Balance sheets and cash flow documents used to frustrate me. I don’t just want to balance them, I want a surplus. A little extra for that rainy day or pretty shoes I’ve been visiting at the mall. It just seems safer.
When learning accounts in secondary school, it used to unsettle me when there was a deficit – even though it was just an exercise in simple accounting, the lesson was a little bigger. "How can you spend money you don’t have?"
Of course once I got my first credit card, I quickly realised how easy it is to spend money you don’t have, and how easy it was to buy on credit and to live off credit. Especially when credit is so easy to come by, that we even have modern day Ah Longs at supermarkets haggling at us with instant credit cards.
In many more affluent countries, surveys have shown that people live off credit and countries live on deficits instead of a healthy surplus.
Simple economics will tell you that if we ignore the deficit, public spending will soon have to be cut, and our taxes raised. A deficit in today’s economy does not drop in 10 years, it only increases with interest and inflation.
I feel like I give a lot more money to the government than I get back in services. And even though the Internal Revenue Board staff are the friendliest and most patient among government officers, it doesn’t make giving money away to the government any easier.
But I believe in giving to Caesar what is his, so I grudgingly part with my money.
But on days when I read the Auditor-General’s report in the paper, I get really upset. Last year’s report stated that RM537.04 million of government money was spent on some American-based Columbia Aircraft Manufacturing Corporation and only RM25 million was recovered after the company went bust.
Over RM500 million lost.
I can’t help but to wonder that a tiny fraction of that RM500 million could be my income tax contribution or perhaps yours. My hard-earned money lost just like that. Is there an end to the story? I’m not sure, because nothing has been reported about it, or maybe we’ve forgotten.
But how can we when you and I know that this economic crisis is affecting all of us? And we cannot afford for our money to evaporate because our currency has still not recovered from the 1997 economic crisis.
This year, we might have a RM1.14 billion loss according to the latest A-G’s report thanks to a railway line and mismanagement. Yes that’s a lot of zeros. Zeros in the way things were handled and probably will be handled. And zero in the surplus fund we so desperately need.
You know the saying, money doesn’t grow on trees, apparently even though our money is now made of plastic, it seems to be decomposing faster in the hands of the decision-makers.
At the end of the day, if a bigger deficit is what we have to look forward to while money gets "lost" in oblivion, does it still mean that the people’s interest are important and achievements of the country put first?
Saying that you’re working on reducing a deficit in the wake of outright mismanagement does not create a sense of security and assurance that we as a country are safe and comfortable – far from it. It makes me hold my breath and hope that this too shall pass.
It’s a simple balance sheet that doesn’t get balanced. Releasing two stimulus packages in the interest of the people, and at the same time doing a David Copperfield with millions does not equate to preventing an economic crisis from affecting us again.
Cuba Gooding Jr in the movie Jerry McGuire won an Oscar for yelling at his agent to show him the money. So with the government as our agent of taxpayers’ money, and the Budget being announced tomorrow, maybe we should be shouting "Show me the money!" Hopefully we get some answers, better services and hopefully instead of money disappearing, the deficit disappears.
Natalie does visit shoes and other stuff on her wish list until the budget can afford them.
Comment: letters@thesundaily.com
