By Shern Ren | November 16, 2011
The Malaysian Insider

NOV 16 — Tomorrow my younger brother is going to school to collect the RM100 that the government has promised him as a school-goer. It’s all well and good for him to get a bit more spending money, but what difference does it make in our national Budget? Here’s an imaginary conversation that will take place tomorrow in a school far too close to home…

Hi, and welcome to Class 1 Malaysia in SJK Pelancar(1). As you’re all aware, our class president (who’s also the class treasurer) has magnanimously decided to give RM100 to all schoolchildren — that’s you and me! But before you all line up to receive his magnificent gift, he’s asked me to make a little speech about how far we’ve come as a class.

There are fifty of us in this class, 1 Malaysia. Who’s bringing in the dough? Well, 21 of us are employed, but only six of us will have any qualification higher than the SPM. Only three working people earn enough to pay any class fees at all to the class fund, which makes it all the more interesting that two of you guys are actually working for the class and earning your living from that same class fund. Don’t get too comfortable in your job though — there are eight fellows from other classes like 1 Donesia willing to do our jobs for half the price, or two of them for every five of us.

Now the poorest 20 of you, on average, know what it’s like to live on only RM11.50 a day, or a monthly household income of RM1,500 — which you must stretch to cover your rent, loans, and utilities as well as the lousy canteen food.

The next 20 of you, on average, are a bit luckier to be getting by on RM27 a day, or a monthly household income of RM3,500 a month. But the richest 10 of you have RM73 a day to burn, or a monthly household income of RM9,500.

Among yourselves, you ten have concentrated 49 per cent of our class’s total income in the top 20 per cent of our class; the lowest 40 per cent have got only 15 per cent of our class’s total income. Good job, capitalists!

But the total household debt between you all is just over a million ringgit, while the total disposable income you’re hauling in is only about RM730,000, so you’d all better tighten your belts just the same

How’s the class fund doing, you ask? Oh, it’s in amazing shape. Our class currently owes various debtors something like RM773,800. Last year it was only RM720,500 — you really have to hand it to our class president to know how to spend.

Remember that there’s only three lucky guys earning enough to pay tax, and our current debt is going to be RM257,900 for each of them to fork up. Well, we’ve got a bit of time to pay off our debts I guess. but you three had better keep paying your class fees like there’s no tomorrow. After all, the interest repayments alone are costing us about RM40,000, or 10 per cent of our expenditure this year.

That’s right, the class president has promised us that we’ll spend about RM400,000 as a class this year. Good news is, that’s about as much as we’ve actually spent as a class last year. Bad news is, he promised us that we’d only spend RM373,000 the year before.

So if we keep spending more than our president says we’ll spend, we’re looking at something actually closer to RM440,000 of spending money for his pet projects this year. I guess you know now why our class owes so much money, don’t you?

It’s okay, the president promised that the class fund will rake in RM330,000 of revenue this year — a third of which will come out of a hole in the ground that his father’s Patronus managed to dig about thirty-five years ago.

Look, there’s only three guys paying about RM11,000 each in class fees — you seriously can’t expect us to actually earn the money we’re making, do you? Us spending more money than we’re making is business as usual by now, you know; we’ve been doing it for thirteen years now and our class is still here. It’s not like our debt is going to reach a million ringgit or anything. And even if it does, we’ll be a developed class by then! I’m sure we’ll think of some way to pay it off.

I guess you would have realised by now that we still have a long way to go as a class. With 15 of our 21 working people unqualified for anything more than filing papers and driving lorries, and eight fit strong 1 Donesians waiting at the door to undercut us, I’m sure you can imagine why the guy at the back is waving his hand and suggesting that we decrease our class fund spending and focus it on upgrading the workforce and reducing foreign labour. But don’t listen to him. (I hear he poked his pencil up his best friend’s nose, or something.)

But, you know, our class president has the perfect solution! He’ll start all kinds of magnificent construction projects so that you can all get paid by your own class fund to pour concrete in the hot sun if you can’t find a job on your own — and just to prove that he cares about education, he’ll even build schools too!

And even though you may each have a household debt of RM20,000 and a class debt of RM15,500 to pay off on only RM900 income per capita per month, I’m sure our class president will find a way to settle all our problems — as long as you give him another five years to do it.

That’s right, he’s going to need a bit more time. I’m sure you’ll give it to him, right? Think of the RM100 you’re getting today. And with that, can I get you all to line up for your money? That’s my good little boys and girls. Remember to kiss his hand!

This is what our workforce and Budget would look like if Malaysia were a class of fifty students. To find the real figures, simply divide by fifty and multiply by 28.25 million where applicable, which is the population of Malaysia as at 2010. (The World Bank estimates it to be currently 28.4 million; this is an upward adjustment of about half a percent.)

The size of an average household in Malaysia is 4.3 people. Both of these numbers come from Malaysia’s Department of Statistics here; the other budget figures come from insightful analysis by REFSA, especially its Budget and pre-Budget focus papers.

Also, SJK stands for “Sekolah Jenaka Kelakar”, which indicates that this is a work of parody.

To those who may take offense at the class’s president allegedly resembling a certain gentleman in power, I can only say that a bitten chilli is the surest cause of a burning tongue.