I appreciate your detailed analysis of Bangladesh's budget, but I must strongly disagree with several of your conclusions.
Your central argument that corruption stems from low salaries makes little logical sense. Consider the reality of our public sector: people spend years preparing for civil service exams, often taking them multiple times, competing for positions with a 5-10% acceptance rate. This intense competition for government jobs clearly indicates that public sector workers are already overcompensated, not underpaid. If anything, we should be reducing wages until we reach a more reasonable market equilibrium.
Your suggestion to benchmark public sector wages against neighboring countries is equally problematic because they face the same problem of public sector overcompensation. Take India, for instance, where public school teachers earn 4-5 times more than their private sector counterparts yet deliver worse outcomes, with rampant absenteeism.
This isn't just theoretical speculation. The Indonesia experiment provides concrete evidence - when they doubled teacher salaries to combat absenteeism, the only change was increased job satisfaction. No improvement in attendance or performance. Hardly surprising, given they were already overpaid.
Looking forward, I have two pressing concerns. First, given our current fiscal challenges, shouldn't we be considering aggressive privatization, particularly in the banking and power sectors, to address our public debt? Second, with WTO rules requiring us to slash tariffs after 2026, how do we plan to replace the 33% of tax revenue they currently provide?
My suggestion would be a shift toward property and land taxes while eliminating income tax. We shouldn't be taxing productive work when we have better alternatives available.
I appreciate your detailed analysis of Bangladesh's budget, but I must strongly disagree with several of your conclusions.
Your central argument that corruption stems from low salaries makes little logical sense. Consider the reality of our public sector: people spend years preparing for civil service exams, often taking them multiple times, competing for positions with a 5-10% acceptance rate. This intense competition for government jobs clearly indicates that public sector workers are already overcompensated, not underpaid. If anything, we should be reducing wages until we reach a more reasonable market equilibrium.
Your suggestion to benchmark public sector wages against neighboring countries is equally problematic because they face the same problem of public sector overcompensation. Take India, for instance, where public school teachers earn 4-5 times more than their private sector counterparts yet deliver worse outcomes, with rampant absenteeism.
This isn't just theoretical speculation. The Indonesia experiment provides concrete evidence - when they doubled teacher salaries to combat absenteeism, the only change was increased job satisfaction. No improvement in attendance or performance. Hardly surprising, given they were already overpaid.
Looking forward, I have two pressing concerns. First, given our current fiscal challenges, shouldn't we be considering aggressive privatization, particularly in the banking and power sectors, to address our public debt? Second, with WTO rules requiring us to slash tariffs after 2026, how do we plan to replace the 33% of tax revenue they currently provide?
My suggestion would be a shift toward property and land taxes while eliminating income tax. We shouldn't be taxing productive work when we have better alternatives available.