A perspective on the debate

It was marketed as an unedited debate between all the parties in Singapore. However, it was a little disappointing to me as all the issues and "solutions" that were raised are not new and were already reported previously.

The flow of the debate went off-tangent a few times, but from what I understood, it revolves around these issues:

• Cost of living
• Foreign workers vs locals
• Income gap

The issue of increasing cost of living is nothing new, but it was disappointing that the solutions raised during the debate is also not new. One of which is no GST for essential foodstuffs, and to implement tiering of GST. This has been mentioned quite a few times I believe.

Based on what I know, I have to agree that what I called the re-distribution of GST, as explained by the minister, is in the best interest for Singapore. Let's say you spend $15 a day on 3 meals. You'll spend about $5,475 in a year, which will result in $383.25 being paid for GST. The minimum growth dividends given for this year's budget will more than cover this GST amount if you have served NS. The U-Save & S&CC rebates more than cover the GST that was taken.

BUT... There is always a catch. What was not being said is that the re-distribution of GST to Singaporeans are not given out every year. The GST offset package that were announced in 2007 were only for a fixed period up to 2010. The highest payouts given at that time ($200) is not even sufficient to cover the simple example I have given above, except in 2009 where they doubled the GST credits given for that particular year. What we can see now is that the GST is used to increase the revenue for the government, not to offset rising cost of living.

I believe we all know that the GST together with all the other taxes collected, is a source of revenue for the government's expenditure. Currently, the re-distribution of GST is very dependent on the current government's budget allocation. It is not enshrined within the constitution that this must be done. Therefore, what the minister said will be true if and only if this GST re-distribution is a regular occurrence every year. What can be done is to fix a certain percentage of the GST revenue collected to be minimally re-distributed back to Singaporeans. This amount can be increased in special circumstances, subjected to approval of course.

I feel that this is much better than the GST tiering as it is an administrative nightmare to administer this kind of tiering, and guess who is doing the job? Definitely not the ministers.

The next issue is on the foreign workers. On paper, whatever the minister said during the debate is correct. If you look at the structure of how the permits are issued, you will realise that it is in a way, providing a minimum wage for locals (you must pay at least $x to hire a foreign worker, subjected to quotas). The key word is of course, on paper. I believe that all of us who frequent the hawker centres, shops, etc will not even know that a quota or permit is being imposed because we see foreign workers everywhere.

Therefore, the current permit system as explained by the minister, will be ideal if it is enforced. That's the only reason I can think of on the discrepancy between what is being said, and what we are seeing. Somehow, there is a loophole that some businesses are exploiting to get around this "work permit" for foreigners. A review should be done to plug these gaps.

To further protect the locals, there should also be a mandate by MOM that makes it mandatory for all job advertisements to indicate the salary that they are willing to pay.

Whenever someone is hired, a projection should have been done if the company can afford to hire this person for at least a year. Therefore, this number should have been available in the first place. Mandating this in all job advertisements will have several benefits:

1. The government will be able to keep track of the indicative salaries to determine if the work permit policies are working.
2. Employees will know what they are signing up for and will save everyone's time in the job hiring process for employers and employees.
3. Increase competition for talent that will hopefully lead to an increase of our median income, and give employees incentives to upgrade themselves. This will also in a way address the growing income gap.

In other countries, it is actually quite possible that the base salaries of the CEOs (eg Japan Airlines) is lesser than some of the employees because it is recognised that direction is of no use if you do not have the people to execute it. Sadly, this is not practiced here. The income gap will be here to stay if the focus is on the profit generated for the bosses.

All in all, this election will be interesting. Let's see if all of us are given the chance to vote.