{"id":6272,"date":"2013-06-02T19:39:56","date_gmt":"2013-06-02T19:39:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/blog\/?p=6272"},"modified":"2017-01-21T10:09:57","modified_gmt":"2017-01-21T10:09:57","slug":"ministerial-salaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/sg\/ministerial-salaries\/","title":{"rendered":"Ministerial Salaries"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the past couple of years, I’ve met a few MPs (and the PM<\/a>, too, through some odd luck) and I am quite convinced of their good intentions and magnanimous spirit. I will dare to say this- person to person, I do believe that there are people in government who genuinely do care. I can’t speak on behalf of everyone, but I have a few favourites (yes, PAP members!) and the conviction and emotion in their voices as they speak about their constituents is unmistakable.<\/p>\n

But here’s the deal, and I’m saying this to them as much as I’m saying it to you:<\/p>\n

As long as they’re earning much more than most of the rest of us, we are going to perceive them differently.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This isn’t personal, this is simply the reality of the matter and it must be acknowledged.<\/p>\n

It doesn’t matter even if one lives humbly, buys cheap clothes, sends his or her children to neighbourhood schools. If you earn a whopping salary, people are going to perceive you differently. This is a\u00a0fact. I would love to be paid to do public service. To be honest, all I really want is enough money to pay for a HDB, food on the table, health insurance, have a few thousand dollars of emergency savings in case of a rainy day and I’m happy. Beyond that, I would gladly spend all my time and energy serving others. Pay me a minster’s salary, and I promise I will take all the lessons and classes I need to project a sympathetic image.<\/p>\n

Maybe I’m missing something here. Anyway, I’d never make it in Parliament in Singapore. I have too much of a potty mouth and I don’t have the academic credentials. Also, I wonder if I can impact the world in a broader and more powerful fashion than just locally. That’s idealistic, I know, but I’m young and naive.<\/p>\n

Somebody once commented that Shanmugam, the Minister for Law, essentially took a massive pay cut when he chose to be Minister. I don’t know enough to comment, and I do believe that it’s very possible that Ministers might be making more in the private sector. I don’t know what to think about this. I think our entire global economy overpays a lot of people. Our incentives are warped all over the world. Why does anybody need so much money, really?<\/p>\n

Things to think about. Your thoughts?<\/p>\n

(Incomplete)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the past couple of years, I’ve met a few MPs (and the PM, too, through some odd luck) and I am quite convinced of their good intentions and magnanimous spirit. I will dare to say this- person to person, I do believe that there are people in government who genuinely do care. I can’t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[145],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6cErj-1Da","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6272"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6272\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9037,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6272\/revisions\/9037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}