Vision 2020 - slipsliding into 3rd world status

With the recent fuel hike, it looks like CASH is KING when it comes to filling up the tank.

The Petroleum Dealers' Association of Malaysia (PDAM) has directed some 3,500 of its members to stop accepting credit and fleet cards for refueling pending an outcome of their meeting with the government on the issue of fuel commission.

Muggers and snatch thieves will now have more reason to stake out petrol stations. Did anyone consider this?

In The SUN today, it was reported that if you earn less than RM2,000 a month, you are considered a low-income earner.

Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Tan Sri Amirsham A. Aziz said in reply to an oral question from Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim, this definition of low-income would be adjusted from time to time to take the inflation rate into account.

And tellingly, if the poverty line is raised from the current RM800 to RM1,500 per household, it would push to country's poverty rate from 3.7% to 24.3%!

What does this tell us?

So many households are struggling to keep afloat because a major portion of their income goes into servicing their car and housing loans. It is indeed a poor family that has to survive on RM2,000 a month in an urban area, let alone RM1,500 or less!

No wonder there's so much anger. If you can no longer use your credit cards to even pay for petrol, it is just a matter of time before the anger boils over.

This is not just about the have-nots and the barely-haves who are trying to keep afloat. Even those with plenty in their pockets are feeling disgusted as this country is regressing instead of progressing towards being a developed nation by 2020.

Now, it seems like a joke, doesn't it, the Vision 2020?

Should we pray instead that by 2020, we won't actually end up like some of our neighbours whose university graduates had to go overseas to work as maids to put food on the table?

Losing value on our Ringgit

I was window-shopping last weekend and chanced upon an electrical shop displaying the latest OSIM uPilot massage chair promotion for Father's Day.

Now, it is really hard to ignore a bright red bulky chair in gleaming leather surrounded by little kids gleefully bouncing up and down on a couple of iGallops nearby.

On closer inspection, I noticed that the recommended selling price for this state-of-the-art ROBO stic (whatever THAT is!) uPilot chair is RM23,880.00 (West Malaysia).

I also took a look at the iGallop and discovered that this rather obscene (my husband's opinion, ok?) piece of bumping & humping equipment is priced at RM2,388.00!

Has the purchasing power of our Ringgit shrunk so fast that Malaysians no longer see the irony of paying the equivalent of an average teacher's full year's salary on a massage chair? And a couple of months' salary on a jiggling machine?

Are we regressing?