Pity the Hong Kong middle class
Updated: 2014-02-17 07:13
By Hong Liang(HK Edition)
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They are oppressed by the property tycoons, bullied by their employers and unloved by the government. Unable to claim a fair share of the economic gains under a woefully imbalanced structure that is stacked against them, the vast majority of the middle class have seen their income sapped by rising costs, especially property prices. With the chance of achieving the "Hong Kong dream" diminishing, the middle class is understandably demoralized.
It came as no surprise for middle-class people in Hong Kong to feel left out when Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying announced in his policy speech last month a slew of much-needed measures to help the working poor. The government has insisted that it has not ignored the middle class, citing its plan to increase the supply of housing as an example of even-handedness.
But the repeated warnings from the financial branch of withdrawing what it wrongly considers handouts that benefit mainly the middle class sound repugnant. Writing on his blog, Financial Secretary John Tsang noted that the so-called budget "sweeteners" of the past several years will "very soon become history" as the global economy continues to improve.
For the first time, Hong Kong people were told that these "sweeteners" are nothing more than relief measures to tie them over hard times. That's not an explanation most Hong Kong people can accept. Hong Kong people have come to expect that it is their collective right to share a part of the budgetary surplus in good times or bad. They are right.
The financial branch of the government is supposed to formulate a balanced budget to maximize expenditure on services for the benefit of all. The massive annual budgetary surpluses in the past several years are an indication that the financial secretary and his team have failed to do their homework properly. Instead of congratulating themselves on how big the surplus was, they should be reviewing their methodology for having missed the mark by such a wide margin.
Many financial officials and researchers at business-funded think tanks have argued that because of the projected large recurrent expenditure on education and social services, those "sweeteners", or one-off handouts, are unreasonable and an unnecessary waste of public resources. It's, of course, hard to argue with that.
But before the government can learn to produce a balanced budget that incorporates a significant increase in recurrent expenditure for the benefit of the society as a whole, those one-off handouts aren't unreasonable or unnecessary. As of now, they are the only way the government can return wealth to the public as it is supposed to do.
Let's make one thing clear. Those so-called "sweeteners" aren't government largess to which the public is obliged to be grateful as some commentators had suggested. The public, particularly the tax payers, have every right to feel entitled to them. The government is simply returning to the public what belongs to the public.
Unlike what Tsang and others suggest, the public doesn't take those budgetary "sweeteners" for granted. When the government produces a reasonable balanced budget, nobody will clamor for handouts or tax concessions.
It's all up to Tsang and his team.
The author is a senior editor with China Daily. jamesleung@chinadaily.com.cn
(HK Edition 02/17/2014 page9)