oh army! off the mrbrown show
The men in white recently announced an interesting sweetener for all who have ever served NS. Basically, they want to give each of us $9000. With a catch. The catch being that if you have already completed your NS liability before the announcement, you don't get the full $9000.
If you are one of those unlucky old soldiers who has already done your full NS commitment, you don't get peanuts, sorry. Especially since peanuts are very darned expensive in Singapore.
You know, I really don't get it. The soldiers these days have it better than us, are better paid, and now they get a better bonus too. For those who already did their time to full, I think they have a case for crying foul.
It really begs the question of whether the "compensation" is really necessary, or is it meant to be a political sweetener because the government has brought in too many foreign talents and now Singaporeans are starting to feel like outsiders in their own country. More than a third of the people now at any one time in Singapore are not local-born, and one might accuse me of playing it a little xenophobic, but it's getting a little crowded here no?
I've heard some of the arguments for and against the payout, from the normative moral high-horse reasoning that NS is a duty, a service, a badge of pride and that paying cheapens the sacrifice, to the opposite end of the spectrum where people argue that it's about time someone compensated NSmen correctly for their time.
In my opinion the latter group are just people who want a free handout without due consideration of what it really means for our economy, because when the government raises taxes in time to pay for this handout, they will be the same ones crying foul. But it doesn't mean that I approve fully of the moral high-horse reasoning either, because a lot of the people trumpeting it are not the same ones who served NS.
To me, it is not an issue of whether we should be compensated or not, but rather, an issue of why now? I have to admit that the timing of this handout is a little suspicious, with it running a little close to the upcoming General Elections.
I'm not suggesting anything here, I'm just saying that it seems more than a little coincidental, like how Potong Pasir is the most rundown estate in Singapore.
Let me attempt to teach you here a lesson that apparently costs $9000. I'm teaching it to you for free, so you better appreciate it.
Sometime in the future, you will see a piece of paper that has a symbol that looks like this.
When you see that, put an X in the box next to it.