More Fables of PKR's buku jingga - 2

"Stagnant nominal salaries have crippled the rakyat’s purchasing power, many find it difficult to deal with the rising cost of living." Source Buku jingga

Rafizi may have identified the pain point but can they fix the problem? Let's read about their vision on disposable income.

Basic math can tell you that if 53.6% of workforce in Malaysia works in the service industry. Naturally with increase of labour cost it will increase the price for individuals who would like to use the services.

Think about the services you use, for example your childcare, the security guards in your housing estate, the ground maintenance guy, the mechanic who will repair your car. Think about the price of your food in warung as the warung tries to cope with the naik gaji of their staff. It is good that we are sharing wealth but to claim that it gives you more disposable income is false.

Every organisation who faces higher labour cost will be transferring the cost to you, the rakyat. You will actually be worse off economically.

For a better Malaysia??

What we should ask from our government is to take Malaysia to the next level, a truly fantastic government would be investing in innovation that can help increase in the purchasing power not one that try to keep heads out of water.

For example investing in our automobile industry making it greener, our public transportation and interstate connnection, investing in our farming industry to create self sustainable food that reduce need for imports, investing in our telecommunication system to make it less necessary for people to travel for work.

All of which would mean that with the right networking tools, we can live remotely and work internationally, We can developed less developed areas, commuting town to build more affordable houses, shops and other infrastructure in less congested area. This will create more jobs, less traffic or concentration in one area, reducing accidents, pollutions and increasing work life balance. That’s how what we are doing here in Europe.

My frustration with PKR is their plans are to actually counter everything of the above with their mansuh plans, if you like to know more about this, you can read their matlamat penting 2012.

Free Education?

Rafizi's plan to for free education is merely sweet offering because he fails to take into account the expenditure per head in his calculations, instead he calculates per spending ability. Sometimes this is of course required by government but in this case, I don't think it is appropriate. Further comparing it to MRT expanditure is ridiculous, not to mention he got the numbers wrong.

For example investment in MRT would actually benefits more people per ringgit per head in comparison to free education per head. It is actually unfair for people who have no children having to take responsibility of other people's children, while their parents can now spend the money on something else, like a luxurious wedding for their kids!

It’s even more unfair when we all know this offering is not sustainable, so you will pay for somebody else kid to get free education, but by the time your kid grow up, the scheme lapse.

I would prefer a government who will invest in bring this to a higher quality students who can help rebuild the country to be a richer nation.

PKR didn’t stop there, in this book they made more promises on salary scheme to promote free education that is illogical to be implemented.

“Implement a salary scheme with a fair and comprehensive assessment system for teachers which will be on par with that of engineers, accountants and doctors. This is our firm commitment to establish a quality education system” source buku jingga

As an accountants I know it's illogical because accountants have a charged-out rates, depending on their experience this rate can varies. You cannot standardize these pay systems to teachers. Accountants pays depends upon the economics of the transactions and its risks hence it varies.

Similarly for doctors they too have varying rates depending on experience and hours they worked. The risk and the details of education a doctor goes through are just very different level to teachers. Doctors job are riskier since they deal with saving lives and lets not forget they put themself at risk too, because dealing with all sorts of disease in comparison a teacher it just a different profession altogether, hence it is illogical that doctors should get at par compensation to a teacher.

In any case PKR will not be able to regulate public sector on this salary, the market will not allow them to. So I suspect Rafizi plans to do this to government staff.

So what does that mean to us?

If education is fully state funded, it means that government cannot be paying high prices given that the government will be earning less under PKR policies.
 

So, govt. accountant and doctors will be paid less or have less chance of progressing on to higher pay, like their counter parts in public sector. They are being achored to a teacher's pay.

Naturally this will cause an outflow of talents out of government organisation to Public sector. All good doctors and accountants that can get jobs elsewhere will leave.

So, while the initial intention is to have firm commitment from teachers, they lose good candidates in the medical and economic field.

Consequently, rakyat who wants better medical now would need to access private hospitals for treatment. Government also would need to use private agencies for high accounting skills. As these are costly, it impacts rakyat’s disposable income. This is what we call math and logic taking serious hit!

If the director of strategy with that impressive bio cannot see this cause and effect, then what hope does Malaysia have under PKR?

Be a responsible voter, do your research.

Thank you.


If you're interested in Bawani KS questions on Free Education...read here...
http://bicaraheartku.blogspot.se/2013/04/free-education-bavani-vs-sh-zohra-jabeen.html