COMMENT | The RM100 handout helps, but Malaysians will continue to struggle with their finances given the rising costs of goods, services and taxes.

Harder still is keeping up with the corruption cases in our courts and the daily chorus of arrests and investigations by the MACC, making us wonder whether our B40 is the end product of corruption after all.

But for those who persevere, they will be justly rewarded, jalabiyas and all, with a journey on a flying carpet to Old Baghdad in the time of Ali Baba circa 900 CE of the Abbasid Caliphate.

It’s where opulence, religiosity and scholarship co-existed in happy harmony with thievery, corruption and abuse of power until the rider became heavier than the horse, causing the Caliphate to totter under its own weight.