I think our PM is almost delusional when he lamented the people’s lack of understanding of the economic situations in the country. I think he has totally misunderstood why the people were so unsympathetic toward him and the efforts currently undertaken by the government.

To me, the external factors being tossed around, from Renminbi revaluation, weak commodity prices to potential hikes in interest rates in the US are mere red herrings.

Any country in the globalised economy will be affected one way or another by external factors but ultimately it is always the country’s own resilience and fundamentals that shall decide the outcome.

For lack of better words, I think the Malaysian economy is totally mismanaged and screwed up. I think no one is questioning the need to rationalise subsidies and to introduce new taxes like the goods and services tax (GST). The issue is what have we done with the money collected from GST and money saved from subsidy rationalisation?

Let me illustrate a point here: one of the reasons for GST is to rein in fiscal deficit and to improve government financial flexibility. But now the PM is telling us the government could no longer spend more to invigorate our weakening economy brought about by external factors.

It only goes to show that there was never revenue and expenditure planning and management.

In Malaysia, the spendthrift government will just grow the expenditure matching with whatever revenue they can lay their hands on, regardless of the state of our economy.

Why keep talking about balancing the budget by 2020 (although by now the PM has indicated that we may not be able to achieve it)? Are we saying from 1998 to 2020, there was no one occasion when the government could run a budget surplus?

If we have not built surpluses in time of plenty, how do we spend more to keep the economy going in time of difficulty without accumulating more debts?

Seriously, I think our PM should stop blaming external factors and start blaming our own moronic culture - spending without thinking, spending on unproductive and wasteful projects and spending to benefit the cronies instead of the economy.

One example: Pembinaan PFI Sdn Bhd has accumulated billions of debt in the short span of its operation. Can anyone tell us what has it built or achieved for the economy or the people?

By all means rationalise the subsidies, but did the government dismantle the monopolies? If the government want the people to pay market price, then it must make sure the economy is sufficiently competitive for the market price to exist.

Free the imports of rice, sugar, flour, cabbage, steel, and whatnot and we shall see what will happen. If the government has ‘deregulated’ the fuel prices, why is the price of RON95 the same in all petrol stations? Are oil companies equally efficient or inefficient?

Now the PM is talking about knowledge and productivity driven economy again although I have heard about this for as long as I could remember. It is just too convenient to beat the same dead horse - emphasis on learning English, productivity-driven growth, R&D and innovation, et cetera.

What productivity-driven economy?

But what do we see in reality the last 20 years? What productivity-driven economy are we talking about when millions of unskilled and uneducated foreign workers have come here to dictate the ‘production function’ of this country? Have we not seen the same labour intensive - dirty, dangerous and demeaning - way of doing things all over the country?

What knowledge and innovative economy are we talking about when we can’t even built an airport properly, manage a taxi service competently or run our schools and universities competitively.

Why always crouch our great ambition in general terms like transformation, innovation, knowledge, English, productivity-driven, et cetera when in reality we have done nothing in the focussed way.

The Australian and NZ economies are very commodity dependent. The Singaporean economy is even more open than us. The Thai economy, in many ways, is even behind us. But do they suffer as much as us today?

I think we just refuse to accept reality - we have too much fat, too much corruption, too many incompetent people at the helm and too many fake jobs performing fake economic activities that have nothing to do with real output of goods and services.

Another example: What has Pemandu done? How can acronyms, charts in glossy papers and eloquent presentations help the Malaysian economy?