Premier Frank Hsieh (
Noting that the gap in household incomes has increased in the past decades, Hsieh said the government needs to find, without further delay, ways to prevent poverty from becoming institutionalized or a generation-to-generation family scourge.
Redistribution
The administration should also push for the implementation of tax reforms and the building of a social-security mechanism, as well as bolster career and vocational services for underprivileged groups so as to help redistribute health from the rich to the poor via legal or institutional channels, Hsieh said.
Even though the gap between rich and poor has widened over the years, Hsieh claimed that as a result of the government's strenuous efforts, the household-income gap was reduced to 6.07 in 2003, down from the 6.39 posted in 2001 and 6.16 in 2002.
Hsieh said that Taiwan's household-income gap is relatively lower compared with other major economies around the world, including South Korea's 6.8, the US' 10.2, Hong Kong's 17.7 and Singapore's 20.9.
In addition, he said, the administration has continued to make remedial efforts to increase and improve vocational services to the less privileged, including Aborigines, foreign brides, young people and single-parent families.
Vocational services
It is believed that when the various vocational service programs begin to bear fruit, the wealth gap will be further narrowed down, Hsieh said.
He ordered the formation of a special task force early last month to flesh out tax reform measures in line with President Chen Shui-bian's (
timetable
Hsieh is expected to personally head a panel that will work out a timetable for implementing Chen's six-point tax-reform program announced on May 30, which focuses on expanding the tax base, restructuring and simplifying the tax system and clamping down on tax evasion.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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