The Malaysian Insider :: Features
The Malaysian Insider :: Features |
| As discontent grows, Singapore budget to tighten noose on the rich Posted: 19 Feb 2014 01:35 AM PST But as the orderly city-state comes within a whisper of overtaking Switzerland as the world's largest offshore wealth hub, a growing public backlash is forcing the government to tone down its policies catering to the rich. The government's budget on Friday could raise levies on high-end cars and purchases of multiple properties, along with a possible widening of the top income-tax rate, say economists. It would build on measures announced last year that cooled Singapore's red-hot property market and targeted mostly rich homeowners. With maximum income tax rates of 20% and no capital gains tax, Singapore has long been synonymous with affluence, boasting the world's highest concentration of millionaires. Daimler's Mercedes was the top selling car brand last year, followed by BMW, government data shows. Businesses that service the wealthy say their clients fear the new policies could mark the start of a trend as the long-standing ruling party, under pressure since its worst-ever election showing in 2011, tries to ease the burden in a country where the average monthly wage is S$3,705 (RM9,686). "There are a lot of people who don't know what's next," said Juliet Poh, owner of SG Vehicles, which sells car brands Ferrari, Rolls-Royce, Aston Martin and Lamborghini. Cars in Singapore are already expensive by most global standards owing to the cost of a government 10-year licence that must be purchased with each new vehicle. In last year's budget, the government introduced a new tiered tax system targetting luxury cars. The first S$20,000 (RM52,286) of a car's open market value is taxed at 100%, the next S$30,000 (RM78,370) at 140%, and anything above S$50,000 (RM130,716) at 180%. As a result, sales of luxury cars fell more than 80% in the second half of 2013, official data shows. In measures partly aimed at buyers of multiple homes, the government also tightened property curbs last year, including a rise in stamp duties. Sales of private homes to the wealthiest 15% of the population have tumbled in the past few months. "A lot of people are affected by the property curb. It is like an indirect curb on cars," said Poh, whose dealership saw car sales drop around 50% in 2013. "A lot of people can't buy and sell properties and do not make money. Thus, they don't have the cash flow to buy the cars." Public anger at the rich-poor divide and new taxes aimed at the ultra rich has been bubbling in fiscally stretched large Western economies since the 2008 global financial crisis. The changes in Singapore illustrate how that is spreading to countries usually seen as low-tax enclaves for the wealthy. Ten years ago Singapore courted the world's wealthy, offering permanent residency to people with personal assets of at least S$20 million (RM52 million), as long as they parked a certain amount here. That scheme was scrapped two years ago amid criticism over the number of wealthy immigrants. Switzerland is now seeing a similar debate. Canada's government this month ended a programme that effectively allowed rich Chinese nationals to buy permanent residency. Critics said it allowed wealthy foreigners to buy their way into the country without long-term benefits. "All these established cities for high net worth individuals are feeling the strain," said Tan Choon Leng, head of the private wealth practice group at legal practice RHTLaw Taylor Wessing LLP in Singapore. Singapore income inequality, measured by the Gini coefficient, is the biggest after Hong Kong among advanced economies, based on its 2012 reading of 0.478. The level eased in 2013 to 0.463, according to government figures. The budget is likely to play well with an electorate increasingly hostile towards ostentatious displays of wealth, a mood that was highlighted last month when an expatriate wealth manager fled to Australia following uproar over his complaints on social media about "poor people" riding public transport while his Porsche was in for repairs. While average wages in Singapore rose last year by 6.5%, the wealth of Singapore's high net worth individuals raced ahead 11.5%. Wealthy foreign residents include Eduardo Saverin, the co-founder of Facebook, who has called Singapore home since 2009. Brazilian-born Saverin, who renounced his US citizenship in 2011, was ranked 7th on a Singapore's rich list published by Forbes Magazine with an estimated net worth of US$2.65 billion (RM8.7 billion). Locals who made fortunes in real estate, finance and trading figured prominently but the list also included New Zealand-born investor Richard Chandler with US$2.8 billion (RM9.2 billion), ranked 6, and China-born property developer Zhong Sheng Jian with US$1.35 billion (RM4.4 bilion), ranked 16. The changes follow pressure on the Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong to respond to signs of growing disquiet over the vision of the country set forth by the People's Action Party (PAP), which has ruled for five decades. Founded by Lee Kuan Yew, father of the current prime minister, the PAP is credited with transforming Singapore from a colonial outpost in the 1960s into a global business centre. Part of that success is built on cheap foreign labour and a consumer class full of wealthy expatriates. ASung in 2011 by its worst election showing in history, when 40% of voters went against the PAP, the government has become more open to seeking input from citizens and factoring their views into policymaking ahead of the next election in 2016. "I would understand if the wealthy people might be angry, but this is for the future," Khairul Adzmie, 39, a coffee shop manager, said of the new measures, echoing a comment heard in other areas of the island of 5.3 million people. "With all these taxes, Singapore can build a better future with better financial security." - Reuters, February 19, 2014. |
| Women man the Home Front in World War I Posted: 18 Feb 2014 08:31 PM PST Driving trams, ploughing fields and manning production lines, World War I radically changed women's role in society, as they stepped into the boots of men gone to fight for their countries. In cities across Europe, women took on traditionally "male" jobs - waiting on tables, delivering the mail, teaching in boys' schools or handling cash as bank clerks. "Women rapidly became indispensable, not only in the nursing and welfare services but in offices and factories and agriculture, changing the whole balance of society in the process," says the historian Michael Howard. As soon as war broke out in 1914, France's Prime Minister Rene Viviani called on women to "replace in the workplace those who are on the battlefield." In Germany, some 44 percent of Bavarian farms were being run by women in 1916, according to the historian Benjamin Ziemann, with some even forced to pull carts in place of horses requisitioned for battle. From 1915 onwards, Europe's industry - now devoted to the war effort - relied massively on the female workforce, as did the United States from 1917. "Without women, victory will tarry," warned Britain's soon-to-be Prime Minister David Lloyd George in 1915. Some 400,000 women were toiling in France's war factories by 1918 - a quarter of the workforce - handling some 2,500 shells per exhausting 11-hour shift. In Britain, women's share of the workforce had risen by 50 percent by the end of 1917, with one million employed in its war factories in 1918, many of them married women from the middle classes, few of whom worked outside the home until then. Roles were again reversed after the end of the 1914-18 conflict, as returning men looked to regain their jobs, but women's contribution is widely held to have helped secure them the vote, as early as November 1918 in both Britain and Germany, and in 1920 in the United States. Up until the outbreak of war, feminists on both sides had pledged themselves to peace in a kind of transnational women's solidarity, according to the historian Joshua Goldstein. But within months all the major feminist groups had thrown their weight behind their respective governments, predicting that patriotism would enhance the prospects for women's suffrage, he said. Pretty English girls in khaki Women's contribution was mostly on the home front, but more than 80,000 also served in Britain's Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, the WAAC, as nurses, mechanics, cooks or ambulance drivers. An emblematic few were exposed to the danger of war, as soldiers - or spies. Among them was Mata Hari, the Dutch-born dancer, seductress and spy who was executed by a French firing squad during the war. Mata Hari was the stage name of Margaretha Zelle, who had charmed her way into European society in the pre-war years. Recruited by German intelligence at the start of World War I, she became a double-agent for the French, but when they suspected she had been turned once again, they arrested her and shot her on October 15, 1917. Another famous figure was Edith Cavell, the British nurse celebrated for saving the lives of soldiers in Brussels from all sides without distinction - who was found guilty by a German military court of assisting the enemy and shot by firing squad on October 12, 1915. "She died like a heroine," the German military chaplain said after her execution. Britain's Imperial War Museum published the testimony of Sarah Macnaughton, a journalist who visited the Belgian front line in 1914, and paid tribute to the nurses working there. "It is a queer side of war to see young, pretty English girls in khaki and thick boots, coming in from the trenches, where they have been picking up wounded men within a hundred yards of the enemy's lines, and carrying them away on stretchers... I lift my hat to you!" she said. A tiny number of women even went into combat. One was Dorothy Lawrence, an ambitious 20-year-old journalist who became the only woman soldier enlisted in the British army - by passing herself off as a man. She turned herself in after only 10 days, worried for the safety of the men who helped her. Flora Sandes, another Englishwoman, enlisted with the Serbian army in 1916, aged around 40, and reached the grade of sergeant major. She stayed on after the war, eventually becoming a major. In Russia, some women took part in combat, driven both by patriotism and the desire to escape a drab existence. Most joined up dressed as men, but a few served openly as women. The most famous were the "Battalion of Death": several hundred women soldiers led by a 25-year-old peasant girl named Maria Boshkareva, who set up the Battalion with permission from the Czar. – AFP, February 19, 2014. |
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