Thursday, December 24, 2009
Christmas
I don’t observe Christmas too but school is closed tomorrow for some holiday so I’m assuming that’s it.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
GST
I really don’t understand opposition to the Goods and Services Tax (GST) apart from concern over problems associated with adjusting to the new tax.
GST is a tax on spending, like the existing sales and service taxes it will replace. A lot of the complaints seem to mistakenly suggest that GST will be imposed on top of the existing taxes. While the service and sales taxes are between 5 and 10 percent, GST when introduced will be at only 4 percent.
Then, there is argument that while the tax is introduced at a low 4 percent, it will only increase in the future as what happens in other countries. The problem with this argument is that the government can increase the rate of any tax, including the current sales and service taxes. The government has also stated that companies earning RM500,000 or less in revenue will be exempt from GST, as will many essential goods.
If it is not clear yet, I am all for GST. “The devil is in the details,” they say, but all else equal GST is a superior tax than what we presently have.
So I am quite amused today when I read that as part of its Common Policy Framework, the Pakatan Rakyat wants to “[i]mplement a progressive taxation system and reject Goods and Services Tax.” Wait, do they mean progressive taxation and GST mutually exclusive?
Quite simply with a progressive tax, the higher your income the higher your tax rate. Many people believe that a fair tax system should be progressive. I am not entirely convinced myself. A flat-rate sales tax – GST is a sales tax – is the classic example of a regressive tax, the opposite of a progressive tax. Lower income people pay a higher percentage of a regressive tax out of their income than people of higher income.
But GST is not necessarily regressive. If essential goods that make the bulk of spending of lower income people are exempt from GST – which the government already says will be – and say luxury goods are charged a higher rate, GST can be made progressive.
Most importantly, GST provides the government a broader, more efficient tax. Whoever will be in office five, ten years from now will definitely benefit from it.
In the meantime, complaints over corruption and wasteful mismanagement aside, like it or not Malaysians must face the fact of higher taxes soon as our petroleum reserves dry up.
GST is a tax on spending, like the existing sales and service taxes it will replace. A lot of the complaints seem to mistakenly suggest that GST will be imposed on top of the existing taxes. While the service and sales taxes are between 5 and 10 percent, GST when introduced will be at only 4 percent.
Then, there is argument that while the tax is introduced at a low 4 percent, it will only increase in the future as what happens in other countries. The problem with this argument is that the government can increase the rate of any tax, including the current sales and service taxes. The government has also stated that companies earning RM500,000 or less in revenue will be exempt from GST, as will many essential goods.
If it is not clear yet, I am all for GST. “The devil is in the details,” they say, but all else equal GST is a superior tax than what we presently have.
So I am quite amused today when I read that as part of its Common Policy Framework, the Pakatan Rakyat wants to “[i]mplement a progressive taxation system and reject Goods and Services Tax.” Wait, do they mean progressive taxation and GST mutually exclusive?
Quite simply with a progressive tax, the higher your income the higher your tax rate. Many people believe that a fair tax system should be progressive. I am not entirely convinced myself. A flat-rate sales tax – GST is a sales tax – is the classic example of a regressive tax, the opposite of a progressive tax. Lower income people pay a higher percentage of a regressive tax out of their income than people of higher income.
But GST is not necessarily regressive. If essential goods that make the bulk of spending of lower income people are exempt from GST – which the government already says will be – and say luxury goods are charged a higher rate, GST can be made progressive.
Most importantly, GST provides the government a broader, more efficient tax. Whoever will be in office five, ten years from now will definitely benefit from it.
In the meantime, complaints over corruption and wasteful mismanagement aside, like it or not Malaysians must face the fact of higher taxes soon as our petroleum reserves dry up.
Friday, December 18, 2009
Heavenly Promises
When I read that the PM at Copenhagen pledges to reduce our carbon emissions by 40 percent of 2005 level by 2020, I thought “WOW, this is huge!” It is a very ambitious target especially given the fact that we are currently subsidising the use of fossil fuel like petrol and diesel instead of taxing it. Fulfilling the pledge will require some serious political will, which sadly seems lacking lately in the country. In fact, political will for just about any serious issue seems to be a very rare commodity in any country at the moment. Politicians everywhere are playing it safe. There is no leadership.
In the absence of political leadership, industry shapes our policies.
Then, I read further that the pledge is conditional upon technological and financial assistance from the developed world. Ah, I should have known that there’s a catch. There’s always a catch.
Climate change is a very scary issue to read and ponder about but we don’t talk much about it at all. Even on campus, I don’t see any programs organized either by the university or the students about climate change.
__________
LINK: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
In the absence of political leadership, industry shapes our policies.
Then, I read further that the pledge is conditional upon technological and financial assistance from the developed world. Ah, I should have known that there’s a catch. There’s always a catch.
Climate change is a very scary issue to read and ponder about but we don’t talk much about it at all. Even on campus, I don’t see any programs organized either by the university or the students about climate change.
__________
LINK: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Week 2
I am beginning the think that there is something conspiring against me going online. Streamyx at home continues to be erratic, while at work Google sites like Gmail and Google Reader take forever to load. The only way I can get Gmail to load is in basic HTML view. Google Reader simply refuses to load completely.
We are now in the second week of the semester so the class lists have basically settled, although I still had a student asking to join my class on Monday and one suddenly showing up today. Registration was supposed to be over last week, but apparently the university only charges a RM5 per day fee for late registration. No wonder many students think nothing about coming and registering late. Even today, a saw a small group swarming the kulliyyah office with manual registration forms.
A colleague recently proposed that we drop one topic from the ECON1610 syllabus to spend more time discussing issues in class, but I disagreed because the content of the course is simple enough as it is. Instead, we can always cut down on instructions and assign reading to the students. We are doing GDP this week. I’ve covered all the definitions and calculation bits on Monday, so will discuss issues today.
We are now in the second week of the semester so the class lists have basically settled, although I still had a student asking to join my class on Monday and one suddenly showing up today. Registration was supposed to be over last week, but apparently the university only charges a RM5 per day fee for late registration. No wonder many students think nothing about coming and registering late. Even today, a saw a small group swarming the kulliyyah office with manual registration forms.
A colleague recently proposed that we drop one topic from the ECON1610 syllabus to spend more time discussing issues in class, but I disagreed because the content of the course is simple enough as it is. Instead, we can always cut down on instructions and assign reading to the students. We are doing GDP this week. I’ve covered all the definitions and calculation bits on Monday, so will discuss issues today.
Economists haven’t gotten many things right lately, and we don’t even agree on what we’ve gotten wrong. Paul Krugman argues that we have underestimated the flaws and frictions of the market. I would go further. We have overestimated the size and significance of the very thing we call “the market.”
If we have poor measures, what we strive to do (say, increase GDP) may actually contribute to a worsening of living standards. We may also be confronted with false choices, seeing trade-offs between output and environmental protection that don't exist. By contrast, a better measure of economic performance might show that steps taken to improve the environment are good for the economy.
Joseph E Stiglitz; Rethink GDP fetish
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Last Week
Last week I couldn’t connect to the internet at home, again. Yes, Streamyx sucks but what real choice is there? I couldn’t be bothered to call the helpline as the last time it didn’t help at all. Has Streamyx implemented a bandwidth cap? Anathem was (is) still there under the bed, but I picked up Makers from the shelf above instead.
Makers is about Perry and Lester who make stuff out of junk, and reporter-turned-blogger Suzanne Church who chronicles their lives. Lester makes mechanical computers for fun, and with Perry they make wonders. You can download and read all of it for free here.
Many reviewers say that Makers is Cory Doctorow’s best work yet and I totally agree, although I’ve only read Little Brother previously. Little Brother was more fun, but Makers has a lot more depth. A reviewer on Amazon even calls Makers a business book.
I took Makers to Kuantan last weekend where the kulliyyah had our IEEP. Earlier, I had registered to take the bus but in the end decided to drive on my own instead. It’s the KL-Karak highway. I love the highland drive with the frequent gear-shifting and tight corners going uphill and downhill. It was wet most of the way too on Friday so I got to put on my hoodie and had a nice cool drive. What a way to unwind. The hills were much more exciting at night, though.
Makers is about Perry and Lester who make stuff out of junk, and reporter-turned-blogger Suzanne Church who chronicles their lives. Lester makes mechanical computers for fun, and with Perry they make wonders. You can download and read all of it for free here.
Many reviewers say that Makers is Cory Doctorow’s best work yet and I totally agree, although I’ve only read Little Brother previously. Little Brother was more fun, but Makers has a lot more depth. A reviewer on Amazon even calls Makers a business book.I took Makers to Kuantan last weekend where the kulliyyah had our IEEP. Earlier, I had registered to take the bus but in the end decided to drive on my own instead. It’s the KL-Karak highway. I love the highland drive with the frequent gear-shifting and tight corners going uphill and downhill. It was wet most of the way too on Friday so I got to put on my hoodie and had a nice cool drive. What a way to unwind. The hills were much more exciting at night, though.
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
2009.2 (Exams, Part 3)
The new semester began yesterday. However, I cancelled my M&B classes this morning to attend a talk by Prof Jomo KS on climate change and development.
Before I forget, summary of last semester’s batch:
One student scored zero. He turned up at 1020 when the exam started at 0900, saying that he overslept. We turned him away, of course, as per examination rules.
The very next day a student emailed me about a resit exam. She was sure of failing the course (and in fact she did). The email annoyed me to bits, as I have not even started marking, and it means extra work preparing the resit paper. Students often fail on resit anyway, and I don’t think this one will be any different. We discussed abolishing resit exams at the kulliyyah meeting before, but nothing concrete has come from it.
A few days later another student ambushed me at the corridor. He was concerned about his performance in the exam. I told him that there is nothing that he could do now and I was still marking the paper. “Of course,” he said, “only you can help me.” Yes, I got the not-so-subtle message.
He was wrong.
Before I forget, summary of last semester’s batch:
Number of students: 85The university records system automatically round the results to the nearest integer, so the final number of fails is 22. All the numbers above exclude two students who were barred from the final exam.
Highest score: 77.40% (A−)
Lowest score: 31.08% (F)
Average score: 51.77% (C)
Median score: 51.34% (C)
Standard deviation: 9.31%
Number of students failing the course: 36
Number of students failing the final examination paper: 61
One student scored zero. He turned up at 1020 when the exam started at 0900, saying that he overslept. We turned him away, of course, as per examination rules.
The very next day a student emailed me about a resit exam. She was sure of failing the course (and in fact she did). The email annoyed me to bits, as I have not even started marking, and it means extra work preparing the resit paper. Students often fail on resit anyway, and I don’t think this one will be any different. We discussed abolishing resit exams at the kulliyyah meeting before, but nothing concrete has come from it.
A few days later another student ambushed me at the corridor. He was concerned about his performance in the exam. I told him that there is nothing that he could do now and I was still marking the paper. “Of course,” he said, “only you can help me.” Yes, I got the not-so-subtle message.
He was wrong.
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