They'll never listen will they?

MM Lee today spoke up about the pay hike and using the same old (over played) reasons of it. Yes, we know we need "top talent" to lead the country (of course it depends on what "top talent" really means). Yes, we know that Singapore cannot afford to slide ever, or we'll never crawl up again. Yes, the PAP is the best gahmen on the face of this planet. Yes, the ministers sacrifice a lot to "serve" our country therefore we must compensate them...

We all know the tune. We all can sing it before the first note is even played.

The problem is this, the people are not fed-up or angry about the pay hike per se, they are pissed that there was so much controversy in the GST hike and "workfare" for the people. It would seems that just to get a $30 increase for the poorest people in Singapore, there was such a huge debate about not becoming a "welfare" state (which by the way, in the PAP dictionary is a vulgar word, welfare I mean not state). and it was a miserable $30. And yet, here we have MM stating the increase in ministers' salary is only "0.13% of the gahmen's total expenditure or 0.022% of Singapore's GDP" (Singapore's 2005 GDP $110.6 billion, not sure if it is SGD or USD but I'll use SGD). This means that ministers' salary is $2.4 billion a year (I don't think this takes their pension into account).

$2.4 billion, 0.022% of GDP. How many percent of our GDP is used to help the bottom 10% of the population? Why is it helping people who are in the runt is such a terrible thing and yet giving ministers a $1 million increase is okay? Why is this, that is so wrong morally and goes against Confucius teachings is acceptable in Singapore but really not acceptable to other first world countries?

And the way the ministers put it, we, the peons, have no part to play in the building of Singapore into what it is today. It is all through the blood and sweat (and don't forget sacrifices) of the gahmen only. We, the peons, just sat back and twiddled our thumbs.

Further reads :-
Where’s the check and balance in deciding minsterial salary?
Singapore's 'fat cat' ministers to get fatter
Paternal Nanny: Justifications and the Perpetuation of Paternalism


Today
05 April 2007

A QUESTION OF DOLLARS AND SENSE
-------------------------------
MM Lee: 'Sense of proportion' needed over ministers' pay

Lee U-Wen
u-wen@mediacorp.com.sg

TAKE a step back and look at the bigger picture, as Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew would have Singaporeans do.

To an average family earning, say, $1,500 a month, a minister's annual salary - $1.2 million at entry level - might seem "astronomical".

But what if that paycheque comes with the responsibility for running a $210-billion economy?

Here is another comparison to put things into perspective. Political appointment-holders - from parliamentary secretaries to ministers - take
home $46 million in total a year.

A mind-boggling sum? But it makes up just 0.13 per cent of total Government expenditure, or 0.022 per cent of Singapore's Gross Domestic Product.

On the other hand, if this $46 million was cut to, say, $26 million, the country would save $20 million - but at the risk of jeopardising people's jobs, homes, assets and security.

Speaking for the first time on the issue since Defence Minister Teo Chee Hean last month raised the need for a pay revision, Mr Lee warned of the risk of talented Singaporeans shying away from the public sector, and a disastrous "revolving door" style of government where its top leaders step down every five years.

A country's strong foundation, he said, has to be built on people that stay in the job long enough to gain sufficient experience and become capable ministers.

"This is a system we worked out, it is above board, it's working. If you are going to quarrel about $46 million - up or down another $10 to $20 million - I say you don't have a sense of proportion," he said.

He added: "The cure for all this talk is a really good dose of incompetent government."

Mr Lee - who mooted the idea of formal private sector benchmarks for ministerial salaries in January 1994 - made these comments to the Singapore media in Sydney yesterday, ahead of the civil service pay review in Parliament on Monday.

Noting that his own annual income of $2.7 million was a "fraction" of what the top manager in the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation earns, he said: "For people like me in Government, to deal with the money which we have accumulated by the sweat of our brow over the last 40 years, you have to pay the market rate - or the man will up the stakes and join Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers or Goldman Sachs.

"You would have an incompetent man and you would have lost money by the billions."

Asked if political leaders should be ready to sacrifice for the good of the people, the Minister Mentor called it an admirable sentiment.

But he highlighted the difficulty of persuading private sector achievers to sacrifice their lucrative salaries to join politics, "with no guarantee of success". He cited how Manpower Minister Ng Eng Hen, a successful cancer surgeon earning $4.5 million, gave up private practice in 2001 for a job that paid $600,000.

Dr Balaji Sadasivan, now Senior Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, and for Information, Communication and the Arts, was a top neurosurgeon "who took a chance".

Said Mr Lee: "When he was not made a minister in the selection process, (then-Prime Minister) Goh Chok Tong asked if he would like to go back to private practice. He said: 'No, I will do this.'"

Moving on to examples from the sports world, the Minister Mentor spoke of how top tennis players and famous footballers such as Ronaldo and Zinedine Zidane were paid handsomely for their talent. That, he said, was the key to producing champions.

"It's a competitive world in which we live, and if we can't compete we are not going to live well," he said.