Where have we been going economically?

I visited United Kingdom in November after almost 30 years lapse.

The place has not physically changed except that the tourism spots are no longer free. There are some exceptions such as the Natural History Museum remains free. However, the authority recovers their costs by the operation of nice Cafés and souvenir shops.

It has changed from a social-centric state where the government pays for most of the things to users pay for the things they consume. A policy shift to who-use-who-pay from one-use-nation-pay; government is now more profit-oriented or at least self-sustainable-minded in their governance.

The value of the property such as houses in England has increased tremendously in the last 30 years and almost 8-10 times more than before while salary had increased by almost 6 times more as far as fresh undergraduate employee is concerned. Our Malaysian counterpart was offered RM1,000 to 1,200 in the 1970-1980 while the same remains unchanged in the 2000 era! However, only the house prices are at par with the British!

Something is quite wrong somewhere in our income arena; we had not been able to raise our standard to the level that we supposed to. One cup of coffee in U.K. costs 1.80 to 2.0 Pounds and the same thing in Malaysia costs RM1.80. The normal bus fare is minimum 2 Pounds while ours ranging from minimum RM1.00 to RM2.00. A pack of four corn cobs costs 3.50 Pounds while it costs RM3.50 in Malaysia. The current exchange rate is one pound to RM5.50!

However, our health services is fantastically “dirt cheap” compared to British health services which charges relatively high than our country. The charges in Malaysia should be gradually increased to ease the burden of government; but we must ensure that the income of the general public is “high” enough to afford it. The idea of setting minimum wages is laudable and should be given more supports on the presumption that productivity is matched relatively.

We may have transformed our landscape in the city but not our economy in terms of wealth distribution. It was an asymmetrical growth indeed.