A Malaysian perception: Cost of Living vs Standard of Living and affordability
Do you really think that these people can fight against basic economics theory of supply and demand, against thousands of years of history or fight against global trends? Do you think they will succeed or are they just lying to you?
LSS Report
The general perception is to blame BN for price increases in Malaysia and if you listen to Pakatan’s promises, you would believe that prices will never increase.
It’s a false hope and dream. It CANNOT BE DONE.
In fact, since 2008 Pakatan State Governments have raised prices of licenses, parking rates and business permits (Penang and Selangor), water charges in Penang 4 times.
On top of that Penang also increased assessment rates, doubled the rental rates of stalls and doubled the water extraction rates – all of which causes costs to individuals and businesses which also increases inflation.
But the reality is that prices have increased in every country in the world and all throughout thousands of years of history.
Show me one country that does not have any increase in house or food prices in the past 20 years. We move there together.
We should not confuse the cost of living with the standard of living. Just blindly reducing the cost of living is going against world-wide trends and going against history.
That is why DAP and Pakatan’s promises are lies and they WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO DELIVER on this without inflicting massive damage and distortion to our economy.
For example, the price of goods in the 1960s and 70s were much lower than now but is the standard of living and people’s livelihood any better than now?
The standard of living, among others, includes factors such as real income, quality of jobs, availability of jobs, a safer and greener environment, quality and affordability of housing, access to quality healthcare, quality and availability of education, better roads and better infrastructure.
Would you also want the house that you buy today at RM100,000 to still be valued at RM100,000 twenty years later?
If you were a FELDA settler, would you want your income to be RM2,000 per month now and still be RM2,000 twenty years later? If palm oil prices increase, cooking oil prices will also increase. But if palm oil prices do not increase then how will the FELDA settlers income increase too?
Since it impossible to contain the cost of living forever as it is a world-wide and a historical trend, BN’s transformation policies and strategies is to minimize inflation – especially for the lower income groups – and increase the real income level of the Rakyat at a faster rate than inflation and increase our overall standard of living.
This is the real challenge and a challenge which BN can prove that they have substantially delivered on.
To ensure the B40 income group are not adversely impacted and helped, there are many govt policies that have helped – such as BR1M, minimum wage, school aid, KR1M, reducing prices of passports and other govt services, capping the price of electricity for the lowest income groups, exempting those with RM5,000 to no longer pay income tax, exempting thousands of items from GST, subsidies for certain items such as tong gas prices, cooking oil and many others.
The many development programs and job creation efforts by the govt coupled with a focus on increasing domestic and foreign investments have also helped dramatically increase the income levels of all Malaysians – particularly the Bumiputra segment which had lagged the overall population before.
