MuniHmdn 🇵🇸

Striving to be well read. RT, Likes and Follows not necessarily endorsements.
Tweets not intended to offend...unless stated otherwise.

[MuniHmdn 🇵🇸 @MuniHmdn]

#NoteToSelf You may not see God's plan for you right now, but you will someday; and when that day comes you'll be glad He made you wait.

[Ooi Beng Cheang @luxentX]

Our local doctors can do amazing things despite the challenges they face daily.

[themokumentary @themokumentary]

Tally vision. 🧵1/4

[ribby @someonesribby]

‘and He will provide for him from sources he never could imagine and whoever puts their trust in Allah, then He alone is sufficient for them’

quran 65:3

[Wilson is Running 🇲🇾 @wilsonyimby]

A friend told me that Singapore's HDB is a form of wealth transfer by their government.

I didn't know what he meant. Wealth transfer from who, to who, and how?

We have PPR in Malaysia. Isn't that just our version of HDB?

The more I dug, the less true that turned out to be.

Start with who each system is for.

PPR is welfare. The income cap is RM3,000 per month. Earn RM3,500 and you do not qualify. It is for the bottom half of B40.

HDB is the default. Around 80 percent of Singaporeans live in HDB flats. The income ceiling for new flats goes up to SGD 14,000 per month, roughly RM48,000. Almost everyone qualifies.

So one is a safety net. The other is the country's main housing system. That is a huge difference at the starting line.

Now financing. This is the part nobody talks about.

Every working Singaporean contributes to CPF. Roughly 20 percent of their salary plus 17 percent from their employer. That money funds the HDB downpayment. It also pays the monthly mortgage directly, no commercial bank in between.

The whole thing is a closed loop. The government builds the flat, sells it to you, holds your retirement savings, and pays itself back from your retirement savings.

In Malaysia, PPR ownership is paid through commercial bank loans. Regular mortgage. Regular interest. Regular default risk. EPF can be tapped for housing in limited ways but is not structurally integrated with public housing the way CPF is with HDB.

This is why HDB ownership is near-universal in Singapore. You almost cannot avoid owning a flat because the retirement system is built to push you toward one.

Then there is the part that turns this from a housing system into a wealth-building system.

HDB flats are sold at subsidized prices and appreciate in price almost from the moment it's sold. The HDB Resale Price Index has gone up roughly 50 percent since 2009, even though the flats are technically depreciating 99-year leaseholds. The newer the lease, the better the location, the better the resale value.

So Singaporeans who bought HDB flats in their twenties and thirties are sitting on assets that have grown alongside the country. They can sell, downgrade, and keep the difference. They can borrow against it. They can pass the lease on to family.

PPR units do not appreciate the same way. The resale market is thin. The locations are not desirable. The buyers are limited to other low-income households. The unit you bought for RM35,000 might still be worth RM35,000 fifteen years later in real terms.

So one system gives you a home and a wealth-building asset. The other gives you a home.

OK so let me circle back to my friend's claim. Why is HDB a wealth transfer?

I think I see it now.

In the 1960s and 70s, the Singapore government acquired most of the country's land under the Land Acquisition Act, often below market rates. They paid the old landowners less than the land was worth. Then they built flats on that land and sold them at subsidised prices to the population.

The wealth transfer flowed from old landowners to new flat buyers, with the government as the middleman. Land that would have made a small number of families very rich was converted into housing that 80 percent of the population could afford.

By 1985, the Singapore government owned 76 percent of the country's land, up from 31 percent in 1949. That was the foundation everything else was built on.

You might be wondering why Malaysia cannot just do the same.

The political moment for that kind of land acquisition has passed. Singapore did it during a specific window of nation-building under a one-party government. Malaysia has federalism, state land powers, multiple ethnic land claims, and a political environment where mass land acquisition would be near impossible.

So PPR is not a smaller HDB. PPR is a different programme answering a different question.

HDB asks "how do we house everyone."

PPR asks "how do we shelter the poorest."

These are not the same project.

When someone says Malaysia should have an HDB, they are really asking us to redo a 1965 nation-building exercise in 2026. That is much bigger than just building more PPR.

Did you learn something today like I did?

[Cenk Uygur @cenkuygur]

You know what’s the closest country to Israel in population? Papua New Guinea. Not joking. Nearly identical number of people. Imagine if our entire foreign policy was structured around Papua New Guinea.

If there were people who were Papua New Guinea First all over Congress and media. And we had given Papua New Guinea over $300 billion and people were saying it wasn’t enough! That we had spent $8 trillion on wars supporting Papua New Guinea and people said we needed one more war for them!

And if you ever criticized our ludicrous support for Papua New Guinea, everyone in media would call you an anti-Papua New Guineaist and said no one should ever talk to you again. Now, you’re beginning to see how absurd our support for Israel is.

[Pastor Ben @BenjaminPDixon]

Do you know how EVIL you have to be to do this to another human being?!

[George Galloway @georgegalloway]

He is a human pig. Unclean.

[osama @0ba0sama]

Americans after finding that a group of fish is called 'school'

[Seyed Mohammad Marandi @s_m_marandi]

Their objective was "no deal." They don't work for the US.

[Omar Hamad | عُـمَـرْ 𓂆 @OmarHamadD]

Benjamin Netanyahu’s criminality has far surpassed that of Adolf Hitler.

[angel @raimcandies]

please please please never stop talking about lebanon, this is genuinely horrific. bombing civilians was already bad enough but using extremely toxic chemicals with long lasting damage is an EXTREME low. wake up you people.. in no world should this ever be acceptable

[Iran Army Media @IranArmyMedia]

Trump has now ended 23 wars, including the Iran–U.S. war a record 14 times.

He deserves a Nobel Peace Prize.

[Louie 🇱🇧 @UTD_Louie]

They’re destroying one of the oldest civilisations on Earth. The most Christian country in the Middle East. It’s not even an anti-muslim agenda, Israel wants to take over al the land. Animals!

[sarah @sahouraxo]

Israel dropped bombs on this child’s home in Beirut.

He was just pulled from under the rubble alive.

His parents are nowhere to be found.

This is what Israel’s bombs do.
This is who they target.

[Sarayu Pani @sarayupani]

An important skill in itself but let’s not forget that Oman did everything possible in their power to block the American strikes in February including going on TV and telling the world the truth - that Iran was negotiating and that the US was lying.

[#DISUNOMICS @_NOMICS]

I have just watched an Lebanese man tell Al Jazeera how he was on his way home and he saw a strike and just knew his family was gone

He spoke to seeing his family body parts everywhere including his little girls head

Sorry Israel is such a disgusting nation

[Iran Army Media @IranArmyMedia]

Israel is attacking Iran’s historical sites,

But Iran can’t respond the same way because Israel has no history. 🙄😂

[Iran News 24 @IRanMediaco]

BREAKING: The Iranian National Security Council:

"Within a few hours, if the firing does not stop in southern Lebanon, the air and missile unit will bomb Tel Aviv.."