It is only 3%

I wonder how many of us remember the time when GST was first implemented in Singapore. It was 1 April 1994, yup April's fool, what jokers the gahmen was! At that time, income tax was decreased and doing the calculations back then, you could actually save money if you are not the type that eats at restaurants or buy expensive things often. Most people didn't kick up a full because, I think, our income tax was lowered quite a lot and the fact that we can have more in our savings. And through the mainstream media, we "believed" it was the best thing for us. It might have been back than.

Forward to this year (2007), tomorrow GST is further increased 2% to 7% with no decrease in our income tax or any other thing for that matter. Increase in GST, bus fares, hospital fees, housing, water, electricity... and we are suppose to save for our retirement! What a joke. And to add insult to injury, we have to retire later in order to save enough for retirement and CPF is decreased if we work pass the age of 55 (correct me if I'm wrong).

Do we still remember in 1994, the gahmen stated, it was only 3% now they say it is ONLY 2% more. The same way they stated that bus fares would increase only 2 cents in 2005. The same way their salary increase is ONLY "0.13% of the gahmen's total expenditure or 0.022% of Singapore's GDP" as stated by MM Lee (See They'll never listen will they news paper article) ("Only" seems to be a favourate word of our gahmen). I can bet you if we were give the same type of increase as our ministers (plus pensions, where appropriate) we would not complain about any hikes would we?