What is “rich”?

(富如何定义？)
夏伟文 & 陈薛卉 (23 Nov 2015)

Almost everyone wish to be as rich as possible. Countless countries dream to become high income (rich) countries. This includes Malaysia’s Vision 2020 and Economic Transformation Program (ETP). In our pursuit of richness / high income, we should first clearly define “richness” (the target) and then, choose its path.

How does Malaysia define “rich”?

What is “rich” or “poor”? Let’s begin with this interesting story.

One day, a rich man brings his son to a farm to experience the life of a poor family. Right after they back from the farm, the father asks: “Do you understand about poverty?” The son nods his head and says: “Yes, father, I understand.” He further elaborates: “We have one dog but they have four dogs, we owned a fifty meters swimming pool in our garden but they have endless foreshore, we have an imported crystal lamp in the dining room but they have incalculability stars at nights, we have thousand square feet of land but they can nomad around grassland, we have several servants to serve us but they are more willing to help other people, we use money to buy the food but they are planting for food, we have wall to protect ourselves but they have friends to protect them.” “Dad, in fact we are poorer than them,” the son said.

In today material capitalism world, “rich” is closely associate with “high income”. In addition, rich country also should have lots of high rise buildings, state-of-the-art infrastructure, high population, high technology level and prosperous service sector. It is just like having many pet dogs, big swimming pool, expensive lamp, servants and security service in the story from the father’s definition of “rich”. We want this material richness? Based on ETP, it seems “yes”. Three of its objectives “high income”, “inclusiveness” and “sustainability” are measured in term of income level or wealth. However, Vision 2020 is more holistic in its targets (stated as challenges to be achieved). Vision 202 has nine challenges as follow.

·         Challenge 1: To form a nation that stands as one.

·         Challenge 2: To produce a Malaysian community that has freedom, strength,   and full of self confidence.

·         Challenge 3: To develop a mature democratic community.

·         Challenge 4: To form a community that has high morale, ethics and religious strength.

·         Challenge 5: To cultivate a community that is matured and tolerant.

·         Challenge 6: To form a progressive science community.

·         Challenge 7: To cultivate a community rich in values and loving culture.

·         Challenge 8: To ensure the formation of a community with a fair economy.

·         Challenge 9: To cultivate a prosperous community.

Vision 2020’s first seven challenges highlights other types of richness we should also pursuit:  “unity”, “freedom”, “democracy”, “ethics/moral and religions”, “social values” and “science and technology”. Challenge no.9 focuses on the common material richness (wealth/high income) while Challenge no.8 emphasis the fair distribution of the wealth/income.

In reference to Malaysia’s status, we are crazily chasing World Bank’s USD 15 000 Gross National Income (GNI) per capita to be qualified as developed nation. Malaysia does achieved good standing in United Nations Development Program’s (UNDP) “Human Development Index (HDI)”. Yet, the country did not emphasis or highlights this achievement as much as richness in income level. In year 2013, Malaysia ranked 62^nd out of 187 countries and considered as high human development. Norway ranked top. Australia, Switzerland, Netherlands and United States completed the Top 5. Among Asian countries, Singapore ranked 9^th followed by Hong Kong (joint 15^th), South Korea (joint 15^th) and Japan (17^th).

This HDI index takes in to consideration of material richness (income) as well as other aspects that enrich human life such as education (schooling years, enrolments, literacy rate, school dropout rate, quality of education and expenditure on education), health (life expectancy, diseases, health expenditure, mortality and malnutrition) and income (including poverty, inequality, various aspects of employment/unemployment, child labor and maternity leave).

Malaysia is ranked 56^th for year 2013 in World Happiness Report published by United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN). Switzerland top the ranking followed by Iceland, Denmark, Norway and Canada. Singapore is the highest Asian countries at 24^th, followed by Qatar (28^th), Kuwait (32^nd), Saudi Arabia (33^rd) and Thailand (36^th). The component used to calculate the Happiness index includes Gross Domestic Products (GDP) per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choice, generosity and perceptions of corruption.

Should Malaysia scarify happiness and social value for higher income? Will higher income bring more happiness? This can be like “egg first or chicken first” argument. How about the quantity and quality of health and education for its citizens? Should we blind our eyes to moral value while glorify excessive greed in order to gain wealth? Aren’t all those like happiness, health, education, harmony, freedom, religious value and moral are also part of human civilization’s “richness”? Which Malaysia’s economic development plan (besides Vision 2020) has non-material richness as their important target towards achieving developed nation status?

Ethic vs. Greed: “Look East” Lesson

Coincidently, two prominent people in Malaysia that emphasized on non-material richness are political rival, namely Mahathir Mohamad and Anwar Ibrahim. In his Look East Policy and self-belief, Mahathir admired and urged Malaysian to look to Japan, South Korea and Taiwan for their positive work ethics. People of these East Asia nations especially Japan have high moral value, outstanding intelligent, strong cultural root, strong patriotism and very hardworking. They take pride in their work too. The Japanese shocked the developing world includes Malaysian when they queue up for food assistance after the tsunami tragedy. If the same thing happened in Malaysia, its people most likely will selfishly jump queue and scramble to get as much food as possible. It has also been repeatedly reported that Malaysians packed home food and beverages in large quantities at open houses. Some claimed Malaysians take empty 1-litre bottles to McDonald to pack home free refillable-carbonated drinks. Is no free refill now a consequence of Malaysians greediness? How rich could we get by packing home extra few bottles of ketchups, packet drinks and fried noodle from open house? Perhaps, a bottle of refilled Coke from McDonald everyday can be a good saving plan.

Let take a look at our surrounding. In Malaysia, you may find public car park lots being occupied by car repair shops, eateries, illegal DVD selling stalls, pubs/disco and variety types of shops. One car wash bay can easily swallowed five to eight parking lots at no cost to them but to the public welfare. Together with businesses like selling pirates DVD, book photocopying, illegal betting, illegal car jokey, prostitution, drugs, money laundering and others make up so called “underground economy”. This type of economy does not pay taxes nor usually benefit the society. Do you see these in Japan or South Korea? Due to rampant corruption, inefficiency in law enforcement, constant missing moral element in policy and economic plan, underground economy is flourishing in Malaysia.

Is there anyone willing to trade USD15,000 GNI per capita for the safety of your beloved children, wife, daughter and girlfriend? Can a nation with high level of pollution, corruption and crime plus low level of ethic/moral, patriotism and happiness to be considered “developed”? Missing the non-material richness is like a body without soul, thus not complete.

Summary

Income or material wealth is important. Nonetheless, in our pursuit of higher income, we should not overlook non-material aspects of richness. Let’s make holistic development as our goal towards achieving Vision 2020. Let’s add the spiritual and social value aspects to ETP for a holistic social economic transformation.

[Chinese version published at 南洋商报经济周刊 Nanyang Press – Business News, page A7 on 23rd November 2015. Available online at http://www.nanyang.com/node/735452. This English version may be slightly different from the Chinese online/printed newspaper version]