Tax the Rich, to Get Free Food, Healthcare and Housing for all Singaporeans
Singaporeans, you want free healthcare? Free food? And HDBs to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars cheaper? Here’s how we do it: tax the fucking rich. Increase taxes for everyone who makes more than ten thousand dollars a month.
Rich people have gotten away with not paying taxes for so long. Tax dollars that could be spent on dramatically reducing the cost of living for Singaporeans. Because although the middle to lower class get most of their money from income, the rich usually get their money from all other sorts of places: stocks, property, land, crypto etc. And in Singapore, they pay little to no tax for any of that! You have zero, I repeat: zero percent tax on capital gains, inheritance or wealth. So while almost 100% of the earnings of the lower to middle class are taxed. For the rich, 30 to 60% of their earnings can be completely tax free. That’s absolutely insane.
Now the PAP dictatorship says they’ve got low taxes for the wealthy because they want to attract foreign investment. But when is too attractive too much? You want to give a free yacht to every millionaire that comes into Singapore?
Because the thing is: you can still increase taxes for the rich, generate tens of billions of dollars, and still be considered incredibly tax-friendly to the rich, compared to other countries. A huge amount of foreign investment will still come. And if really some companies change their mind or leave Singapore because of the increased taxes, the tens of billions of dollars that will be generated from taxes, will make up for it, and more.
And to be clear, we only need to tax people who make more than ten thousand dollars a month (the top 20% of earners in Singapore). Everyone who earns less than that will not have their taxes increased at all. Not only that, the rich Singaporeans won’t even be less happy because they have less money from paying more taxes. Studies in behavioral economics show that money does increase happiness, but up to a certain point. And that point for most Singaporeans seem to be: ten thousand dollars a month. Any more money will literally not make you any happier, and might even cause more trouble and sadness. So even considering all the money you’ll pay in taxes and put into CPF, you’ll still have enough disposable income to be maximally happy.
With these tax increases, they can generate an extra 30 billion dollars more a year. 8 billion of that can be spent on healthcare, 8 billion on housing development and subsidies, another 8 billion on targeted assistance for the elderly, disabled, and people with low-income. All essential healthcare services, especially for those with serious conditions like Cancer, Stroke, Dementia, will be completely free. All the elderly, disabled and poor will be given more free money for food, water, electricity and other basic necessities, saving them 500 to a 1000 dollars a month. And the cost of HDBs can have a 30% decrease, and be hundreds of thousands of dollars cheaper. We can afford all of this and more, by taxing the rich.
Here are all the additional taxes we can place on the rich, and the money each tax will generate:
Total Gained from Additional Taxes: 28 Billion Dollars