It is now the second day of the introduction of the six percent goods and services tax (GST), and so begins the insanity.

From idiotic tweets from a ministry asking people not to “gelabah biawak”, to an MP of a teeny tiny island and also the chairperson of Keretapi Tanah Melayu Bhd, telling people to colonise the moon to avoid the tax, it was a Feast of Fools.

It did not help that it was April 1, mind you.

The introduction of the GST and mixed messages on items which are taxed, zero rated and even tax exempted, have also led to confusion, allowing the opportunistic rising of prices.

Both sides have highlighted this, so it’s not exactly a ‘gelabah biawak’ situation regardless of the Domestic Trade, Cooperatives and Consumerism Ministry’s Twitter account’s reaction to one complainant.

These are the issues that both sides must take note and push for better debates. Sadly, both sides would prefer to dumb down the electorate and act like clowns.

Personally, I now regret that mad rush to Ikea. Had I known sooner that the company would factor in the GST to their prices, I wouldn’t be as irked as I was last week.

However, both sides of the argument must be considered, and both sides should stop with the moronic statements. Let’s start with those against the tax.

Look, Malaysians, if you want to protest the GST, say it as you mean it and be extremely direct.

Say you don’t earn enough to make ends meet.

Say you are already earning enough to pay income taxes and now burdened with yet another tax which will in fact hurt your finances.

Heck, I don’t even care if you wish to protest not being able to go hangout as often as you want to. It’s rational.

But please, please for the love of God, stop with the dumb ‘sardines and lobster’ argument!

Do you know why lobsters are zero rated?

Because from farm to the kitchen, it is as it is!

You buy it raw, boil it in a pot and serve.

Do you know why sardines are not?

Because someone chopped off their heads, doused them in tomato sauce and come in cans!

What, did you think sardines naturally came headless, floating downstream in a river of tomato sauce and people just happened to pass by and scoop them up in cans and magically seal them?

Stop being stupid.

Yes, it is a poor man’s food. But it is a manufactured product which involves a factory of companies which makes more than RM500,000.

And that’s it.

Of course, you could always find freshly-caught mackerel and pickle it in a jar of spaghetti sauce yourselves.

And you would still have to pay 6 percent for the sauce!

Now, perhaps the Customs Department and the government would rather not hurt your feelings with this explanation, but the truth is it is a daft argument.

So please, stop drinking the Kool Aid and get educated.

Where it went wrong

If you want to argue about taxes, then argue about income and politics; because this is where things went wrong.

And this one is on government and the pro-GST side.

For far too long, the lowering and exclusion of lower and middle income earners of the Malaysian population from paying income taxes as well as consistently idiotic expectation of ‘unlimited petrodollars till kingdom come’ has kept this government happy.

Couple this with companies finding it acceptable to pay an unrealistic minimum wage as well as use ‘low productivity’, ‘needing to reward shareholders first’ and even using there blanket subsidies to justify unlivable salaries, and here we are.

Malaysians, try this.

Look at your companies and employers, and ask them how much of its income goes to the employees in the form of increments and bonuses?

This is the part where most businesses tend to be opaque because there is no call to compel these companies to tell anyone about it, not even regulators.

While companies in the more advance worlds tend to splurge some 60 percent of their total earnings on their staff, Malaysian companies tend to pay close to 28 percent.

Yet TalentCorp still can’t fix the brain drain and still wonders why.

Our nation is facing these issues because for far too long, the government had decided it would rather be popular instead of being realistic.

It is still choosing not to tax capital gains, inheritance and even pollution and environment.

For the last point above, it was a surprise to me that even Rafizi Ramli is suddenly against logging companies paying five percent more for petrol.

You have to wonder what the Sarawak population thinks of this brilliant idea of his.

Both sides need to get this argument right. The GST is here to stay. The reason people are unhappy is because they are not earning enough.

The reasons they are not earning enough are plenty.

An unrealistic minimum wage. An insistence in rewarding shareholders and the corporation more than its workers.

Blanket subsidies which make items cheap but producers more dependent on foreign labour to keep their profit margins.

A broken direct transfer programme in the form of Bantuan Rakyat 1Malaysia (BR1M) and welfare.

A lacking in officers, resources, as well as independence, to enforce prices as well as to stop leakages in government spending.

So can we all now cut the BS and please move on?