LIFT : Of conscription and employment

OK, so I haven't been updating my blog, much less the LIFT series. But hey, I was bogged down down by school work and the exams are just round the corner. Anyway, I was surfing a local forum, well, not exactly local; it's hosted in the States but the content is largely local. Anyway, as I was saying, I was surfing this forum when I came across this interesting thread that featured the LIFT below.















The letter cannot be really classified as a LIFT per se, for I agreed wholeheartedly with the letter writer. Still, the letter serve no purpose, other than to allow the Ministry of Defence to come up with a nicely template-d reply to drive home its message regarding the "importance of national security". This letter will also serve as a nice target board for other "patriotic" male citizens - who firmly believes in the institution of conscription - to practise their rebuttal skills. Since he is about to receive an onslaught of not-so-friendly replies, I think I will skip my own reply. Oh... How I pity the letter writer. I shall keep a close eye on the forum pages in the days to come and post any new developments.

Oh yes. As you can see from the print screen capture, I'm using the latest Firefox 2.0 complete with the Adblock Plus extension. Man, it works like a charm. No more annoying ads ever appearing on the web pages that I browse. Try it and chances are, you will like it too.

The mandatory two years of conscription was (and still is) a waste of time. Sure, I learnt some useful skills but more often than not, it's basically being pushed around by superiors who treat me worse than the stuff you find at the bottom of your shoes. In fact, the entire conscription stint can be compressed into, say, 6 months or less. Just lessons to operate the rifles and basic fieldcraft will suffice. Things like marching around in parade squares, going on lengthy simulated exercises, dunking of one's head into a bucket of water and other stuff that generally don't contribute to the effectiveness as an soldier can be be safely omitted.

Since I'll be graduating and entering the labour market soon, the issue mentioned by the letter writer concerns me too. Gravely. I wonder, how many interviewers will give me a scowl or condescending smile, when I declare myself to be combat fit and liable for reservist duty? Perhaps I should migrate to a better place, specifically, somewhere where I can enjoy the similar benefits as a citizen but without the thankless task of defending the country.

Oh yes, speaking of "thankless", let me list down some examples:
1. My female contemporaries have a two year headstart over me, while I slog thanklessly in the Army. While it is true that males get higher starting pay, I think it is less than sufficient to offset the headstart.

2. National Service is not an one-off affair; it's life-long, until I reach 40 years old or I finish my reservist cycle, whichever comes first. So, while I attend the reservist training thanklessly, my colleagues will have a joyful time supplanting me and taking over my pet projects. I will come back from the training to see the smug smirks on their faces and that can't be too encouraging when I all physically exhausted and mentally drained.

3. I do have some perks though, for my efforts. One of which is of course the vague notion that the place where I live in will be defended by similar men like me: dispirited and disenchanted. Then again, we have a Gurkha contingent here, whom I have absolute faith in. I mean, we pay them quite a bit to do their jobs, right? So, logically, they should be doing their jobs right. And who can forget the tax relief that all NSmen enjoy? A measly SGD3000 per annum is all I get for my efforts and that's provided I go for the reservist trainings. Otherwise, it is just SGD1500. If that isn't thankless, I don't know what to call it. When I face the potential risk of losing my job while attending the reservist training, the carrot of tax relief is really nothing. I mean, without a job, I have no income. When I have no income, does it matter if my tax relief is 3000 or 3000 000?

4. While I'm still in conscription, I think I'm not paid according to market rate. My pay is roughly equivalent to that of a construction worker, my thankless job scope is twice of his and yet my freedom is a quarter of his. Going by the Equity Theory, it is obvious that I'll feel immensely inequitable. To add salt to injury, I entered conscription with a diploma. With that, I could have easily been making at least SGD1400 a month in the private sector. Am I compensated for the loss in income? Now, do you know why so many conscripts are so disillusioned and unmotivated? Apparently, the SAF went against the wisdom of the good ol' Herzberg Two Factor Theory (not by me; by this psychologist, Frederick Irving Herzberg) and no prizes for guessing who's the winner.

Well, I guess that's pretty enough for now. There's a lot more examples that I can quote but I think you get my point. Sigh... Such is the thankless life of a physically fit Singaporean male. Resign to fate? Nah, I think I'll work out a way somehow.

After a long day... Shit happens

Finally, I'm done with most of my school work. Projects and presentations. How long has it been since I wrote here? Weeks, I guess. Oh, I tried out the Blogger Beta. Doesn't seemed to be any difference, except that my Gmail is displayed at the top as I'm blogging now.

The presentations went pretty OK, both the Organizational Effectiveness and the Business Strategy Policy. The former was reasonably well done, considering the fact that we did only last minute rehearsal and co-ordination. We got put down quite badly by the tutor but no problem there. After all, his comments served to remind us of the points we missed and we have 10 days to fix the final report. Oh yeah, I got 76/100 for the test two weeks ago. I think it sucks as I preferred to see at least an eight in the tens place. Then again, compared to the average of 63, I'm way better.

Speaking of report, the report on Nelson Mandela turned out to be pretty thick, 30 odd pages in all. As a result, I had to split the report into 2 sections so that I could stapled the pages together. Then I got a friend to buy me a folder, with which I put the two sections together. The folder cost a few bucks but I don't think I'll go ask my group mates for the money la; small issue there.

The Flash movie I made turned out better than I expected, especially in terms of the colours. I'm now convinced that engineering faculty has inferior projectors as compared to the business faculty. There you have it, another reason for me to run the engineering faculty down. The tutor shot me a question when I was presenting midway and I was caught off-guard. I don't think I gave a good reply but heck. This is like, possibly my last academic presentation and honestly, I tried to give it my best shot. Towards the end, the presentations got real dry and boring, as everyone was basically saying the same stuff: internal analysis, external analysis, strategy, blah... Perhaps it was a lousy idea to have 9 consecutive presentations all at one go.

Quite possibly the first time in my varsity life, I actually reached school at 8am to attend a group meeting. Man, it was fricking difficult to get up at 6.30am. The plus side is that the train was not packed and there was space for me to stand, without having someone's head 3cm from my nose bridge.

While I was on the bus to Harbourfront, I saw a piece of shitty news. The GST is going to be raised to 7%. I was like, "What in the hell...?" And the reason? You can read it off here. In summary, the increase in the GST aims to, as quoted by PM Lee, "to help the lower income groups and the elderly, not to increase their burdens. When we implement the GST increase, it's not just the GST increase, it's the package which will fully offset the impact of the GST increase and begin to strengthen the social safety nets and tilt the balance in favour of the low income groups - we will not just raise the GST but we will have a comprehensive offset package."

Package, eh? When the GST was last revised (and raised to 4%, then 5%), a SGD4 billion package was given out. It was named the ERS, or Economic Restrucing Shares. I think I got a few hundred bucks from that. Does that "fully offset the impact of the GST increase" for me? Hell, fuckin NO! There is no way in hell that a meagre sum of a few hundred can offset the effects of GST increases. Ask yourself this, how long does it take to spend all a few hundred bucks?

That said, I do hope that the package that they are offering this time round will at least match what was given out previously. After all, taking account into inflation and all, the package should be larger logically. Thus, I also do hope that this upcoming package will truly and "fully offset the impact of the GST increase" until the next round of increases or general election, whichever comes first. Then again, I know this hope is as practical as conducting a exploration of the surface of Venus clad only in sandals and shorts.

My only main gripe regarding this increase is really simple. This GST increase is suppose to help the poor, right? And the poor means they have difficulty making ends meet and managing their expenses, right? How does a blanket tax increase help them then? Won't it increase their burden even more? While it is true that the rich consume more - hence pay more GST, the poor do consume as well and they do pay GST as well. Since the aim is to benefit the poor, by imposing an uniform tax across the populace, doesn't it effectively means that the poor are actually paying for the whatever the "social safety nets" that are supposed to be in place? Yes, they are paying less as compared to the rich but my point is this: Why should the poor, who in the first place are in financial difficulty, pay for the "social safety nets"?

Secondly, this uniform tax simply means everyone pays, regardless of earning power. What about students, like me? We are not working and have no income. Is it fair to force us to pay for the increase? What about the schooling kids who are eligible to pay for the increase in GST but not eligible to get the help package? Is it fair to them? How about the rest of the non-working population, like housewives and elderly? Can they withstand the increases? I'm not even going into those who are students or housewives or elderly AND poor.

Of course, I have some recommendations of my own but hey! I'm not paid any Member of Parliament allowances or ministerial salary to come up with solutions. We put them there to work things out for us, not the other way round. Besides, lest some chap, be it anyone, plagarise my ideas and not accord me the due credit (and monetary rewards), I think I should keep my ideas to myself. It's not that we don't have ideas; we just don't see what's in it for us to share our ideas without any incentives - simple Expectancy Theory explains everything.

As a parting note, I would like to quote PM Lee again, "I'm not going to tax 15% on income tax, I'm not going to tax 25% from GST the way the Scandanavians do, but I have to make the adjustments of 2% which I think is fair and I think Singaporeans will support." I guess I must be an exception, for neither do I support nor am I in favour of the GST hikes.