GST Hike
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.
Topics: All Posts, Money, Personal |
July 25th, 2007 at 4:20 am
[…] This is the same fish balls noodles that I had always eaten with my husband at Woodgrove. However, after the GST increase on 1st July 2007, the fish balls are not the same anymore. If you compared this fish balls to those I had taken some time earlier, at Good Food Ends With Good Talk, one of my other blog — Best Fish Balls Noodles, you will see that the fish balls are smaller. You cannot taste the fish balls. Let me tell you the difference. The fish balls taste different, not as nice as before. Before the GST, the fish balls are bigger and tastier. Now, the fish balls are smaller, softer, not much of taste — don’t taste like fish balls even, taste more flour balls than fish balls. I suppose they had put more flour, say 70% flour as compared to the amount of fish, 30%. Of course all other ingredients were adjusted according too — the salt, MSG, flavouring, soy sauce, etc etc. Their price remains the same S$2.50 per bowl of fish balls noodle. However, the standard has dropped. It is not the best fish balls noodle already. This is the effect of GST increase. Increase GST causes the cost of everything to go up. Store vendors had to face the higher increase in their cost price too. To raise their profits, they had to cut cost and reduce costly ingredients, replacing the more costly ingredients with cheaper ingredients. But will this solve their problems? I would rather they had the same standard. I can afford to pay them another 50cents, if they ask for it. But if that is the same fish balls they are going to give to customers in future, then that is the end for me to patronize them. I would not spend $2.50 for poor quality food, but I would spend $3.00 for tastier food. […]