I am far from being an elitist, or upper class. I am an ordinary rent paying debt incurring middle class who pay tax, but turun harga minyak and turun harga Kereta is freaking me out. Really. Even as car is so expensive and minyak price is increased, the road is still filled with WA plates and soon WB. And the people are protesting against all the new Highways building. Another Jakarta in making. I have my public transport day every fortnight and as much as I would like to concur that public transport accessibility is a major problem, it can be solved by cracking the egg : start creating demand for public transport. Public transport in Malaysia is always empty during non peak hours, despite many car flows during these hours. Besides, there were a lot of time where the rapid KL bus I took (u80 series) that passed thru My area were considerably empty despite the slow traffic caused by many cars. A Chinese friend used to tell my brother Zee How, that Malaysians are living way above our means. He said, poor people here live like rich people. Poor people, like all of them in major cities in Melbourne, london, New York, Beijing, Tokyo, do live like poor and work up from there. He said, in Kuala Lunpur (not Malaysia), people who cant afford things would still buy it and incur debts, ranging from credit card to loans. Take for example, in New York, London, Melbourne, Beijing, Tokyo, Berlin, Manila, Jakarta, NO middle lower or working class would ever talk about buying or owning property in the city, near where they work. Rental is the only way, or commute by the hours everyday is a norm. What happened to Malaysia is where we suffer from massive mismatch of expectation and reality of income. Everytime when we touch about economy, people only talk about illicit outflow of capital (due to trade mispricing and Rotterdam effect, not snifen money as claimed, for at least 80% of the figure), corruption, lavish spending of politicians , abuse of power. No one bothered about revenue, investment, wealth generation, pragmatic reduction of deficits, unemployment, labour forces compatibility, national comparative advantage, or sectoral growth. We are so ignorant, and disgruntled because we hated the ruling party. Truth to be told, the hatred has blinded us to a state of pure ignorance and apathy. We need to grow. Put politics aside and think as a working or middle class. Malaysia has vast and huge opportunity and we are not capitalizing on it when the mat Salleh and foreigners like Chinese investors or indian investors do. What a waste. Wake up malaysian. Do the right thing. Stop complaining and think as a participant of our economy, not recipients of benefits of policies.
Posted on: Thu, 25 Sep 2014 15:56:21 +0000