In line with PM Lee's call for Singaporeans to be more gracious along with his announcement of a slightly bigger hongbao this year, my paper published a letter from Mr Brandon Lee under the headline "Why must we help the lazy?"

Here are some choice excerpts:


"Why should middle- and high-income workers be penalised in the form of higher taxes to support low-income workers who do not take charge of their lives and bear responsibility for themselves and their families?"

"Expecting responsible, hardworking Singaporeans to help pay for the lifestyles, families or maids of irresponsible Singaporeans is simply irresponsible."

"In Singapore all of us go through the same education system and are given the same opportunities to earn a good livelihood and build a family."

"In fact, (the Government) should cut back on handouts in order to urge all Singaporeans to be more self-reliant, even during bad times."


While his view can be called pragmatic, it is also extremely narrow and simplistic. Mr Lee has entirely discounted other factors that influence everyone's cards in life: luck, family circumstances, accidents and misfortune, even something as seemingly mundane as personal looks.

Moreover, Mr Lee has displayed a distinct failure to properly grasp government policy. Singapore has never been planned as a welfare state and it's policies are correspondingly designed to not allow its people to entirely depend and subsist on handouts. They are instead tailored to minimise the impact of our shrinking dollar, an effect surely much more felt by the low-income earners than Mr Lee, protected on his self-erected pedestal.

Worst, Mr Lee's painting of every low-income Singaporean with the same brush and then crying out against them receiving financial aid reeks of elitism. It is a feeble mind that fails to think of the taxi-driver slaving away to put his son through university or the factory worker slogging double shifts to finance her part-time diploma.

It seems that responsible and hardworking Mr Brandon Lee wants to have his cake and eat it too; all by his deserving self, of course.

my paper article and forum discussion here:
Why must we help the lazy