What A Fre@ky G@P? Wealth Gap

Recently, Dr M has raised up the issue of reduce wealth gap to narrow race gap. According to the Stars newspaper, Dr M also mentioned that all the different races were responsible for building a success for the country, adding that it had been tough to ensure all the races to get united be­­cause of Mly’s demographic profile. Later, he mentioned about The Federal Constitution was based on that contract and more than that. The reason of having the contract is to ensure the spirit of each race sacrifices something to gain something else. The balance was needed.

Thank you for commenting about the rich and poor gap. Who are the rich and the poor? I will definitely not comment on the contract so much as I have not read about it at all. Reducing wealth gap might not necessarily reduce the race gap. What is Race gap anyway? The gap between other races or the gap among an ethnic group. Whatever it's, I guess he was talking about the unification of the people among or between the ethnic groups. When we talk about wealth gap, we usually talk about the income inequality or the income distribution. In general, we can measure the gap by using the Gini coefficient. I won't talk about the Gini coefficient but it has something to do with measuring income and population. The idea of the Gini coefficient is simple and it's about how the population and income distribution spread over a country. The lower the coefficient, the better is the gap. In Malaysia, the ethnic groups are distributed in this way, 58% Malay and other Indigenous, 26% Chinese, 7% Indian, 9% Others. In many countries, individuals belonging to certain racial and ethnic minorities are more likely to be poor or racially segregated.

The government usually plays a role in reflecting the outcome of the income distribution, especially in developing countries. Why Governments? Political needs, economic benefits, corruption and so on. Of course, the government could also reinvest or redistribute most of this income back to the poor in order to close the gap of income inequality. Unfortunately, we don't see anything. Even Mly people among the poor ethnic group is facing income gap differences. Suddenly, we see a development of the poor ethnic group and the rich ethnic group, which also caused a recent change in political movement during the recent election. I am not here to disapprove the idea of improving wealth gap, which also helps to narrow race gap. I am saying that the race gap is not necessarily caused by wealth gap. It has something more to do with that, and we have to look at things in different perspectives.

Over the years, I believe that even within the Chinese ethnic group, we can find income gap between the educated and the uneducated, the rich and the poor people, but we still unify to improve our country. However, things have changed a lot in Penang. It's more about communication or the belief of an equal treatment from the government. Malay population income gap among themselves has grown a lot too, and even within their ethnic group. I see the reason of why smart people deserve to earn more. They work hard to get into that position. Rich people, on the other hand, might not be necessarily smart or even hard-working but manage to lead due to power. Suddenly, we see a big division in groups. The rich wants something. The poor wants something. The gap continues and widens. There is always a gap? But why the gap has widened? Financial crisis, Political crisis, Revolutionary needs and more.

Now, you find lots of differences in their income distribution as well. If wealth gap is what we think to be the cause of disunity among races or race gap, what about educational gap, political gap, transparency gap, quota gap, AP gap and health gap. They all could lead to income gap and also race gap. To be honest, everyone sacrifices for their country but we also deserve to be equally treated. Of course by closing down the wealth gap, everyone seems to be equal in income distribution or even maybe hierarchy status. But, shouldn't we look at equality rights with transparencies. Again, smart and rich people want to distinguish themselves from others. It's alright to have a very small gap problem. You can close the gap but that doesn't mean you can have a social unification among people. The respect is just not there. Significantly, we must focus on needs for a revolutionary change in education, people's mindset and work attitudes. Maybe, it's just the right time for the government to think about it. Importantly, it's all about equal educational opportunities, equal benefits, equal government loans, equal medical benefits, equal supports and equal freedoms to all people. Yeah! And I agree the balance is needed. But to what certain extent the balance goes? For how long? Who are the people in this country who get the better balance? Are we talking equal balance? Shouldn't we focus more on universal fairness so that even indigenous people deserve the helps. Forget about closing the income gap, when the balance may lead or widen the race gap in a long run. I'd rather focus on something concrete and influential that will prosper the society as a whole in a long run. We all expect more to come.