Rant & Raves

:: Listening .. “Lonely” by Akron ::

Inside information is that from Sept onwards, the price for cigarettes will increase by 1 dollar, meaning that a pack of cigarettes will now cost 7.50 dollars. Well, when will the inflation be slowed down?

Recently there were price hikes in petrol and toll charges. In retrospect, the general publics income has not increased for years, so one can imagine the burden laid on the shoulder of the publics. Yet with all the excuses those government bodies gave for increasing the price are not justifiable. For example, the toll management explained that there are a lot to be done, and they are still not making any money. One has to think that after operating the toll for more than 20 years, one would be able to make some kind of money. Instead, they claim they are still heavily in debt, and the condition of the North-South highway is as bad as ever. So where did the toll collect go?

And how about the petrol? Well, they said they are slowly decreasing the subsidies spent on the petrol, and I can certainly understand that the global petrol price has gone up to USD 67 per barrel recently. But we are producing our own petrol as well, and according to the calculations published by them, I don’t see how this will help much as the math is really confusing.

We should all fight inflation together, but it seems to me that the government is actually inflicting inflation and with all the price going up, then other products will be going up as well since the cost for raw materials are definitely going up. At the end, we will suffer.

Yes, increasing the price (or tax) will definitely help, but then the economy of the country will suffer in a long term basis. Furthermore, with all those prices increasing like nobody’s business, then local spending will be less, hence market will be affected with very conscious spender. So how can the government encourage local spending?

Sometimes I have the impression that we are actually falling backward instead of charging forward in term of technology and standard of living. Previously the Fast*Track system was a big hit because it is more efficient and faster for the automated toll payment. But instead, due to some funny reasons, the toll management forced Fast*Track out and instead use their 15-years-old technology; Smart’Tag. The scan-time is slower, reaction distance is shorter, more expensive to produce, and the battery life worse than Fast*Track. So does that make sense to anyone?

All the things being done don’t make sense at all. It is a very confused country indeed…