When Malaysia imposes its ban on sale of petrol around its borders to foreign cars, their economy will be affected - cos of the impact on other sectors such as tourism, shopping, food etc. But Malaysia says its subsidies are for their people. Yes, the economy will be affected but what is for Malaysians has to be kept for Malaysians.
MM Lee says that subsidies for Singaporeans is a bad thing. What we need is a dynamic economy to grow the economic pie, so that there is more to share. However, we do not hold back ’subsidies’ for foreigners in terms of subsidised education etc. And the issue with the growing income inequality as evidenced by our Gini coefficient is that when the pie grows, very little crumbs end up with the lower income group.
So, we dun get subsidies in our country … or in other countries.