Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) is many things. He is notorious for his sharp tongue and unfiltered opinions. He sometimes puts on comical costumes, makes puzzling gestures or participates at events that some might deem unbecoming of the capital’s mayor. However, he is not wrong on the issue of a government subsidy for elderly people.
Although the next nine-in-one elections are still a year away, debate about the subsidy has been renewed, with a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) mayoral hopeful vowing to reinstate the subsidy should he be elected.
On Saturday last week, former KMT legislator Ting Shou-chung (丁守中) announced he would join the KMT Taipei mayoral primary, even though he has failed four times before to win the party’s nomination.
During his seven terms as a lawmaker, Ting proposed many concrete and constructive policies, including efforts to increase the percentage of low-floor buses in Taipei and transform unused public school spaces into daycare centers or nurseries.
Ting, who has described the Taipei mayoral post as the “final destination of my political career,” could have successfully presented himself as a candidate different from traditional KMT politicians if not for his pledge to reinstate the city’s subsidy for older people — an annual cash giveaway partially axed by Ko in 2015 at the expense of his popularity rating.
Initially, city residents aged 65 or older received a subsidy of NT$1,500 to NT$10,000 (US$50 to US$333) each September, depending on their age, in celebration of the Double Ninth Festival. It cost the city about NT$700 million a year.
After running as a reformist and winning election in 2014, Ko introduced a wealth exclusion clause to the subsidy, making it available only to senior citizens from low and middle-income families.
Ko said that what elderly Taipei residents need is not a once-a-year cash subsidy, but a sustainable care system.
It is puzzling why Ting, who has vowed to improve the city’s global competitiveness and living standards, would want to reinstate a short-sighted policy when he is aware of Taipei’s aging population, which is projected to rise from 16 percent of city residents to 20 percent in 2021.
Taipei has the highest percentage of elderly residents, defined as people aged 65 or above, among the six special municipalities.
This upward trend is unstoppable and is happening nationwide. Advocating the expansion of the subsidy is tantamount to opposing the phasing out of the controversial 18 percent savings rate for civil servants hired before 1995.
Everyone would like better social welfare and benefits from the government, but they should never be introduced at the risk of bankrupting the government. One-off cash giveaways might increase a politician’s popularity among voters, but that positive sentiment would be short-lived and do little to improve the living standards of older residents.
As Ko said earlier this month, local governments that continue to dole out the so-called “Double Ninth payments” are doing so out of electoral calculations and they are nothing but an attempt to bribe voters.
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
I have heard people equate the government’s stance on resisting forced unification with China or the conditional reinstatement of the military court system with the rise of the Nazis before World War II. The comparison is absurd. There is no meaningful parallel between the government and Nazi Germany, nor does such a mindset exist within the general public in Taiwan. It is important to remember that the German public bore some responsibility for the horrors of the Holocaust. Post-World War II Germany’s transitional justice efforts were rooted in a national reckoning and introspection. Many Jews were sent to concentration camps not
RSS