The people of Taiwan are immersed in lottery madness these days. Such euphoria can be seen everywhere and the phenomenon is reflected in the skyrocketing number of lottery tickets sold throughout the nation. The jackpot for the grand prize reached NT$136 million in only the first week of sales, marking a new high for lottery prizes in Taiwan. In this wave of lottery madness, however, we should not forget the original intent of the lottery and we should also consider its future development.
The Public Welfare Lottery (
According to Article 3 of the "Public Welfare Lottery Supervision Committee Regulations" (公益彩券監理委員會組成辦法), proposed by the Ministry of Finance, lottery profits are to be distributed as follows:
First, about 35 percent of lottery proceeds go to local governments. Half of those funds are used for social welfare and charity causes. About 45 percent of the funds are used for the National Pension Program (
Second, 15 percent of the lottery revenues that go to the government are supposed to be evenly divided among local-level governments. The remaining 85 percent of those revenues are to be allocated to the local governments according to the population and lottery sales of each city or county.
Let us put aside for the time being whether the above distribution is able to solve the financial problems of local governments. We must have the following understanding of the matter:
First, lottery profits are unstable. The tremendous ticket sales in the first week do not guarantee a large profit in the future. In times of plenty all of us are happy because there is enough candy for everyone. In bad times, however, will everyone scramble for the profit as a crowding-out effect occurs?
Second, the distribution policy -- developed by a finance ministry committee -- is just an administrative order, not a law. Hence, the policy is flexible and it will be easy for the finance ministry to change the allocation since sufficient supervision is still lacking.
We must handle lottery profits wisely -- so that the money will not be used by local government chiefs to secure votes or to secretly exchange profits with others.
Since the central government is the authority on the lottery, all social welfare and charity programs sponsored by lottery funds should be directly assigned by the central government -- rather than local governments -- in order to earmark the money for specified purposes only. By doing this, necessary programs will not be sacrificed due to the possible crowding-out effect triggered by unstable lottery profits, and the promotion of public welfare can truly be achieved.
Moreover, we must regulate the distribution of lottery profits. The budget for social welfare is usually cut once the government runs into financial difficulty. Today, the finance ministry is in charge of distribution. The public is unable to judge the priority of the social welfare, national pension and national health insurance programs. If the distribution is not regulated, it may lead to large-scale political struggles and other problems once lottery profits shrink in the future. As a result, the best thing we can do is regulate the distribution of funds in an effort to maintain the scale of the nation's social welfare programs once financial hardship occurs.
At a time when local governments are complaining about their poor financial situation and when public welfare is repeatedly sacrificed, the lottery serves as a "rhapsody" not only for the people but also for the government. It can raise huge amount of money, which is why we should be more careful in handling these funds in order to help those in need.
Yu Jan-daw is a DPP legislator.
Translated by Eddy Chang
On May 7, 1971, Henry Kissinger planned his first, ultra-secret mission to China and pondered whether it would be better to meet his Chinese interlocutors “in Pakistan where the Pakistanis would tape the meeting — or in China where the Chinese would do the taping.” After a flicker of thought, he decided to have the Chinese do all the tape recording, translating and transcribing. Fortuitously, historians have several thousand pages of verbatim texts of Dr. Kissinger’s negotiations with his Chinese counterparts. Paradoxically, behind the scenes, Chinese stenographers prepared verbatim English language typescripts faster than they could translate and type them
More than 30 years ago when I immigrated to the US, applied for citizenship and took the 100-question civics test, the one part of the naturalization process that left the deepest impression on me was one question on the N-400 form, which asked: “Have you ever been a member of, involved in or in any way associated with any communist or totalitarian party anywhere in the world?” Answering “yes” could lead to the rejection of your application. Some people might try their luck and lie, but if exposed, the consequences could be much worse — a person could be fined,
Xiaomi Corp founder Lei Jun (雷軍) on May 22 made a high-profile announcement, giving online viewers a sneak peek at the company’s first 3-nanometer mobile processor — the Xring O1 chip — and saying it is a breakthrough in China’s chip design history. Although Xiaomi might be capable of designing chips, it lacks the ability to manufacture them. No matter how beautifully planned the blueprints are, if they cannot be mass-produced, they are nothing more than drawings on paper. The truth is that China’s chipmaking efforts are still heavily reliant on the free world — particularly on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing
Last week, Nvidia chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) unveiled the location of Nvidia’s new Taipei headquarters and announced plans to build the world’s first large-scale artificial intelligence (AI) supercomputer in Taiwan. In Taipei, Huang’s announcement was welcomed as a milestone for Taiwan’s tech industry. However, beneath the excitement lies a significant question: Can Taiwan’s electricity infrastructure, especially its renewable energy supply, keep up with growing demand from AI chipmaking? Despite its leadership in digital hardware, Taiwan lags behind in renewable energy adoption. Moreover, the electricity grid is already experiencing supply shortages. As Taiwan’s role in AI manufacturing expands, it is critical that
RSS