In addition, better-off families spend more, thus they will save more? This does not square with Engel's Law, which states that as income rises, percentage of income spent on essentials such as food will fall. The better-off thus spend a smaller percentage of their income on basic essentials, although they might spend a larger amount of money in absolute terms. Either the government is being woefully unaware of basic economic theory here, or they are hoping to get away with statistical sleigh-of-hand. Lies, damn lies, and statistics, anyone?

Mr Tharman also stated that 14 percent of lower-income families' budgets are spent on essential items like oil, rice and uncooked food, with one-third going towards housing, education and healthcare, which have no GST. And thus, in his own words,

"So you can have low or zero rate GST for this 14 percent, but the rest of their expenditure, as a result, will be at a higher rate."

Again, I am baffled. Why does one automatically result in the other? Why would a low or zero rate GST on essential items instantly trigger increased spending by lower-income families on housing, education and healthcare? What is the correlation? Or is he implying... that the government will be forced to tax healthcare, education and housing in order to raise the additional revenue it absolutely must have? Otherwise I do not see how decreased spending on essential items will result in higher spending on housing, education and healthcare. Again, am I missing something here?

Mr Tharman next points out that it is difficult for the government to determine what are essential items, and what are not. An argument that makes more sense, at last. But is the august minister honestly suggesting that our bureaucrats are incapable of making arbitrary classifications based upon rigid set standards without providential clarification? Why, I believe they have more than enough experience in that sphere, because they certainly have no problem doing it both with movie ratings and NSF postings. When it comes to really helping the people (as opposed to "protecting" them), it seems that things have a nasty tendency of becoming impossibly difficult.

As such, I am wholly unconvinced by the government's latest attempt to justify raising the prices of everything we need. I believe their explanations lack conviction and betray a poor understanding of basic economics. If anyone can take the government's stand and point out to me any error of my ways, you are more than welcome to do so.

Below that transcript, on the same page, came a suggestion that money can be saved by paring the number of generals in the SAF. It was declared, in response, that every dollar spent on defence was worth it. Anyone who has ever done National Service will have an exceedingly hard time believing this, and anyone who has ever done NS will also have an exceedingly hard time believing that anyone can say this with a straight face. Because seriously, there is a fuckload of wastage in there - the most glaring example being the vast amounts of food wasted in the hundreds of cookhouses around the island every day.

Anyway, I suppose they can keep the generals - what the SAF has too many of is not generals, but warrant officers. I believe a lot of people can agree with me here. Seriously I've met more utterly worthless warrant officers than I can count. Usually they're just sitting around, waiting for retirement... and drawing thousands in taxpayers money every month. It's a bloody scandal. Every NSF, everyone who has served NS is bound to know at least a few of these worthless oafs. For example, my previous unit had one warrant officer who was superb at offloading his work onto much lower-paid NSFs, brilliant at stealing newspapers and food from the SAF (the former to sell, the latter to, I don't know, eat?) and absolutely top-notch at utilising the free office telephone to make lengthy personal phone calls. In other words, he never did much more than report for work daily, read the newspapers and then keep them, have long personal telephone conversations and deflect any work that somehow landed on his desk. All for something like four thousand dollars of taxpayers' money a month. Fucking hell, sack the bugger already. Take every single fucking warrant officer, look hard at what they actually do, and it can probably be found that 99% are useless bloodsuckers who ought to be thrown out onto the streets - at a cost savings of literally tens of millions for the Singaporean taxpayer.

Seriously, 3G army? Fuck that. What a bloated, useless force. If you even want to start heading in that direction, start actually behaving like a responsible public organisation and get rid of all the goddamn deadweight. Then maybe you'll find tax hikes are completely unnecessary, after all.