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As I said earlier, the government that is going to plan Malaysia’s future beyond 2020 is not about a popularity contest between two people. It is about what do we do about Malaysia’s aging population? Would we just dump them into old folks’ homes. Let the Rotary Club or Lions Club worry about them? Or are we going to come out with a good policy to support them? Last week, I wrote an article called Are we having a popularity contest? ’ Basically, my argument was that we need a good education system, a good healthcare system, and food (meaning a good agriculture policy so that Malaysia can feed its growing population without depending on imports: like it now does and has been from the very beginning). Today, there is another issue I want to talk about: and that is about Malaysia’s aging population and what do we do with our old people. First, read the news report by AsiaOne (below) regarding Japan and the graphics below from the UK Parliament website.
In 50 years or so, Japan expects its population to decrease. That would be good if it was India or China. The problem with Japan, though, is that they expect less people to be born while old people will live longer. how to read tabs guitar , in 50 years from now, almost half the population would be retired people. This would also mean they would not be income-generating Japanese, they would need supporting (and with no younger/working people to support them they would be dependent on state support), and they would be a strain on the healthcare and welfare system. This, to a certain degree, is already happening in the UK. Everywhere you go in the UK you will notice one very glaring thing: everyone appears so old. And I should know: I have been living here almost three years now. The UK is going to see what Japan is going to see: a growing aging population. What has all this got to do with Malaysia?
Well, in the 1980s, a mere 30 years ago, Malaysia was said to be amongst the youngest countries in the world (not in terms of nationhood but in terms of population). Around https://guitar121.com of Malaysians were below voting age. Can you see that two-thirds of Malaysians who will need to worry about the problem are going to be the Bumiputeras? By then, Malaysia’s ‘overseas population’ is going to increase from one million, now, to probably three million or so -- about 85% or 90% of them non-Bumiputeras. The non-Bumiputeras are not going to suffer as much as the Bumiputeras as they are more ‘mobile’. Know how to plan their future better than the Bumiputeras do. Today, people are living longer than, say, around the time of Merdeka. Around the time of Merdeka, by the age of 55 you retired and you are not expected to live too long after that. Today, at 65 or 70 you are still active and probably healthy as well.
Today, you may live to the age 75 or 80. And what is troubling is: long before that, say before the age of 65, your savings and EPF would have dried up. How do we support our old people? They need food. A good healthcare system. In the UK, they can have that, although at great cost to the system (and the working population). But then even the lowest paid worker is taxed 20% of their salary at source and the VAT takes away another 20%. By the time all the taxes takes its toll, 70% of what you earn goes to the system to support the old people and ‘others’ (such as school leavers who are unemployed) who depend on the system. As I said earlier, the government that is going to plan Malaysia’s future beyond 2020 is not about a popularity contest between two people. It is about what do we do about Malaysia’s aging population? Would we just dump them into old folks’ homes.