Friday, December 10, 2010

Gambling With Your House

The Macmillan dictionary defines subsidy as "an amount of money that the government or another organization pays to help to reduce the cost of a product or service". The closest one can get Mah Bow Tan to admit HDB housing is not subsidised is his contribution today:
"In contrast (to market based pricing), a cost-based system means that the same price would be charged for different flats in the same project, regardless of the location, floor, direction, and other attributes." Just as Clinton once asked his questioner to "define is", Mah is challenging you to "define cost".

Mah is trying again, in his nefarious scheming agenda, to muddy a basic concept. A unit on the 12th floor obviously requires longer piping runs and wiring conduits to reach than one on the 2nd floor - these engineering and construction costs can be accounted for without nebulous conjecture. But he factors in subjective elements like "an unblocked view". How does one value an unfettered view of towering concrete blocks versus, say, a maze of MRT tracks?

Further confirmation of his warped logic is evidenced in his statement that "the subsidy must be set relative to market values". That's as good as the NKF definition of subsidy, as exposed by the KPMG investigation team:
6.11.1 The NKF reported in its Investment Report 2004 that it enabled its patients to save in excess of $3.5 million in treatment costs by providing subisdies for costly medication and by bringing down drug prices.

6.11.2 We found that the amount of such savings was derived from the difference between the prices charged by NKF and a notional market price of drugs based on estimated annual consumption in 2004 instead of the difference between the prices charged by the NKF and the actual prices of drugs paid by the NKF. These savings were reflected in invoices given to patients.

6.11.4 As mentioned above, the market price was a notional market price determined by the NKF. The NKF, being a substantial and significant purchased, enjoyed subsidies and rebates from its drug suppliers. Instead of passing these costs savings to its kidney patients, we found that the NKF charged its patients a premium for certain drugs.

"In my understanding of NKF's view, subsidy must be tested against the market rate and not the net amount incurred." Doesn't that sound remarkably like Mah's sermonising?

Mah's pathetic defence of his Singapore Sales strategy (mark up first, then discount down) is his "basic principle" that the HDB flat is an asset that grows in value, to be realised in the future for resale in the open market. In other words, basic accommodation is not meant to be the roof over one's head, it is just another poker chip in their grand scheme of things. That, of course, is consistent with his boss' stubborn plans to build, not one, but two humongous gambling dens, despite widespread public outrage and inevitable social detriment.

9 comments:

  1. Please lah...

    MBT is trying his "very" best to save his "skin"...anyway...even he loses at the polling station in GE...it is irrelevant...the PAP will just put him somewhere else...be it GIC/Temasek Holdings/GLC...you named it...they will put him somewhere...

    And don't be surprise this self serving no conscience pig of an idiot will continue his parasitical ways of getting more "public" money to "survive on"....how much is enough for these parasites...obviously not enough...

    The irony here in the greed to get so much finite stuff...the infinte is lost...future generations will pay for the excesses of the past and current generations...

    Saying sorry to these future generations or making corrections to self serving but idiotic take and take everything policies/plans will be far too late...

    hmmm...it is okay anyway...the elites and MBT future generations will be "suffering" too..albeit maybe lesser...but i can gurantee when man becomes extinct within 50 years...the elites and MBT future generations will be dying from lack of non-contaminated portable water, rising sea levels, multiple extinctions of many lower order but critical life forms and a half dying earth at that time too...

    We have idiots in charge. Who doesn't truely feel and understand a hostile universe out there that can't wait to make man-kind extinct...and here we have "idiots" making it sooooo easy for the hostile universe to remove man-kind just like that effortlessly...

    And LKY mentioned "intellectual" class is needed...so far his idea of the "intellectual" class are contributing quite a bit amongst the various other overseas elite and super-rich to the ultimate fall of man-kind and their future porgeny.

    LOL.

    I do not hate or envy the elite or the so called "intellectual" class...i disdain them because they can only see as far as their dicks and narrow-minded world view.

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  2. The millions Mah Bow Tan received from just his last term in office is already enough for him to retire on, not counting the (peanuts) pension he is getting on hitting 55.

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  3. To use subsidy purportedly instead of discount which was not only appropriate and proper, it shows that Singaporeans are subjected to misinformation, misapplication, mislead, misquote and other abuses.

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  4. As long as the press remains under state control, we will be continuously bombarded by state propaganda and misinformation.

    Even online websites like yahoo FTP are being controlled by government. And government is trying to shutdown TR.

    It remains to be seen what extreme measures the government will adopt to rein in the internet during the next GE.

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  5. The Minister again reminded us of a huge deficit because of the housing subsidy. Until and unless we see the actual real facts and figures, I do not think for a moment that he is still lying to us.

    For all we know, he could have added all the salaries of all the Ministers and dumped it in as part of the costs. Or for argument's sake, he could have added in the whole operating costs of the Housing Board to prop up the deficit and forget to include the commercial revenue of the commercial properties that the Housing Board is managing.

    Again, the devil is in the details. As nobody is revealing any actual figures, they will still have the upper hand to continue to lie to us, isn't it ? Minister, if you are not lying, then what is so difficult in giving us the actual real numbers ?

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  6. Just to add :

    Lest we forgot, the operating costs of the Housing Board or any Ministry for that matter, are provided in a yearly budget and they are provided to fulfil the specific needs of the people. They form part of the national building costs similar like our defence budget.

    And I seriously think that NONE of such costs should be factored in as part of the Housing Subsidy DEFICIT that they keep reminding us. Otherwise there will be no end as to what costs will contribute to such a deficit, isn't it Minister ?

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  7. In most countries, state housing is used to provide housing for the lower income group. In Singapore however, it has turn into a profit making venture with many cashing out upon reaching the 5 year limit. It is only natural that the government want to have a piece of the action. Another social experiment gone wrong. So much for farsighted scholars.

    ReplyDelete
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