The Moley Prophet

Singaporeans should know how our government stressed that it is important that the country remains free of deficits. Which we did. But how? How can a country which is so tiny, paying millions to its cabinet ministers, lossing tons of money in overseas investments be free of deficits?

The answer is of course, dig from the pockets of its own people. The government earns from every single thing it gives its people. Let me start with housing in Singapore. Something that the government is so proud of, having beaten down lots of other countries out there.

The Housing and Development Board is a statutory board of the Singapore government. And that says everything. Singapore government = PAP. Something which they have fought hard to defend. Even harder now. This is where the government earns its cash. Most Singaporeans are being drilled in the head to think that HDBs are being heavily subsidized by the government. Bullshit. How much does it cost to build an executive HDB unit? Have you guys asked? Have they answered properly? They just said, “We are heavily subsidizing them”. Nonsense. How much does it cost to build a unit, is the question. And I don’t think they answered it fully. I know what they will answer if we press them for it. The cost of building the unit including land costs! Land cost can be inflated! And anyway, the land is free for them. They don’t have to pay for the land. If you talk about opportunity costs, some of the land couldn’t even be sold! So how much is HDB exactly paying for each unit? Don’t know if I mentioned in my previous posts, but it costs only $80,000 for each executive size unit. I’m not coming up with this figure, I knew this contractor who built executive units for HDB before, and she told me that. A truly big cash cow that board is. Then there are all the nonsense conservative charges.

Lets go into cars. My favorite topic. We all know that cars in Singapore gets the world record for being the outrageously expensive. A Suzuki Liana can cost as low as 6,000 quids in UK. Thats a Japanese car mind you. Shipped all the way to UK. In Singapore, with that kind of money, I’m not sure if you could get a Proton or Perodua even on a weekend car license plate. These cars are made just over the causeway. And its the cheapoest car in the industry. After you get the car, there are lots of stuff to pay. Road tax, ERP, carpark charges, insurance, and the list goes on. Don’t forget the cost of gas in Singapore. Almost $2.00 a litre? People start grumbling when fuel prices in Malaysia go up by a few cents. And its so much cheaper for gas there! Still cheaper than Singapore! And here we pay road tax, COE, and ERP, but what is the condition of the roads here? Traffic jams everywhere. Road works for laying cables all the time. And after the road works, the roads are in a horrible state!

Into the cyperspace, we find that many of us share the same IP address as all of us go through a proxy at the ISP side. Thats a big problem for many of us but we are not discussing it today. The price of internet here is what we are concerned about! Over $80 for a 3500kbps connection? Outrageous! Even worse for corporate subscribers who are also using the same network. I don’t see any difference in speeds. 512kbps for $168? What nonsense. And there are the preposterous charges. Even schools in Singapore can’t afford to go for a better network. My alma mater is so poor that the whole school is linked to a 512kbps network. Pathetic.

All these government and government linked organizations are making tons of money from Singaporeans. Rental for my mother’s IMM shop is over $3,000 per month. That stupid pathetic small shop. And now they are expanding the number of shops while only increasing the carpark slightly. They have also installed the carpark sensors which are not working, this probably means that they are going to charge for carpark. My father thinks that the management is thinking that the charges will hopefully lower the demand. What crap. More shops but less shoppers. Its a killing I tell you.

If you just happen to be a passer by, please pass this message to your friends and tell them they have overpaid for most of the things that they own.