tim's experiment

Between the time when I escaped from the UK’s university system and the time I came to Hong Kong I worked, mainly in journalism but also in sundry bars and Bingo halls, for about eight years. This, I discovered as retirement loomed, entitled me to a pension from the UK government. This can be collected wherever you are, though if you live overseas you don’t get cost of living increases. It is regarded as an owned entitlement, because it is the product of the compulsory payments made into the National Insurance fund by you and your employer when you were working. Accordingly, how much you get depends on how much was paid in. As the payments in my case only lasted for eight years the entitlement is quite small, though still welcome. As my 65th birthday approached I Skyped a nice lady in the UK Pensions office, which for some reason is in Newcastle, and she sent me the necessary forms. The money appears in my bank account every month. If your entitlement is very small you can ask them to send it less often.

The amount, as I said, is nothing to write home about. It covers, by coincidence, our monthly management fees with a little to spare. It is, however, more than twice as much as the amount our generous government, with much heaving and straining, is proposing to distribute to the deserving poor under the latest proposals. These involve a means-tested monthly payment of $2,000 or so. Our leaders have bravely announced that they will not consider any proposed changes to this plan, and less bravely also announced that if it is not approved in the original form the distribution of largesse will be delayed.

This has not so far inhibited the opposition, some of which has come from unexpected quarters. There is a recurring problem here. If proposals require legislators’ approval then legislators will be tempted to tweak them. Officials will be tempted to say that tweaking will not be tolerated. But if it is not tolerated then members feel they are being treated like a rubber stamp. Or the National People’s Congress. This is of course resented. I notice that even the DAB has been slower than usual to discover, as it always does, that a proposal which it initially opposed has redeeming features so the DAB will support the government. Surprise!

The substantive question presented by the government’s proposal is one which dogs all welfare systems. If the benefit is distributed to everyone then some of it will go to people who do not need it. I am, for example, the happy owner of a ticket which allows me to go anywhere on the MTR for $2. I also own a car. If the benefit is means-tested then many of the people for whom it is intended will not get it. They will be unable or unwilling to fill in the required forms, or they will reject as a matter of pride a benefit associated with poverty.  The argument is not about fairness to millionaires. It is about whether the way the benefit is offered will get it to the people who need it.

Clearly there is no final solution to this dilemma. If there were it would have been found by now. People have been struggling with the question since the days of Bismark. However a partial solution, at least, is available. That is to make the collection of the benefit sufficiently inconvenient to put off those who don’t really need it. Let us, for example, replace the $2,000 a month with $500 a week, to be collected in cash at a stated time and place in your neighbourhood. This is not difficult. It is the way UK pensions used to be distributed. You collected your weekly dollop from the nearest Post Office. Perhaps the nearest 7-11 would be more convenient in Hong Kong. Well off retirees are not going to make a weekly trip and quene up with a load of peasants for $500. It is not worth their time. For those who really need it, on the other hand, a short weekly walk is a trivial requirement. Many of them neither have nor need bank accounts. They would prefer cash.

How a person is expected to survive in Hong Kong on $500 a week is another matter. Look at it whichever way you want I do not see how this figure can be described as generous. Is there anyone on Exco who does not own fleets of flats, droves of directorships, shedloads of shares, or pairs of detached Peak houses festooned with dubiously legal additions? I thought not.