Tuesday, 7 January 2025
Play the game that people play?
Monday, 2 September 2024
A problem many would like to have...
After working all their lives engaging with various businesses to pull themselves out of the shackles of poverty, they can say they have arrived. No, thanks to the governmental racially discriminatory policies, and despite this, they had managed to give their three children an overseas education. Again, the children had opted to settle overseas because of the national social re-engineering policies. The roots are so deeply embedded elsewhere that they find it pointless to return to the roost. Their occasional summer vacation and digital connections would suffice for family bonding.
The couples are left to fend for the coop and the empty nest. To complement that, there are multiple landed properties, real estate assets, various incomes, and a stash of moolah to lubricate their silver years.
None of the children are keen to take over the legacy the parents will soon leave. In the minds of the foreign-educated liberty thinking, socialistic minds of the offspring, they do not want anything with their capitalistic parents' money, which they would be thinking was earned through the blood and sweat toiled by the bodies of the working class. And they want none the part of it.
So, the elders are left with a dilemma. How will they will off their legacy when none of their kids want to inherit it. In a world where siblings and relatives clobber and murder each other to get a piece of the meat, here they have to deal with no one wanting their hard-earned.
Many individuals with apparently noble intentions (?really) have no dearth of suggestions and avenues on how to dispose of their wealth to the world. There is no shortage of NGOs willing to put their money to good use, more than a hundred orphanages and homes that are always short of contributions, the house of worship with their bottomless pit of donation kits and private entities that could set up trusts to aid the needy. Yet, they decided to spend it all with close friends, fine dining, rewarding their palate and seeing all the things that they could see in this lifetime. Who knows what holds for them in the future when this life is through? An abyss? A new beginning with no recollection of what transpired here and now? Or…
Friday, 9 September 2022
All the justice money can buy.
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Chief Justices Tengku Maimun Tuan Mat, Chief Judge of Sabah and Sarawak Abang Iskandar Abang Hashim, and apex court judges Nallini Pathmanathan, Mary Lim and Mohamad Zabidin Diah. |
Now we know there is life after the appeal. One can seek justice by pleading at the Federal Court. If the results there are not to his liking, he further argues to have a judicial review of the panel of judges that meted his sentence. Even the Federal Court can be held at ransom. This is called justice in the world of the high-heeled. Everyone deserves adequate legal representation, and it is his human right. Of course, it becomes mandatory if the client can afford the obscene amount of retainer fees involved as the case goes higher in the hierarchy of the legal accolade. Nobody has the guts to inquire about these people's seemingly bottomless coffers and the disproportional amount they save from their structured civil servant pay.
Not to forget the special treatment these VIP client is entitled to. In the eyes of the law, unlike what everybody else says, he is not a criminal until he has exhausted all his legal avenues. Till then, he will be roaming freely, still flashing his designer outfits and not repeating wearing the same tunic more than once. He can perhaps add a tinge of tangerine in his tie to mock naysayers who miss the joy of seeing him in an orange prison suit. The shiny steel cuff links can remind them of the handcuffs that he does not have to wear.
We, the mere mortal we are, are also told that everyone deserves a second chance. Like a true religious confession, with a single stroke of the royal quill, one can get a clean slate, free to do what he seems fit, sniggering at the whole parody of it all.
In the true mantra of cash is king, money can buy friends, love, liaisons with the rich and famous and definitely justice and freedom. Laws are made to make the powerless remain so and squirm at the sight of the stick. For the privileged 1%, it is just an inconvenience. Laws are meant to be broken. The rich can challenge it. The poor just have to oblige.
Friday, 22 April 2022
Blurred line between fact and fiction!
Friday, 14 January 2022
Wealth does not last more than 3 generations?
Sunday, 21 March 2021
A full circle

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Anti-capitalist protesters - St Paul's Cathedral, London, 2011. Photograph: Oli Scarff/Getty Images Europe |
Resentment grew again. Wage did not expand in proportion to the increased cost of living. The increase in union strikes and demand for entitlement did not help either. Labour was no longer an asset but the expense of doing business. The welfare state was just too costly.
On the other hand, it generates more income for them. Tax evasion manoeuvres are helped via cash-strapped tax havens in banana republics. The problem with these havens is that their local populace does not benefit from these transactions. They remain poor. They do not have to fear economic downturns as history has shown that bail-outs can be arranged.
Only 15% of the world wealth is spent to create a beneficial trickle-down effect to the not-so-wealthy 99%. The 'baby boomers' had it good. With the post-war prosperity and ability to acquire wealth, they can enjoy the fruit of their labour in their twilight years if they had done so. Meanwhile, the Millenials has it bad. With the rung of the social ladder getting wider and having had to finance their own education, they may spend their whole life in debt. They may not afford to own a roof over their head like their predecessors. The gig economy that they find satisfying puts them in a precarious position. They are not provided with a safety net against accidents, sickness and opportunity for holidays.
The author suggests that there should be a comprehensive tax revision. The ultra-rich needed to be taxed progressively the more they earn. Invasion of taxes by clandestine methods needs to be looked into. As inherited wealth will dominate wealth made form a lifetime's labour by an exorbitant margin, he propose an inheritance tax. His argument is that one cannot start the game of life with different terms, the have and have nots. His analogy is a game of monopoly of two players where one player starts the game with more money and has the chance to play with two dices. He will pass 'Go' more times and buy more properties and earlier in the game, hence collecting more rent. Well, one can say this is a Marxist or leftist view of the distribution of wealth.
Thursday, 22 October 2020
The higher you fly, the harder the fall!
This is another one of Netflix's productions that hit a snag in India, this time it spurned court cases demanding against its release. Three out of the four episodes in the series were released recently. The fourth episode, a documentary narrating the rise and fall of Ramalinga Raju of Satyam Computers, was successfully stopped at the courts for its damaging portrayal of the man.
Vijay Mallya, a fugitive currently residing in the UK, is also known as the King of Good Times. Born to a beer brewer father, despite the Prohibition of liquor in many states of India, managed to glamourise beer drinking during the dot com bubble heydays of the '90s. From there he went on to the world centre stage through his involvement in the 'no frills' airline business and the F1 races. He made a few shady loans, and soon he was hot on the heels of the authority. He fleed to London and is fighting extradition efforts to India.
Diamondtaire, Nirav Modi, was born into a family that delved in the jewellery business for generations. He was the one who singlehanded showcased the master craftsmanship of the Indian jewellers to the world stage via his international brand that carried his name. He allegedly inflated the value of his own merchandise through sales of his jewellery to different shell companies. His shady loans with Punjab National Bank, however, alerted the lawmen to investigate his dealings. Modi is now seeking asylum in the UK.
We are familiar with the brand Sahara which use to be displayed proudly on the Indian cricket and hockey team jerseys. Sahara (Saviour) is the name of a financier group created by a rags-to-riches individual named Subrata Roy. At one time, the Sahara group of companies was the biggest employer in India after the Indian Railways. Its primary business was chit fund, a type of savings for the poor. It later ventured into real estate, hospitality, airline industry, healthcare, education and many more. His problems started when he decided to public list two of his companies. This spurred the Market Regulators to look into his company accounts. Despite the repeated accusations and huge fines imposed on the conglomerate, the company's fundamentals are still intact.The story of fame and fortune always excites the deprived or those dreaming for the unattainable. Perhaps, the safest way to gather wealth is to do in the sly without kicking much pomp and splendour. Splashing obscene amount of cash for private events always open the eyes of the regulators who had been entrusted with upholding the law, has the Hobson's choice of needing to investigate. No system is leak-proof; it is easy to find a discrepancy. One thing leading to another, years of labour will come tumbling down. The middle ground seems prudent but then how do create something earth-shattering without a thud?

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