badboy (beriman)

[izzi 🍋 @IzzraifHarz]

what’s wrong sweetie? why dont you eat your ayam gepuk pistachio matcha strawberry habbatussauda cheezy lemonade durian crepe buttercream tiramisu OTR espresso creme crown dark choc powder?

[badboy (beriman) @atikhsm]

@saladmodem @jjhwonu tudia buat hukum sendiri

[Krishna @22KK_krish]

The right lanes on Malaysian highways were promised to Alphards, Vellfires, Vios, and Bezzas 3000 years ago?

[pinenutter @pinenutter]

The biggest scam in Msian cafe culture today (apart from really terrible coffee beans) is the big breakfast. Cafes like Lisette and Kenny Hills selling toast, eggs, beans, mushrooms for RM40. I don't know if they're delusional or Msians have no sense of value. Like, wtf?

[Wilson is Running 🇲🇾 @wilsonyimby]

I need to convince myself that wealth tax works because I’m skeptical.

So I went digging.

Most people imagine a wealth tax like this. Tax the billionaires. The rich pay more. The country becomes more equal. Simple.

What does the day say?

Only 4 countries in the world still have a broad wealth tax today. Norway, Spain, Switzerland, and Colombia. Out of these, only Switzerland has clearly succeeded.

Why?

Switzerland does the opposite of what most people would guess.
Switzerland taxes wealth at very low rates. Between 0.05% and 1%. The starting point is also very low, around CHF 80,000 (about RM390,000). So the tax does not just hit billionaires. It hits the upper middle class too.

This sounds unfair at first. But it is exactly why it works.

Because the tax is small and applies to many people, the wealthy cannot escape it easily. Moving to another country to avoid 0.5% tax is not worth the trouble. Plus there are millions of taxpayers contributing, so the total revenue is huge. Switzerland collects about 4.3% of all tax revenue from this single tax. That is a lot.

Now compare with France. France used to have a wealth tax from 1982 until 2018. The rates were high. The tax only applied to the very rich. Sounds fairer right?

Result. About 10,000 wealthy French citizens left France over 15 years, taking 35 billion euros with them. The tax raised very little money. France gave up and replaced it with a property-only tax in 2018.

Sweden tried the same. High rates. Narrow target. The IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad moved to Switzerland and stayed there for decades. Sweden gave up in 2007. The wealth tax was only collecting 0.16% of GDP. Repealing it had basically no effect on government finances.

Norway is in between. They have a wealth tax since 1892. Their income inequality is very low (Gini 0.26, one of the lowest in the world). But their wealth inequality is still high (Gini 0.63, above OECD average). When Norway raised wealth tax rates in 2022, more rich people left in one year than in the past 13 years combined.

Spain has the same structure but with a twist. The Madrid region offers 100% exemption. So Spanish billionaires just move from other regions to Madrid. The national wealth tax effectively does not work because of this loophole.

So what actually reduces inequality?
Studies show that personal income taxes and property taxes do far more for reducing inequality than wealth taxes ever do.

The countries with the lowest Gini coefficients in the world (Belgium, Slovenia, Finland, Czech Republic) do not have wealth taxes. They have progressive income taxes and strong welfare systems.

What this means for Malaysia.

We need more tax revenue. But if we want to reduce inequality, a 2% tax on the richest billionaire is not the strongest tool.

A few things that would work better.

Reform our property tax. Improve capital gains tax. Strengthen inheritance tax. Make our income tax brackets more progressive. Better enforcement on existing tax laws.

A separate question worth thinking about. Are we sure the existing wealth transfer mechanisms in our tax system (rebates, allowances, zakat treatment) are reaching the poor as efficiently as we assume? Worth a separate conversation.

If we really want to introduce a wealth tax, we should copy Switzerland. Low rates, applied broadly, hard to escape. Not high rates on a small group of billionaires who can simply move to Singapore or Hong Kong.

2% on 1b is 20million, that’s a penthouse in Singapore, per year.

Most people imagine a wealth tax catches the super rich. The data says only the Swiss model actually does that.

Most expensive lesson Europe learned in 30 years.

[SejaFi 🇲🇾 #SharedHeritage 🇵🇸 #FreeOrPartition @sjfi_twider]

Aku suka membandingkan Perak dan Johor sebenarnya.

Perak adalah negeri Melayu protektorat pertama.
Sedangkan Johor adalah negeri Melayu yang anglofilia.
One Westernised by rule, and one Westernised by choice.

Sebab tu ada beza ketara dari segi lokasi bandar dan city primacy.

[badboy (beriman) @atikhsm]

@arinasaycheese haus seperti anjing

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

The "invisible guest theory" is a 25-year-old psychology experiment with a TikTok rebrand, and the actual mechanism is more useful than the viral version.

Cornell ran this in 2000. Made students wear a Barry Manilow t-shirt into a room full of strangers. Students predicted 50% of the room noticed the shirt. Actual number: 23%. Less than half what they expected. The researchers called it the spotlight effect.

The mechanism is anchoring. Your brain starts with your own experience of the moment, which is extremely vivid and detailed because you're living it, and then tries to adjust for how much less other people are paying attention. The adjustment is always too small. You feel 100% of your own embarrassment and assume everyone else feels at least 60% of it. They feel about 15%.

But here's what the viral version leaves out. Gilovich ran a follow-up and found the effect works in BOTH directions. People also overestimate how much others notice their positive contributions. You think your clever joke landed with the whole room. It didn't. You think everyone saw you handle that tense moment well. They didn't. The spotlight shines equally on your wins and your failures, which means both are mostly invisible.

The real freedom isn't "nobody's judging you." The real freedom is that nobody's paying nearly as much attention as you think, to anything you do, good or bad. Once you internalize that, you stop performing entirely.

[fluttershy @hwrtyed]

fast learner with short term memory loss

[moku @mokudesuka]

We're cooked = masak kita

Malays been using this slang for centuries

[badboy (beriman) @atikhsm]

@gingerinaara @karissalund reminded me of one time a german traveler cerita he was told by the singaporeans to be careful in malaysia kalau tak nanti dia kena rompak…

[Al-Biruni.ID @pararealmen]

The real macan asia tenggara

[PW @puspawangsa]

orang Melayu dah guna istilah “anak haram jadah”, “anak sundal”, “anak kencing”, “anak gampang” lebih 300 tahun 😂😂

[badboy (beriman) @atikhsm]

its 10pm and someone just gave salaam?!?!?!?!

[TK🍉| commissions closed @CrazySadAzn]

trying to find the balance between becoming more politically informed and not killing myself

[Cooking with Chris @coookwithchris]

Glucose spike from oat milk vs whole milk latte👀

[vash🍒 @avenchurin_twt]

the delivery is so fucking good too, the pause, the look as the gears in his brain turn, oh mackenyu you were truly born to play zoro 😭😭😭

[Pia @_epiphiany]

Kalau aku kaya aku akan enjoy kekayaan dalam diam kot, tak beef dengan marhaen. Tapi ni sembang sekarang la. Dah kaya nanti tengok la macam mana

[Syam @saifulhisyam]

Yang kaya individu, tapi yang berbangga satu negeri. Itu yang orang panggil mentaliti jiwa hamba.