Profiting from Taxpayer’s Money During COVID-19 Pandemic
This pandemic has taken a toll on people’s ability to make a living for themselves. Thus countries around the world have come up with programs to alleviate this problem.
The US and UK have come up with their own ways of dealing with this, where as the US is giving stimulus checks to those who are unemployed, as well as struggling businesses. Where as the UK is directing stimulus checks toward businesses which then pass it on to their employees at 80% of their regular paycheck.
But those are the usual boring schemes that you’ve definitely have been hearing over-and-over again.
Indonesia however, have come up with an ingenious idea of giving people online video-training like you would normally get from services such as Skillshare, Udemy, etc — in a time where you can’t even get a job.
This scheme is full of conflicts of interest, and potential moral hazard.
The one which stand out the most among them is Ruangguru, as it’s Founder & CEO was holding an executive position in the government as the Millenial Advisor to the President. After abruptly stepping down through public backlash— which is not the only advisor who stepped down after a public controversy of yet again, another conflict of interest of similar kind.
The government set aside US$1,3 Million for the scheme, a huge pile of money—by just getting a bit of that cash, would set you for life in Indonesia.
But of course, Ruangguru was still chosen for hosting the online-video training despite public backlash and criticism.
Each participants are given direct stimulus in four installments — which amounts to US$59.25 each installment.
Sounds bad? It’s not yet over.
Say you wanna sign up, you need to go to the government’s website, input your email and create a password — once you’re done, you will be faced with a motivation test (in a pandemic), then you will have to wait until you get chosen, which nobody have any guarantees when.
The US$1,3 Million for the scheme could’ve been better used given directly to people who are now unemployed, instead of having this convoluted scheme that will only enrich a small number of connected players at the top.
Ohh…. did I mention that they are building a new capital city in the middle of a rain forest in Borneo amid the pandemic and not halting it? Maybe diverting the budget to take care of the people who pay taxes every months who are now losing their jobs would be a better use of that money, though the oligarchs may not be so generous enough to share it
But now that I think about it, the new city could’ve become a nice retreat during this pandemic. As long as you got the connection — as mainly the politically-connected business people can go on airplanes now.
The people never asked for a new capital city, the oligarchs do.
The budget for the new capital city is US$31,1 Billion, 23 times the amount of “direct-relief” scheme which I mentioned above.
For the next story I’ll write about the denial of reality by the Jokowi administration.
