FEELING SORRY FOR THE GAP BETWEEN RICH AND POOR

My friend and I went to the well-known coffee shop at the district 3 with its price of more than 30,000 VND each cup. He told that he had just met an old friend, a worker in Dong Nai, who frequently does extra hours but his income is just averagely around 3,000,000 dong per month. So, he never drinks coffee with its price of 4,000 dong each cup.

Another girl told that she was invited to a grand hotel for a meal by her friend who just won a land deal. And she was surprised by the price of a ration which can support a family for a month.

Passing Phu My Hung urban area by chance, a wide range of people feel surprised to think that they are entering into a completely strange land. Along with its cleanliness, spaciousness and modernity, it is evidently the wealth of residents here. Monthly family’s expense (hygiene, security, lights…) can also increase many times as some poor households in other areas. From that we can realize living standards gap together with quality of life.

The similar situations sometimes happen nationwide with different levels. In 2007, a situation was given that two people shared a chicken but a person actually eat up it while the other is just looking.^^

After 3 years, this situation could be more different than before. Two people share 2 chicken. So, a person averagely eat more than a half of chicken but whether this situation  can happen with the fact that one person eat up two chicken. And two others just can look at him or a person eat more than a chicken and a person eat its remaining while the third person is still hungry?

What a pitiful situation! In reality, the overview of an increasing developing society and a prosperous country have been demonstrated by regularly annual GDP growth and continuously average income per capita growth. That is an indispensable thing. However, it make the gap between rich and poor to accelerate and one thing to say that the rich trend to be richer while the poor are hard to improve their income due to limiting capital, educational level and professional skill…

Income gap will lead to ability gap in meeting demands of education, health care, entertainment…It means that people’s living standard has not been improved much. As a result, the gap between rich and poor should be adjusted by strategic policy rather than by separate policy in locality. Yet, adjustment must be implemented by all relevant agencies rather than just only by the State. Firstly, there must be consistent and complete point view of social equality. For example, along with business assistance, we also take a measure to assist farmers and care about beneficiaries of welfare and social sponsorships…

Also, we need to attach special importance to improve people’s quality of life, which is considerate as the goal of reducing the gap between rich and poor rather than just focus on income. Policy of social security needs to be cared properly, especially health care and education. For instance, tuition and some receipts for poor students should be free of charge completely. Besides, there cannot be any prioritized policy for the poor and policy cases in health care….

Tax policy is also one of another interest. Personal income tax should be reconsidered beginning rate of tax and reducing items for low-income or average income people with no tax. On the other hand, increasing tax for costumers buying goods and expensive and luxurious products and consider taxing goods and raw materials for production, particularly for agriculture.

Macro policy has to ensure that increasing people have been eaten much more than before. And  this is considered as goal of worldwide in general and of  Vietnam in particular.

(According to Saigontimes’ newspaper )

Translated by Huynh Thi Ngoc Thuy