Tan Kin Lian's Blog: Utopia of welfare corporatism

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Utopia of welfare corporatism

Dear Mr. Tan,

I believe this article has strong relevance to our situation in Singapore: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/feature/2010/01/11/second_bill_of_rights/index.html.

Some of the things that Mr. Lind mentions are occuring here.

"In the utopia of welfare corporatism, today's public benefits -- Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance and, in a few states, public family leave programs -- would be abolished and replaced by harebrained schemes dreamed up by libertarian ideologues at corporate-funded think tanks like the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation. Tax subsidies would be funneled to insurance companies, brokers and banks. Social Security would be replaced by a bewildering miscellany of tax-favored personal savings accounts. Medicare would be replaced by a dog's breakfast of tax subsidies for purchasing health insurance and personal medical savings accounts. Unemployment insurance would give way to yet another Rube Goldberg scheme of tax-favored unemployment insurance accounts. As for family leave -- well, if you're not wealthy enough to pay out of pocket for a nanny for your child or a nurse for your parent, you're out of luck."

I also agree with this:

"The strongest case for economic citizenship instead of welfare corporatism is economic. Economic citizenship is more efficient and cheaper in the long run, because the government need only meet costs, while subsidized private providers must make a profit."

Balbindar

4 comments:

Tan Kin Lian said...: The corporate sector is able to fund the think tanks and the lobbyists. They make the argument that the corporate sector is able to achieve better efficiency through market competition, compared to government run programs.

This is theory. In practice, the corporate sector make huge profits by exploiting the ignorance of consumers, by locking them into unfair contracts and by misleading consumers. Things have got out of hand, leading to the collapse of the financial system.

If we continue with this type of market approach, the world will continue to be less safe, less fair, and the birthrate will continue to fall (as people dare not have children, due to high cost and insecure incomes).

Good luck to the countries that adopt this approach. It is sad for the people of Singapore.; January 13, 2010 11:20 AM
Anonymous said...: Public servant is extremely inefficient. That is the reason why Government want to privatise Government enterprises. For example, Mala**** has more than 20% working population working in public sectors. Imagine the cost to those tax payers.; January 13, 2010 12:53 PM
Anonymous said...: REX comments as follows,
(re. post of 12.53pm)

It is ok, it is ok, for 20% of working poplulation in Mxxxxx to work in public sector, as they are paid small bits of salaries for doing small bits of work, it's quite fair.

But singapore, it just takes 0.1% public servants earning superscale per month $100,000 with 13th month bonus to kill us. Don't need 20%.

No wonder S government cannot afford to pay for subsidizing disabled children education, for abolishing foreign Maids levies, abolishing GST on essentials like Rice, Electricity and Water... ad infinitum.

And lagi worse, little output to boast of and can claim "caught offguard" (re. hdb prices saga), after drawing such homongous wages.

rex

REX; January 13, 2010 1:52 PM
Anonymous said...: "Mala**** has more than 20% working population working in public sectors. Imagine the cost to those tax payers."

You make it sound like the private sector and taxpayers do not benefit from the public sector and services. Perhaps what you are arguing for is a smaller and leaner public sector.; January 13, 2010 2:45 PM