Malaysia Money Matters

It was bound to happen eventually - the lax way the government wastes money, leakages everywhere and so on. In the long run, this downgrade is probably a good thing. It is a wake up call that we have to DO SOMETHING concrete to move our economy to the next step! Off the top of my head, with but a stroke of a pen, the government should: Impose GST - not just to broaden the tax base but to create more oversight into businesses; lets face it, there's way too much cooking of the books. How can business tax be almost equal to personal income tax? (Govt tax revenue sources by petroleum: business: personal is roughly 33:35:32) Shut down / tightly control the money changers and remittance houses - they are the key channel for fund leaving the country under the radar. Banks have to monitor and report to Bank Negara on fund flows but these organisations don't have to. Why? And it's already proven that funds from corruption by politicians have left the country this way. So ...

Came across a rather shocking piece of news that was in a vernacular paper; seems that Malay teenagers were willing to subscribe to regular porn stories sent to their phones from an Indonesian service for RM17 a month (or was that a week? Think it was a month...). Like, what the hell? They're kids! Go read a Jackie Collins novel and flip to the dirty bits and fap away at that, my son. Can you imagine that if they have 1,000 subscribers, that's a cool RM17,000 a month. I'm sure they have a lot more than that. I tell you, gotta get me some of that ACTION! hehe but how? LOL Just kidding! (maybe) Which brings me to the situation here, in our oh-so very 'moralistic' country where even the word "Beer" can be censored out of Beyonce's 'If I were a boy' single. Imagine, if you will, that censorship were not as hidebound as it is now and that instead of people accessing porn illegally, it was taxed - goodness, it would exceed the revenue from th...