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Chitchat Why Jamus Lim join Workers' Party ?
- Thread starter batman1
- Start date
from Jamus Lim facebook:
Jamus Lim
42 mins ·
One of the first activities that I was involved in after I began volunteering for the #workersparty was food distribution to needy families (incidentally, it is also the activity that many nonpartisan volunteers are more comfortable with engaging in, since it is ultimately apolitical charity work). So this evening, it was a nice throwback to those early days, as we went house-to-house to distribute Ramadan porridge and kueh raya (recent tightening of COVID-19 controls precluded our usual method of distributing at the void deck, since this would encourage gatherings en masse).
There is something magical about the act of giving. Even as we are fundamentally taking something away from ourselves, we gain so much more from the simple pleasure of knowing that we have made someone else happy. It’s part of the spirit of generosity and sacrifice that infuses Ramadan, and I was happy to be able to continue to share this with some of our residents in #Anchorvale. Thanks to all our our donors who made another round of giving possible. #TeamSengkang #SengkangGRC
Jamus Lim
42 mins ·
One of the first activities that I was involved in after I began volunteering for the #workersparty was food distribution to needy families (incidentally, it is also the activity that many nonpartisan volunteers are more comfortable with engaging in, since it is ultimately apolitical charity work). So this evening, it was a nice throwback to those early days, as we went house-to-house to distribute Ramadan porridge and kueh raya (recent tightening of COVID-19 controls precluded our usual method of distributing at the void deck, since this would encourage gatherings en masse).
There is something magical about the act of giving. Even as we are fundamentally taking something away from ourselves, we gain so much more from the simple pleasure of knowing that we have made someone else happy. It’s part of the spirit of generosity and sacrifice that infuses Ramadan, and I was happy to be able to continue to share this with some of our residents in #Anchorvale. Thanks to all our our donors who made another round of giving possible. #TeamSengkang #SengkangGRC
His Mandarin is that of a typical ACS boy.
Jamus has the opportunity to use different languages, including Mandarin, when communicating with residents.
from theindependent.sg:
Jamus Lim uses parable of ‘saving and spending’ to explain why we should not have a GST hike
Singapore — Workers’ Party MP Jamus Lim argues Singapore should not have a Goods and Services Tax (GST) hike and tells a story to explain why.
But what if this uncle starts raising all his tenants’ rent every year, including that of his extended family? “Times are bad,” he explains. “I need to set aside more money for my children.”
“But times are bad for me, too,” the family protests. “No worries lah!” is his stoic response. “When I die, your children will also get a share of the inheritance. Family sure take care of family one! Blood is thicker than water!”
MP Lim comments: “It’s easy to see how uncle is going from responsible saving to zealous over-saving. He may even be becoming stingy, instead of just frugal. This depends on your point of view.
“Just as the balance between wealth and non-material comforts is a personal choice, how much a government should spend or save is a difficult decision that society will need to decide on together. Everyone’s idea of thrift and responsibility is different.
“Sometimes people claim that other family members want to withdraw all their savings just to buy a new sports car. But maybe they need to withdraw their savings because their house is falling apart and their kids are malnourished. Yet, uncle is still asking them to tighten their belts!
“Since times are hard, isn’t it better for uncle to raise the rents of his more expensive properties, instead of ALL his properties? Especially if this could hurt his relatives. Why doesn’t uncle look at different ways to increase his income or fund his spending?” asks MP Lim.
He says the Workers’ Party is against a GST hike because it believes there are more revenue sources that Singapore can tap to minimise economic hardship for the average Singaporean.
The solutions include:
1. Raising the Net Investment Returns Contributions (NIRC) from 50% to 60%;
2. Tapping a portion of land sales;
3. Raising duties on sales of high-end properties;
4. Introducing a modest wealth tax.
The Workers’ Party is not advocating using up the reserves. “We advocate a slower rate of reserve accumulation, not a drawdown. This means that there will be fewer new cookies going into the jar, but the total number of cookies in the jar still keeps growing.”
MP Lim adds: “Our forefathers had scrimped and saved in their youth, so that they could enjoy an easier retirement. They also did so, so that they wouldn’t be a burden on future generations. Yet, now we are saying that we cannot afford to take care of them without also raising taxes, without making things harder today, because we also need to take care of the needs of our future generations.”
He argues against the proposed GST hike from 7 per cent to 9 per cent, due to take place between 2022 and 2025.
Calling for a GST hike, he says, is being “Just like that rich uncle with multiple properties and multi-million dollar investments, who still keeps raising your rent.”.
Jamus Lim uses parable of ‘saving and spending’ to explain why we should not have a GST hike
Singapore — Workers’ Party MP Jamus Lim argues Singapore should not have a Goods and Services Tax (GST) hike and tells a story to explain why.
The story, he says, is a parable — a story with a moral — about a rich uncle who doesn’t like to spend money. The uncle has inherited a large house and a lot of money, is the ‘towkay’ (big boss) of successful businesses, and collects dividends and rental income from his multiple properties. He even rents houses to his relatives at a “family rate”.
But what if this uncle starts raising all his tenants’ rent every year, including that of his extended family? “Times are bad,” he explains. “I need to set aside more money for my children.”
“But times are bad for me, too,” the family protests. “No worries lah!” is his stoic response. “When I die, your children will also get a share of the inheritance. Family sure take care of family one! Blood is thicker than water!”
MP Lim comments: “It’s easy to see how uncle is going from responsible saving to zealous over-saving. He may even be becoming stingy, instead of just frugal. This depends on your point of view.
“Just as the balance between wealth and non-material comforts is a personal choice, how much a government should spend or save is a difficult decision that society will need to decide on together. Everyone’s idea of thrift and responsibility is different.
“Sometimes people claim that other family members want to withdraw all their savings just to buy a new sports car. But maybe they need to withdraw their savings because their house is falling apart and their kids are malnourished. Yet, uncle is still asking them to tighten their belts!
“Since times are hard, isn’t it better for uncle to raise the rents of his more expensive properties, instead of ALL his properties? Especially if this could hurt his relatives. Why doesn’t uncle look at different ways to increase his income or fund his spending?” asks MP Lim.
He says the Workers’ Party is against a GST hike because it believes there are more revenue sources that Singapore can tap to minimise economic hardship for the average Singaporean.
The solutions include:
1. Raising the Net Investment Returns Contributions (NIRC) from 50% to 60%;
2. Tapping a portion of land sales;
3. Raising duties on sales of high-end properties;
4. Introducing a modest wealth tax.
The Workers’ Party is not advocating using up the reserves. “We advocate a slower rate of reserve accumulation, not a drawdown. This means that there will be fewer new cookies going into the jar, but the total number of cookies in the jar still keeps growing.”
MP Lim adds: “Our forefathers had scrimped and saved in their youth, so that they could enjoy an easier retirement. They also did so, so that they wouldn’t be a burden on future generations. Yet, now we are saying that we cannot afford to take care of them without also raising taxes, without making things harder today, because we also need to take care of the needs of our future generations.”
He argues against the proposed GST hike from 7 per cent to 9 per cent, due to take place between 2022 and 2025.
Calling for a GST hike, he says, is being “Just like that rich uncle with multiple properties and multi-million dollar investments, who still keeps raising your rent.”.
Full of shit lah you. No get one third no need work? Cannot get any thing done? Then you all deserve ZERO!
Zero is a good starting point in order to aim for a better result.
Full of shit lah you. No get one third no need work? Cannot get any thing done? Then you all deserve ZERO!
There should be zero tolerance for laziness.
from Jamus Lim facebook:
Jamus Lim
Yesterday at 07:58 ·
After a long day at #Parliament, a few of us that were not due to speak rushed off, so that we could make our meet-the-people sessions. While we have temporarily suspended house visits due to new #COVID19 rules, the #workersparty MPs have committed to continuing our weekly face-to-face meeting with our residents (albeit with a skeleton crew and strict social distancing measures), especially since many are unable to—or uncomfortable with—electronic means of communication. Rest assured that the volunteer team and I will continue to serve and represent you through this period of heightened restrictions. #TeamSengkang #SengkangGRC
Jamus Lim
Yesterday at 07:58 ·
After a long day at #Parliament, a few of us that were not due to speak rushed off, so that we could make our meet-the-people sessions. While we have temporarily suspended house visits due to new #COVID19 rules, the #workersparty MPs have committed to continuing our weekly face-to-face meeting with our residents (albeit with a skeleton crew and strict social distancing measures), especially since many are unable to—or uncomfortable with—electronic means of communication. Rest assured that the volunteer team and I will continue to serve and represent you through this period of heightened restrictions. #TeamSengkang #SengkangGRC
from Jamus Lim facebook:
Jamus Lim
10 May at 16:56 ·
Last Saturday, I was a panelist in the inaugural Singapore-Africa Dialogue, held on the ESSEC Asia-Pacific campus. The wide-ranging discussion sought to offer a better understanding of potential lessons our Little Red Dot might offer for the African development journey.
The other panelists—Joel Ng (RSIS | S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies), Nirilanto Rafilibera, and Marc Liew (Singapore Cooperation Enterprise)—had all lived in Africa for extended periods of time, and so I was fortunate to be able to learn from their professional experience of working in the diverse and complex continent. Opportunities abound in what will be the most demographically vibrant part of the world in the decades to come, and I was thrilled to have been able to participate in the conversation.
Jamus Lim
10 May at 16:56 ·
Last Saturday, I was a panelist in the inaugural Singapore-Africa Dialogue, held on the ESSEC Asia-Pacific campus. The wide-ranging discussion sought to offer a better understanding of potential lessons our Little Red Dot might offer for the African development journey.
The other panelists—Joel Ng (RSIS | S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies), Nirilanto Rafilibera, and Marc Liew (Singapore Cooperation Enterprise)—had all lived in Africa for extended periods of time, and so I was fortunate to be able to learn from their professional experience of working in the diverse and complex continent. Opportunities abound in what will be the most demographically vibrant part of the world in the decades to come, and I was thrilled to have been able to participate in the conversation.
from Jamus Lim facebook:
Jamus Lim
Yesterday at 05:51 ·
There has been a lot of chatter among the intellectual and policy classes worldwide about investing in infrastructure. Part of the impetus, of course, is record-low costs of borrowing worldwide (although that is slowly changing). Singapore is no different. Borrowing to fund high-return projects isn’t just about taking advantage of cheap financing; it is actually the sort of fiduciary responsibility any financial steward should consider, as long as conditions are right. Otherwise, we are forgoing potential opportunities.
Traditional thinking on infrastructure, of course, is focused on hard stuff, like roads and rails, ports and power plants. All that is well and good, assuming that it’s needed. But it’s not the sort of infrastructure that increasingly matters for the future. Soft infrastructure, instead, builds human capital. It’s about spending to educate our kids and raise them well, about tending to our sick and those with healthcare needs, about training the next generation of scientists and researchers. These only appear to be recurrent needs if we look at it from the perspective of paying fees and salaries in schools and hospitals. But they are also about vesting into the long-term future of our children and students and patients. That’s why I suggested that SINGA bonds shouldn’t be just directed to hard infrastructure, but also soft ones. Because we want to sustain our global #1 ranking not just in regular infrastructure, but also in human development.
What’s more, soft infrastructure investments offer much more bang for the buck. Payoffs are usually higher in the former, whether in terms of rates of return, or contribution to national output. Not all spending on health and education qualify as infrastructure, of course. But it is possible to define clear conditions where certain projects would meet the necessary criteria, just like how we evaluate physical capital investments. In my speech in Parliament, I described these criteria in detail, along with example policies that meet them. Most crucially, these are investments that will more than pay for themselves over time, mainly in the form of higher tax receipts.
While Finance Minister Heng cautioned against the imprudence of loosely classifying all manner of recurrent spending as infrastructure, I remain hopeful that we do not rule out human capital projects from SINGA. The #workersparty believes that there is no reason to privilege buildings and bridges over the raw potential of our people, as we take advantage of low-cost financing to invest for the future. #makingyourvotecount
Jamus Lim
Yesterday at 05:51 ·
There has been a lot of chatter among the intellectual and policy classes worldwide about investing in infrastructure. Part of the impetus, of course, is record-low costs of borrowing worldwide (although that is slowly changing). Singapore is no different. Borrowing to fund high-return projects isn’t just about taking advantage of cheap financing; it is actually the sort of fiduciary responsibility any financial steward should consider, as long as conditions are right. Otherwise, we are forgoing potential opportunities.
Traditional thinking on infrastructure, of course, is focused on hard stuff, like roads and rails, ports and power plants. All that is well and good, assuming that it’s needed. But it’s not the sort of infrastructure that increasingly matters for the future. Soft infrastructure, instead, builds human capital. It’s about spending to educate our kids and raise them well, about tending to our sick and those with healthcare needs, about training the next generation of scientists and researchers. These only appear to be recurrent needs if we look at it from the perspective of paying fees and salaries in schools and hospitals. But they are also about vesting into the long-term future of our children and students and patients. That’s why I suggested that SINGA bonds shouldn’t be just directed to hard infrastructure, but also soft ones. Because we want to sustain our global #1 ranking not just in regular infrastructure, but also in human development.
What’s more, soft infrastructure investments offer much more bang for the buck. Payoffs are usually higher in the former, whether in terms of rates of return, or contribution to national output. Not all spending on health and education qualify as infrastructure, of course. But it is possible to define clear conditions where certain projects would meet the necessary criteria, just like how we evaluate physical capital investments. In my speech in Parliament, I described these criteria in detail, along with example policies that meet them. Most crucially, these are investments that will more than pay for themselves over time, mainly in the form of higher tax receipts.
While Finance Minister Heng cautioned against the imprudence of loosely classifying all manner of recurrent spending as infrastructure, I remain hopeful that we do not rule out human capital projects from SINGA. The #workersparty believes that there is no reason to privilege buildings and bridges over the raw potential of our people, as we take advantage of low-cost financing to invest for the future. #makingyourvotecount
from Jamus Lim facebook:
One of the matters that has frustrated many Singaporeans in recent months is the belief that our efforts to control #COVID19 are being undermined by cases imported from more pandemic-ravaged countries. This concern is understandable, but on the flip side, an open economy such as Singapore simply cannot afford to keep our borders tightly shut for any extended period of time. Moreover, our economy also currently relies on a large number of foreign workers to do (mainly menial) jobs that most Singaporeans are unwilling to do (weaning us off that reliance is important but a conversation for another day).
So for now, we need to better manage our foreign worker in/outflow—especially in construction, but also other sectors with a large foreign worker share—to minimize the risk of importing the virus. This will ensure that our roads are still repaired, our trash still cleared, and our children and patients still taken care of, without simultaneously making us more unsafe. It also allows travel for compassionate reasons.
The government recently set up a construction manpower exchange, the SCMX, to allow workers whose permits have expired to be redeployed to another firm (if they still wish to stay). This makes sense, but participation is voluntary. In theory, it makes sense for a firm to avail workers it no longer requires (perhaps because it lost a contract) to SCMX, since it will save them the costs of repatriation. But in reality, there are reasons it may resist doing so. Firms may wish to make it harder for their competitors to absorb their ex-workers, to bolster their own position in the market. If they are the incumbent, this reticence may even win them renewals, since they are the only firm with a guaranteed workforce.
That’s why the government should step in as a market maker for SCMX. Instead of allowing firms with expired contracts to send workers home, they should release them to the exchange, which will then match them to other firms with manpower needs. Mandating the release short-circuits the possibility that firms play the game of sending back workers just to disadvantage their competitors. This action is not only inefficient, but also raises the risks of importing COVID-19.
There are costs to hosting workers until they are matched, of course. This can come from hiring firms, who save on the costs of identifying, training, quarantining, and transporting new workers from abroad. Government can also subsidize, since this lowers their costs of pandemic management. Who knows, they may even make money from the enterprise, as many market makers are able to. In my speech on the latest amendments to the COVID-19 Bill, I advanced exactly this suggestion. This simple tweak to the SCMX can not just make worker redeployment more efficient, but also safer for everyone else, too. #workersparty #makingyourvotecount
One of the matters that has frustrated many Singaporeans in recent months is the belief that our efforts to control #COVID19 are being undermined by cases imported from more pandemic-ravaged countries. This concern is understandable, but on the flip side, an open economy such as Singapore simply cannot afford to keep our borders tightly shut for any extended period of time. Moreover, our economy also currently relies on a large number of foreign workers to do (mainly menial) jobs that most Singaporeans are unwilling to do (weaning us off that reliance is important but a conversation for another day).
So for now, we need to better manage our foreign worker in/outflow—especially in construction, but also other sectors with a large foreign worker share—to minimize the risk of importing the virus. This will ensure that our roads are still repaired, our trash still cleared, and our children and patients still taken care of, without simultaneously making us more unsafe. It also allows travel for compassionate reasons.
The government recently set up a construction manpower exchange, the SCMX, to allow workers whose permits have expired to be redeployed to another firm (if they still wish to stay). This makes sense, but participation is voluntary. In theory, it makes sense for a firm to avail workers it no longer requires (perhaps because it lost a contract) to SCMX, since it will save them the costs of repatriation. But in reality, there are reasons it may resist doing so. Firms may wish to make it harder for their competitors to absorb their ex-workers, to bolster their own position in the market. If they are the incumbent, this reticence may even win them renewals, since they are the only firm with a guaranteed workforce.
That’s why the government should step in as a market maker for SCMX. Instead of allowing firms with expired contracts to send workers home, they should release them to the exchange, which will then match them to other firms with manpower needs. Mandating the release short-circuits the possibility that firms play the game of sending back workers just to disadvantage their competitors. This action is not only inefficient, but also raises the risks of importing COVID-19.
There are costs to hosting workers until they are matched, of course. This can come from hiring firms, who save on the costs of identifying, training, quarantining, and transporting new workers from abroad. Government can also subsidize, since this lowers their costs of pandemic management. Who knows, they may even make money from the enterprise, as many market makers are able to. In my speech on the latest amendments to the COVID-19 Bill, I advanced exactly this suggestion. This simple tweak to the SCMX can not just make worker redeployment more efficient, but also safer for everyone else, too. #workersparty #makingyourvotecount
from Jamus Lim facebook:
Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri kepada sahabat Muslimin dan Muslimat kami! Here's wishing all Muslim residents of #SengkangGRC Eid Mubarak! May this day be filled with love, peace and joy.
On this day, we would also like to reveal the winners of the Hari Raya Colouring Competition organised by Sengkang Constituency Commitee.
The Committee enjoyed looking through all submissions, and has shortlisted the 10 winning designs.
Our heartiest congratulations to all the winners, and we will be in touch with you shortly!
Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri kepada sahabat Muslimin dan Muslimat kami! Here's wishing all Muslim residents of #SengkangGRC Eid Mubarak! May this day be filled with love, peace and joy.
On this day, we would also like to reveal the winners of the Hari Raya Colouring Competition organised by Sengkang Constituency Commitee.
The Committee enjoyed looking through all submissions, and has shortlisted the 10 winning designs.
Our heartiest congratulations to all the winners, and we will be in touch with you shortly!
