Between Spending Taxpayers' Monies on Many Foreigners Retail and Wasting on Government Projects Wholesale...

It was quite painful to listen to the PM struggling to explain on TV3 on how they were going to ensure that subsidies on essential goods would be designed to help only those who were poor.

There was some mention of taxing larger capacity cars etc and also based on a person's income - I guess you will soon get your income tax embedded in your MyKad so that soon all supermarkets will read your MyKad and charge you accordingly.

I wonder if anyone has done any sums on the possible outcome of the ban on foreign cars especially those from Singapore who enter JB with at least 3/4 tank. I think most will not purchase more than RM40 of petrol.

If we assume that the market price for unsubsidised fuel is nearer RM60, it means that each motorist enjoys a subsidy of RM20 by coming over.

Let us suppose that 10,000 on average do this and also spend say RM250 on other items like shopping, restaurants and entertainment.

The net effect is this:
The government will lose RM200,000 on the subsidy leakage but the JB economy will lose
RM2,500,000 in revenue per day.

It is simply naive for some state leaders to assume that the tourist trade will not be effected. I daresay that lifestyle type of companies will be hard hit and a few hundred JB-ians will lose their jobs.

But coming back to wasting on government projects wholesale:
In this article from malaysiakini
http://www.malaysiakini.com/news/83630
it seems that

“The e-tanah (e-land) project in Penang had failed miserably. We are talking about RM60 million worth of taxpayers money going down the drain and we want to look at what happened there so that this can be avoided in the future,” he said.

So what else is new, you ponder?
Well each year we spend RM600m on the NS scheme where your children get good experience in tolerating all kinds of food poisoning.
http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/NST/Thursday/Frontpage/20080529165536/Article/index_html

But no use to complain. Not a matter of urgency or public interest as no one has died. If you like conspiracy theories, you could be forgiven if you wildly speculate that maybe our defense forces are trying out new defence strategies.

I mean you can't really advance far if you have to go to the toilet every 5 minutes, can you?