Wee Choo Keong had a birthday surprise when visiting Wangsa Maju folk burst into his office last Wednesday night (June 25 2008) with a birthday cake instead of complaints alone. Here are the pics. Better pics will follow later.
Happy Birthday, YB!!
Blog down
This blog went down since 2 days back for no apparent reason. I created a dummy blog, exported the contents in http://wangsamajuformalaysia.blogspot.com into this dummy blog, tweaked it, and deleted the http://wangsamajuformalaysia.blogspot.com. Subsequently I rename the dummy blog to http://wangsamajuformalaysia.blogspot.com.
The import and export feature is only in Blogger in Draft, the new blogger format, in case you didn't know. The screenshot of these new features are shown below.
The import and export feature is only in Blogger in Draft, the new blogger format, in case you didn't know. The screenshot of these new features are shown below.
We also maintain a backup site at Wordpress, but will remain at Blogspot for the moment. Make no mistake, Wordpress is a great site to host blogs.
Indonesia and the oil crisis
Amidst rising oil prices and inflation rate (estimated to be 8.9%), Indonesia is contemplating withdrawing from OPEC and direct the production of its oil for local consumption. Like Malaysia, Indonesia too, made a governmental executive decision to cut fuel subsidies and increase fuel price by 30% on May 5, 2008 in order to quash a budget deficit. With national elections looming over the horizon in 2009, Indonesia looks like it has little choice in the oil price game- increase domestic oil production and lower the prices; or loose the elections in 2009. The Indonesian public had voiced their anger in the Makassar (Sulawesi) demonstration recently. Compare to its neighbor Malaysia, Indonesian citizens has more reasons to protest- almost 50% of its 235 million people live on less than USD2 a day… its GDP per capita in 2007(USD3,900) is 30% that of Malaysia (USD12,900).
Parents are forced to give up children to crowded government-funded orphanages there!
The price of hiring Indonesian maids
The Star reports today the cost of hiring Indonesian maids may cost more. Association of Foreign Housemaids Agencies (Papa) president Datuk Raja Zulkepley Dahalan warned that employers may soon have to fork out up to RM8,000 to hire an Indonesian maid. The monthly salary of maids in the following countries are compared:
Taiwan RM2,400
Hong Kong RM1,700
Singapore RM700-800
Brunei RM700-800
Malaysia RM550
At face value, we may think Malaysia has the lowest maid salaries but did you know in terms of wealth these countries rank high above Malaysia? Check out this article from International Herald Tribune. In 2007, Brunei's (about USD30,058) GDP per capita is 2.33 times higher than Malaysia's (USD12,900) and Hong Kong's (USD37,300) is 2.9 times higher. Singapore (USD31,400) is about 2.4 times higher. With more wealth, comes more spending power, hence we can't compare wages in this manner.
What is "Subsidy"?
Someone emailed this to me, I thought it was worthy of posting.
The story about "apple subsidy".
A man called Maha owns a farm which can produce 10 apples every day. He has 5 workers to operate the farm. Each of them eats 1 apple daily and it is enough to keep them operating the farm normally. The remaining 4 apples, the landlord sells them at RM10 each and he earns RM40. He uses the RM25 to improve the farm operation and facilities. He gives RM2.00 to each of his workers and he keeps the remaining RM5.00 as profit. Day by day, the farm is well developed and all of the 5 workers are happy with the money they can save.
The story about "apple subsidy".
A man called Maha owns a farm which can produce 10 apples every day. He has 5 workers to operate the farm. Each of them eats 1 apple daily and it is enough to keep them operating the farm normally. The remaining 4 apples, the landlord sells them at RM10 each and he earns RM40. He uses the RM25 to improve the farm operation and facilities. He gives RM2.00 to each of his workers and he keeps the remaining RM5.00 as profit. Day by day, the farm is well developed and all of the 5 workers are happy with the money they can save.
When Maha passed away and there is a new landlord, Abdul comes to continue the farm operation. He says to the workers:" We need to improve the farm quality and redefine our way of thinking.From now on all of you only need to pay RM1.00 for each apple you eat. It is very cheap as the price is RM10 each outside the farm." The workers have no choice but to pay RM1.00 for the apple they eat daily. Their earning decrease from RM2.00 to RM1.00 per person.
As usual, Abdul sells the 4 apples and he gets RM40. He uses RM25 for farm improvement and pays RM10 to his 5 workers. He gets RM5.00 as profit. On top of that, he gets another RM5.00 from the apples that he sells to his workers. In total, he gets RM10 as profit every day. Soon, the apple price increases to RM20 each. The new landlord gets a higher profit as he gets RM80 for the 4 apples he sells daily. Then, he decides to give the farming improvement contract to one of his close friend, Samy. Samy says:"Apple cost naik, improvement cost also misti naik." So, the farm improvement cost increases from RM25 to RM50. In actual, the improvement only cost RM30.
The remaining RM20, Abdul and Samy share evenly among themselves. Let's calculate how much Abdul gets daily:
RM10 (from farm improvement cost)
RM20 (Net profit by selling 4 apples:
[Gross profit,RM80] - [Improvement cost, RM50] - [Wages RM10] = RM20)
RM5 (from selling apples to his workers)
RM20 (Net profit by selling 4 apples:
[Gross profit,RM80] - [Improvement cost, RM50] - [Wages RM10] = RM20)
RM5 (from selling apples to his workers)
In total, Abdul gets RM35 daily compare to RM10 initially when he takes over the farm from Maha. His profit increases RM25 and the workers are still getting RM1.00 daily per person. The greedy Abdul does not want to stop there.
One day, he says to his fellow workers:" You see ah, the current market price for one apple is RM20 and you are only paying RM1. See how lucky you are! I have to SUBSIDY RM19.00 for each of the apple you buy and total I need to SUBSIDY RM95.00. This will greatly burden the farm and we might get bankrupt if we continue like this. In order to avoid bankruptcy, I need to increase the apple price that you buy from RM1.00 to RM1.50 and I will bear the remaining RM18.50 per apple as my subsidy to you all. " So, greedy Abdul adds RM2.50 to his current profit and the number becomes RM37.50.
After you have read the story, I am sure you have already understood the meaning of "SUBSIDY" given by the government. The RM95 subsidy never existed in the first place and so was the RM52 billion fuel subsidy generously "given" by the government. Cutting fuel subsidy is actually just a reason to steal money from your pocket.
Source: written by DJH, June 13, 2008 13:49:44
Source: written by DJH, June 13, 2008 13:49:44
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