Effect of GST Increase

By Peace | June 30, 2007

As usual, went to church this morning. I had missed the fish ball noodles for a month already. I was craving for it and looking forward to eating the fish ball noodles since last night. However, this morning, I did not have my usual appetite. I did not finish the fish ball noodles for the first time.

Today the fish ball noodles did not look the same as before. The fish ball is much smaller and it is not as tasty as before too. The shape of the fish ball is not all even also. Some were very much out of shape, which looks very elongated like an oval plastic toy egg. This must be the effect of GST, the Goods and Services Tax which is going to increase tomorrow, on Sunday 1 July. GST is a tax charged on the supply of goods and services made in Singapore and on the importation of goods into Singapore. The current rate is 5% since 1 January 2004. However, from tomorrow onwards, the GST rate will be increased to 7%.

This means that we need to pay more for what we need from tomorrow onwards. Already life is hard now. With the GST increase, it is going to be worse. The rich will always get richer but the poor will always get poorer. Money, money, and money. Everything is talking about money.

Even in daily life, the parents are imparting the importance of money to their children. Richard said this to the children,”Play, play, play. All you know is play. Got money?” Isn’t this a sad thing to hear? Children of today have lesser time to play, have lots of studies and stress than decades ago. Everything is moving in the ‘express lane’, at such a fast rate that the important basic concepts of most things are not being emphasized in schools. What I feel and know of is the education system is moving too fast and lots of changes are being added. Children have lots of things to study. Stuff which were being taught during my secondary school days were taught in the Primary levels now. I have too much things to say about this. Probably another day I shall have a post on it. It really makes my blood boil.

Back to money. Everything is money, money and money. I am really sick of listening to the word ‘Money’ at times — especially when parents have to vent their anger on the children when they have so much stress, having to face many problems in life when trying hard to make money. This prompted me to start another new blog, Money Sick. I am not going to have any more blogs already. With this, it will be my last blog that I am going to create. Creating blogs need time as well as money to manage. So I am going to stop at this and not any more.

Money Sick is just three days old. It was a very sudden and fast decision. Never even plan or thought of before. I had been working on it for two days. So if you are going to check it out, there is only two posts and not much content in it yet. I shall continue to post more of my thoughts as and when I am free. For now, I am going to sleep soon.

This is Money Sick. Read more about Money Sick here.