In this article, I intend to analyze the government's reconstruction and relief efforts for the 921 earthquake (
1. With respect to the relief fund granted by the government, NT$1 million for each death and NT$50,000 for each injured person -- why is the amount higher than the relief payments granted for the death and injuries caused by past natural disasters? Will the treatment of all the deaths and injuries caused by future natural calamities follow this precedent? A more substantive question is whether a higher death and injury toll means more benefits for survivors? Or is all of this simply because of the impending elections?
Any taxpayer would hope that the taxes he or she pays are helping those in real need. The most important issue is how to take care of survivors. Television news broadcasts a report of a 5-year-old girl who survived the quake, but her face had been severely injured. The doctor said that the little girl is lucky to be alive, but she faces a long period of rehabilitation.
Another little girl also survived the ordeal after being buried under rubble for several days. However, her leg will have to be amputated. What can possibly be accomplished by giving people such as these a meager relief payment of NT$50,000 each? By granting NT$1 million for each death, the total relief payout for the 2,000 killed will reach more than NT$2 billion. I believe that this money should, instead, be spent to establish a foundation to take care of those who have been maimed or disabled by the quake. They still have a long life to lead, and they are the people the taxpayer should be supporting.
2. A newspaper reported on Oct. 5 that the director general of Budget, Accounting, and Statistics, Liu San-chi (劉?T錡), said the previously estimated total for relief funds (NT$200,000 for each fully collapsed house and NT$100,000 for each partially collapsed house) and the housing rental subsidy (NT$3,000 every month) have escalated from NT$20 billion to NT$40 billion. Furthermore, Vice President Lien Chan (3s戰) has suggested waiving the National Health Insurance fees of quake victims for six months and extending the same kind of waiver for Labor and Farmer Insurance fees. All these suggestions were approved. Reportedly, the waiver in fees for the National Health Insurance alone will cost the National Health Insurance Bureau NT$700 million in total. The "jobs in exchange for relief" (以?u代賑) program launched by the Council of Labor Affairs will cost several hundred million dollars as well. Reportedly, a more than insignificant number of "fake quake victims" are coming forward and complicating the scene, as well as increasing the number of people waiting in line to claim relief payments.
According to the Social Relief Law, the issuance of emergency relief should be restricted to households unable to provide burial for a deceased member or households made financially destituted by the injury of a family member. The law also requires that the relief should take the form of cash disbursement, the amount to be decided by provincial or municipal authorities. This is then submitted to the Ministry of the Interior for review.
The disbursement of relief funds after the recent quake is being made without any regard for the relevant laws. The sum was first increased from NT$100,000 to NT$200,000. Premier Vincent Siew (
I am not saying that quake relief is not important. However, the government must not act beyond its capability. The taxpayers' money should be carefully spent, not squandered through unjustifiably lenient eligibility for relief to buy the hearts of the quake victims and to indirectly purchase votes. The government must learn to say "no," and declare that certain things "cannot be done," instead of giving the public false hope so that they continue to make demands and exert pressure on the government.
3. According to the emergency decree issued by President Lee, the central government is not restricted by the "Public Debt Law" in raising funds for post-quake reconstruction, even issuing government bonds or taking out loans up to a total of NT$80 billion. Reportedly, Minister of Finance Paul Chu (
As for the issuance of public bonds, the director of the Institute of Economics at the Academia Sinica, Dr Hu Sheng-cheng (-J3茈?, has expressed reservations. He indicated that the government is incurring huge amounts of debt currently, as the annual government deficit is increasing yearly. The issuance of public bonds for quake relief would not only aggravate the deterioration of the government's finances, but also threaten future economic growth. Hu suggested the temporary imposition of additional taxes and special taxes to raise the funding for quake relief.
The issuance of public bonds will not remove the need to impose taxes, it simply delays their imposition. One day, sooner or later, the government will still need to repay the principle sum of the loans incurred through the issue of public bonds. When that day comes, the government will need to impose taxes to pay back the debts. From this perspective, the issuance of public bonds is simply asking our future generations to pay our debts for us.
If the money donated by the general public is insufficient, I suggest that the Executive Yuan propose to the Legislative Yuan the imposition of additional or special taxes. The worst case scenario is that the Executive Yuan makes no such proposal and instead quietly steals several hundred billion dollars from our future generations. However, I think, between the issuance of public bonds and the imposition of taxes, the government would choose the former, as our children are still young and future generations are not even born yet. These people do not have the right to vote in next year's presidential election. It seems the government wants to leave all the headaches behind until the election is over and let future generations worry about these problems.
Yang Cheng-chen is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Economics, Academia Sinica.
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