Dead Pensioners?

I was just wondering about this issue recently. The civil service employs about 2 million people and while I do not have the exact numbers, I have a feeling that there are a significant number of pensioners as well. Unlike the private sector, civil servants are given a lifelong pension. Even after their death, this pension can be collected by their spouse or any child under the age of 18.

As a direct result of this pension scheme, the government has a heavy burden to bear on wages. Therefore, the government is unable to raise the pay of the civil service significantly to meet inflationary rates. As a result, the private sector does not need to pay too much either as long as they pay similar to what the civil service pays. Therefore, the entire remuneration system in the country is kept depressed artificially by the government.

In order to ensure that people are still able to afford a decent life style, they government has to artificially depress the prices of certain commodities by imposing price controls and other subsidies. As a result, Malaysians are actually living an artificial lifestyle that is not sustainable in the long run. Everything is being kept low artificially and this lifestyle bubble that we live in will burst at some point and everyone will suddenly realise that our ringgit savings are worth a lot less than we thought.

We have to find some way of releasing the pressure on this artificial bubble by allowing some level of inflation of good, accompanied by a salary inflation as well. But in order to do this, the government will have to have enough cash to pay its workforce and pensioners as well. Therefore, I jokingly suggested that maybe, it’s time for all the pensioners to just grow old and die (this statement is not meant to be taken seriously).

However, with the increasing quality of health care in the country, plus the fact that it is free for pretty much anyone (especially pensioners), this is unlikely to happen soon. So, instead of hoping for them to expire, we should come up with some other ways to reduce the number of pensioners in the country. One way of doing it is by privatisation of course. Just privatise different departments of the government until there are none left to privatise.

Anyway, this is just a silly blog about a random thought on one way to help increase the basic wages in Malaysia. My parents had a nice laugh about it (and gave me some other ideas) when I threw this idea at them. They are both pensioners by the way. I love my parents. We can talk about death and taxes just like we talk about any other random thing.