The value of one ringgit

WRONG MESSAGE: Malaysiaisseenasa land of easy pickings for foreign beggars because the money is good

From

Wthey had suffered at the hands of Bill Clinton, at a time when such degradations did not resonate in society as they do now and men were not held accountable. That was a double standard. But, that tactic is also a way of blaming a woman for her husband’s infidelity, and it does not seem to have scored many political points among the women Trump needed to win over.

Trump went into this debate knowing that the polls show him trailing her in state after key state. The very women he has treated his whole life as objects to leer at or belittle now are exacting their revenge: many tell pollsters they are not voting for him.

“Nobody has more respect for women than I do,” Trump insisted after Chris Wallace, the debate’s moderator, challenged him about the accusations of groping.

His own words contradicted his claim. — Susan Chira, a Times senior correspondent and editor on gender issues

ELECTION? WE DON’T NEED NO STINKING ELECTION

Remember when people, including me, thought that Trump’s invitation for Russian hackers to invade Hillary Clinton’s emails was one of the most breathtakingly undemocratic things ever said by a presidential candidate? We were so naive.

On Wednesday, Trump flatly refused, twice, to say that he would accept the results of the election.

Clinton responded with a huge understatement. “That’s horrifying,” she said.

I don’t take much of what Trump says seriously. He’s not going to build a wall on the Mexican border, just for starters, unless his own company gets the contracts. But, there is nothing more precious to American democracy than the peaceful transfer HAT is one ringgit? What can it get you nowadays? Well, enough to get a boy into trouble, enough to cause him to crawl into a grilled drain to retrieve it.

Recently, an 8-year-old boy caught the imagination of Malaysians when he got trapped in a longkang in Klang after attempting to get back his RM1 pocket money.

What a boy... willing to get all dirtied going down on all fours, unwilling to let go of a ringgit from the hard-earned salary of his father or mother. Here is a kid who understands the importance of money, that you just can’t literally let it go down the drain, no matter how small the amount. of power according to the will of the voters. It’s the founding principle of our country.

Not, apparently, to Trump, who earlier in the debate claimed to be a great champion of judges who applied the Constitution literally as it was written. (Which, of course, would mean that Obama and Clinton could never have voted, never mind become president.)

He blamed Clinton personally for inciting violence at his rallies (A lie). And said that the news media are colluding with the Democratic nominee to poison the minds of voters, which is also untrue unless quoting his own words counts as poisoning. Trump then went on to talk about the “millions” of people who are falsely registered to vote. Another lie.

Trump won’t commit to honouring the election results. He is encouraging people to go to voting places to “monitor” voter fraud — a dog whistle for intimidating minority voters. And now, he says he won’t stand by the American people’s judgment.

I don’t believe Trump is going to lead a popular uprising after Election Day. He’s not the leader of a

My empathy is with him. When I was his age, when “five sen was bigger than a bullock cart’s wheel” to some people, I had looked into every nook and corner of the school’s toilet after a 20 sen coin rolled away from my pocket. The fear of being scolded by the conductor on the bus home, if I didn’t have 20 sen, made me do it.

At least, they didn’t throw me off the bus in those good old days.

Last week, a college student was ordered off the bus in Kuala Lumpur by a not-so-kind driver because there wasn’t any credit left in his season ticket. His offer of one ringgit to the driver was rejected. As he dejectedly got off the bus, a woman passenger muttered: kasihan (pity him).

As I was seated at the back of the bus, I only knew about it later, and hence didn’t have the chance to pay for his fare. But, why didn’t the passengers near him help? As the bus movement, as he says. He’s a narcissist. If he loses, he’ll probably go back where he came from, to the haze of reality television and shady business dealings.

But, it was still terrifying to see someone in an American presidential debate implying that he did not respect the democratic system. — Andrew Rosenthal, a Times columnist

FISCAL FOOLISHNESS

Overall, Wallace was better than I expected. But, he was pretty bad on fiscal issues.

First of all, still obsessing over the debt? Still taking leads from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget? Federal debt simply isn’t a pressing issue; there is no possible reason to make a big deal about it while neglecting climate change, where every year that action is delayed makes the problem harder to solve.

Then, there was the discussion of economic policy. It was really bad — and inappropriate — when Wallace talked about the Obama stimulus and simply asserted that it “led” to slow growth. That was editorialising and bad economics. moved away, I sadly watched the student trudging by the roadside with his head down.

On the other side of the coin, it is hard to make “sen-se” of things. A kid trying so hard to get back RM1, and a kid with RM1 couldn’t get a bus ride. Yet, we have newspaper reports of foreign beggars getting RM1,000 or more a day!

If you think these reports beggar belief, they are as sound as a dollar, so to speak. That’s because some of the beggars themselves have admitted to the media that their daily takings can run into four figures, which makes them richer than you or I.

In good or bad times, Malaysia is still seen as a land of easy pickings for foreign beggars. For many of us, what is one ringgit (or more) if it can make us feel better in walking past them without feeling guilty?

But, this sends the wrong message to others in other countries, that they can come to Malaysia to beg,

The past eight years have actually been a huge experiment in macroeconomics. Saying that the Obama stimulus was followed by slow growth is a terrible argument: when you spend money to fight a terrible slump, weren’t any disappointments in performance arguably caused by whatever caused the slump, not by the rescue operation? But we have a lot of other evidence, all of which says that spending money in a slump helps the economy and that the Obama stimulus was, therefore, the right thing to do.

Some of that evidence comes from the details of the stimulus itself, which had different effects in different regions — and that tells you a lot about how it worked, and the answer is that it was positive. Even more compelling is the anti-stimulus that came from austerity policies in Europe: Countries that slashed spending and raised taxes had much deeper slumps than those that didn’t.

Basically, events have strongly confirmed the Keynesian thinking that lay behind the Obama stimulus. The impression that it failed comes mainly from the fact that it wasn’t big enough to produce a rapid where the money is good.

Even our welfare officials do not want us to fatten the beggars’ bank accounts.

As it is, Malaysians are griping about foreigners taking over their jobs in factories, farms and other sectors. Now, local beggars are complaining they have to fight for their “territory” with foreigners.

Some Malaysians have already stopped giving beggars money, offering them clothing, food and drinks instead. But, they are quite choosy; they prefer money.

On a different note, today is Budget Day, and the lower-income group is counting on some good news, more than a few ringgit for their pockets, from the government.

kongster@nst.com.my

The writer is

ONE COHERENT ECONOMIC PLAN Many of Clinton’s proposals are investments in human capital: early education, debt-free college, apprenticeships. Investments in human capital are an effort to boost long-term productivity and promote growth. Recommending tax increases that would pay for those investments is an effort to ensure that bolstered economic output is not offset by a rising deficit. In other words, it is coherent.

Economic projections and economic history do not support Trump’s assertion that big tax cuts at the centre of his economic plan — his proposed tax cut would be the biggest ever — would promote growth for the middle class. Highend tax cuts during former president George W. Bush administration, for example, only led to inequality and lopsided growth.

The economy under Clinton’s plan would be flat at first and stronger later. Under Trump’s plan, the economy would get a boost at first from the cash unleashed by the tax cuts, but become much weaker later, as the huge deficits from the tax cuts reduced the plan’s initial positive effect on economic output. — Teresa Tritch, a member of the Times editorial board. NYT