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Chitchat Why Jamus Lim join Workers' Party ?
- Thread starter batman1
- Start date
Jamus invites you for a run. 
Today’s the first Saturday of the month, and we’re returning to the usual 6:30 pm start time (after last month’s slightly earlier start given the Deepavali celebrations that same evening) for our #SengkangGRC #RiverRun. Owing to the year-end monsoon season, it’s been raining more on the afternoon this past month, but it seems like the forecast suggests a cloudy—but dry—evening. Hope to see folks there! #TeamSengkang
Jamus Lim
10 h ·Today’s the first Saturday of the month, and we’re returning to the usual 6:30 pm start time (after last month’s slightly earlier start given the Deepavali celebrations that same evening) for our #SengkangGRC #RiverRun. Owing to the year-end monsoon season, it’s been raining more on the afternoon this past month, but it seems like the forecast suggests a cloudy—but dry—evening. Hope to see folks there! #TeamSengkang
Jamus enjoys a grilled cheese sandwich. 
The grilled cheese sandwich is a humble food in most American households, the go-to for busy mothers needing to feed their kids a filling meal in a hurry. But it was something that my wife grew up with in her formative years, and so it is comfort food for her, in the most visceral sense.
So every now and then, she puts her culinary skills to work and whips up a batch. Our family applies a twist: we work in some gochujang, that spicy-savory-sweet-sticky bean paste, along with chopped jalapeños and onions, to give the sandwich some extra kick and body. It seems overindulgent, but we pair it with potato chips and wash it down with some beer (goodbye low-carb diet).
Jamus Lim
4 h ·The grilled cheese sandwich is a humble food in most American households, the go-to for busy mothers needing to feed their kids a filling meal in a hurry. But it was something that my wife grew up with in her formative years, and so it is comfort food for her, in the most visceral sense.
So every now and then, she puts her culinary skills to work and whips up a batch. Our family applies a twist: we work in some gochujang, that spicy-savory-sweet-sticky bean paste, along with chopped jalapeños and onions, to give the sandwich some extra kick and body. It seems overindulgent, but we pair it with potato chips and wash it down with some beer (goodbye low-carb diet).
Jamus Lim
1 d ·https://www.facebook.com/stories/17...3gLIDyqgrSD3d1_CCadymFa6wJRVw&__tn__=<<,P-y-R
HungryGoWhere.com
2 d · Politician and die-hard Peranakan Jamus Lim
HUNGRYGOWHERE.COM
My Must-Eats… with Member of Parliament Jamus Lim | HungryGoWhere
Politician, globetrotter and die-hard Peranakan Jamus Lim lets us in on his favourite hawker eats and more.
Jamus continues house visits. 
Over the last few weeks, #TeamSengkang house visits managed to wrap up 311C #Anchorvale, and get a start on both 304A #Anchorvale and 294A #Compassvale. A few conversations touched on the intersection of family planning and housing access.
These residents expressed their concerns about the long wait for HDB flats. This, in turn, meant that young couples have been unable to move out, and start a family. It’s fair; setting aside the privacy needed to make a baby (you know, when a man loves a woman…), it’s still the case that many couples find the uncertainty of not having one’s own place very disruptive for family planning purposes. And with sky-high prices for resale flats, some couples who are early in their careers find it impossible to tap on the resale market.
I’ve increasingly been writing appeals for young couples who are applying for their Nth time (high single digits are not uncommon, and we had recent case where the couple tried 11 times). It’s hard not to empathize with how debilitating repeated rejections are. We often advise such couples to apply to both mature and non-mature estates, and both sales-of-balance as well as build-to-order offerings. Even so, the long waits involved mean that many couples resort to applying while they are just dating. This requires a fair bit of foresight—and confidence in the relationship!—which could be a uniquely Singaporean problem. #SengkangGRC
Jamus Lim
13 h ·Over the last few weeks, #TeamSengkang house visits managed to wrap up 311C #Anchorvale, and get a start on both 304A #Anchorvale and 294A #Compassvale. A few conversations touched on the intersection of family planning and housing access.
These residents expressed their concerns about the long wait for HDB flats. This, in turn, meant that young couples have been unable to move out, and start a family. It’s fair; setting aside the privacy needed to make a baby (you know, when a man loves a woman…), it’s still the case that many couples find the uncertainty of not having one’s own place very disruptive for family planning purposes. And with sky-high prices for resale flats, some couples who are early in their careers find it impossible to tap on the resale market.
I’ve increasingly been writing appeals for young couples who are applying for their Nth time (high single digits are not uncommon, and we had recent case where the couple tried 11 times). It’s hard not to empathize with how debilitating repeated rejections are. We often advise such couples to apply to both mature and non-mature estates, and both sales-of-balance as well as build-to-order offerings. Even so, the long waits involved mean that many couples resort to applying while they are just dating. This requires a fair bit of foresight—and confidence in the relationship!—which could be a uniquely Singaporean problem. #SengkangGRC
Jamus Lim
3 d ·The Workers' Party
1 December at 11:26 ·In his speech on the EV Charging Bill, Jamus raised a number of practical considerations for how the physical charging infrastructure could be better calibrated to improve rollout, before closing with how the COE system could also be adapted to assist in the transition toward a green economy.
Jamus discusses carbon tax.
The idea of a carbon tax often strikes most people as a necessary evil: an added cost to businesses that use a lot of dirty energy sources, so that they reduce their usage and transition to cleaner sources. On its face, this is true. And while more sophisticated approaches (such as cap-and-trade, which is basically a plan that fixes an amount of pollution per firm, then allows them to exchange obligations among themselves) exist, the simplicity of a carbon tax is particularly appealing. But what is sometimes forgotten is that carbon taxes are a transition tool: a way to get to a low-carbon economy. If they succeed, the economy will run efficiently on green energy, and the tax won’t be needed anymore. Just as important, we’d like to see the revenue from a carbon tax be deployed toward further greening our economy in the meantime; providing subsidies for firms and households and workers to adopt green technologies and invest in green initiatives.
Now, if we accept that a carbon tax is valuable, the question is how we would go about it. This is a question of practical implementation, and an important one. The government plan is to roll out an incremental increase in the tax, over the next few years. The #workersparty is on record about our desire to have a higher average rate than the government (they’re at $50-80; we’re at $58-133). Given that end goal, we nevertheless believe that we can exercise some flexibility in getting there, especially with respect to economic conditions.
This means a time-varying carbon tax. While this may sound complicated, it really isn’t. Policymakers often implement policies that cater to where we are in the business cycle, such as altering the interest rate or government spending (we call this monetary or fiscal policy). Stabilization policies aren’t limited to these traditional ones. Something like a carbon tax can be adapted to make things easier for businesses and households during, say, a recession (and vice versa tame exuberance during a boom).
Does this throw businesses off, since they value predictability? I don’t think so, for a couple of reasons. Businesses routinely deal with fluctuations in macro policies, such as changes to the interest or exchange rate (or even the CPF employer share). Indeed, if you offer relief during a tough time, they may appreciate it more than the certainty, per se, even as they know they’ll need to make up for it when times are better (that’s what insurance does). And the notion that a fixed carbon tax is less volatile is itself questionable; a fixed dollar tax per ton is actually more volatile than one that rises and falls according to profit or income, resulting in a stable tax *rate*.
What about other transition tools? Well, MAS is—insofar as central banks are concerned—pretty progressive when it comes to the environment. But one suggestion is to weave green objectives into their day-to-day, such as targeting green bonds in open market operations. Another idea is to set up an export-import bank, targeted at small and medium enterprises, with financing for green projects as part of its mandate. This would assist SMEs not just with internationalization and digitalization, but with environmentalism.
The government had previously considered an ExIm bank, but ruled it out given how EnterpriseSG already fulfilled some of these functions. We actually think that available programs don’t quite serve smaller SMEs that well, nor are green initiatives prioritized. Since meeting environmental goals are already inherently cross-border in nature, enfolding these into trade-related lending is the natural next step, one that may be considered in the context of an ExIm bank here. #makingyourvotecount
Postscript: Someone recently suggested that I was being inconsistent, having argued for an environmental tax on SIA during the pandemic, but now advocating flexible support for businesses in the rollout of the carbon tax. I went back and looked at my post (you can too, if you wish… I’ll wait). I was gratified to see that my arguments then remain true. Back then, I stressed my belief in both the need for a national airline, as well as the importance of helping our struggling businesses.
But I also said it shouldn’t occur at a cost to the environment. This is the case now, too—I’m not advocating that the carbon tax be dropped for businesses—but that they be adjusted to provide them breathing room during tough economic times. And back then, when SIA was being bailed out, I supported the move; but I believed that environmental taxes that could be passed on to the rich (the kind that would blow money on flights to nowhere) was better than using taxpayer money from the relatively less well-off. Getting those who are richer—whether households or firms—to bear a greater burden for public goods is also a consistent theme of mine. More generally, I think we can go behind simplistic debates where tax = bad, and pay more attention to redistributive effects of taxation.
Jamus Lim
2 d ·The idea of a carbon tax often strikes most people as a necessary evil: an added cost to businesses that use a lot of dirty energy sources, so that they reduce their usage and transition to cleaner sources. On its face, this is true. And while more sophisticated approaches (such as cap-and-trade, which is basically a plan that fixes an amount of pollution per firm, then allows them to exchange obligations among themselves) exist, the simplicity of a carbon tax is particularly appealing. But what is sometimes forgotten is that carbon taxes are a transition tool: a way to get to a low-carbon economy. If they succeed, the economy will run efficiently on green energy, and the tax won’t be needed anymore. Just as important, we’d like to see the revenue from a carbon tax be deployed toward further greening our economy in the meantime; providing subsidies for firms and households and workers to adopt green technologies and invest in green initiatives.
Now, if we accept that a carbon tax is valuable, the question is how we would go about it. This is a question of practical implementation, and an important one. The government plan is to roll out an incremental increase in the tax, over the next few years. The #workersparty is on record about our desire to have a higher average rate than the government (they’re at $50-80; we’re at $58-133). Given that end goal, we nevertheless believe that we can exercise some flexibility in getting there, especially with respect to economic conditions.
This means a time-varying carbon tax. While this may sound complicated, it really isn’t. Policymakers often implement policies that cater to where we are in the business cycle, such as altering the interest rate or government spending (we call this monetary or fiscal policy). Stabilization policies aren’t limited to these traditional ones. Something like a carbon tax can be adapted to make things easier for businesses and households during, say, a recession (and vice versa tame exuberance during a boom).
Does this throw businesses off, since they value predictability? I don’t think so, for a couple of reasons. Businesses routinely deal with fluctuations in macro policies, such as changes to the interest or exchange rate (or even the CPF employer share). Indeed, if you offer relief during a tough time, they may appreciate it more than the certainty, per se, even as they know they’ll need to make up for it when times are better (that’s what insurance does). And the notion that a fixed carbon tax is less volatile is itself questionable; a fixed dollar tax per ton is actually more volatile than one that rises and falls according to profit or income, resulting in a stable tax *rate*.
What about other transition tools? Well, MAS is—insofar as central banks are concerned—pretty progressive when it comes to the environment. But one suggestion is to weave green objectives into their day-to-day, such as targeting green bonds in open market operations. Another idea is to set up an export-import bank, targeted at small and medium enterprises, with financing for green projects as part of its mandate. This would assist SMEs not just with internationalization and digitalization, but with environmentalism.
The government had previously considered an ExIm bank, but ruled it out given how EnterpriseSG already fulfilled some of these functions. We actually think that available programs don’t quite serve smaller SMEs that well, nor are green initiatives prioritized. Since meeting environmental goals are already inherently cross-border in nature, enfolding these into trade-related lending is the natural next step, one that may be considered in the context of an ExIm bank here. #makingyourvotecount
Postscript: Someone recently suggested that I was being inconsistent, having argued for an environmental tax on SIA during the pandemic, but now advocating flexible support for businesses in the rollout of the carbon tax. I went back and looked at my post (you can too, if you wish… I’ll wait). I was gratified to see that my arguments then remain true. Back then, I stressed my belief in both the need for a national airline, as well as the importance of helping our struggling businesses.
But I also said it shouldn’t occur at a cost to the environment. This is the case now, too—I’m not advocating that the carbon tax be dropped for businesses—but that they be adjusted to provide them breathing room during tough economic times. And back then, when SIA was being bailed out, I supported the move; but I believed that environmental taxes that could be passed on to the rich (the kind that would blow money on flights to nowhere) was better than using taxpayer money from the relatively less well-off. Getting those who are richer—whether households or firms—to bear a greater burden for public goods is also a consistent theme of mine. More generally, I think we can go behind simplistic debates where tax = bad, and pay more attention to redistributive effects of taxation.
