Islamic Economy

Sharing from the forum organized by first year medical student

A bit of info, Prof Abd Rahim studied in UK/US (somewhere..supervised by a Jewish economy professor during his final year project). He is now a member of Majlis Proffesor Negara under the Cluster of Economy.

Datang lambat sikit ke forum..hu. Point berterabur sedikit.

The forum is about economy (explained in layman's term), Islamic economy and effect on health infrastructure

Point #1: Capitalism

• Not all Western country are using capitalist economic system.
• US capitalism was brought/introduced by Britain. But Britain itself is a mix of capitalist and socialist economist system. Specifically, Britain is a welfare state. (He ask, why Britain doesn't use full capitalist system that they introduced to the US?)
• What is capitalism? Well, (1) focus on maximization of wealth; (2) the government act as invisible hand; (3) business is free of government intervention (campur tangan) and (4) when the business is successful, they will be taxed by the government, which will be used to help The People (rakyat).

Point#2: Goods and Service Tax (GST)

• GST is value-added tax. It is a benefit of welfare state.
• Malaysia is not a (full) welfare state (BR1M is an example of welfare act).
• The current tax system is full of wastage. (BR1M, there's an example of certain person getting 10 BR1M for himself).
• Malaysia needs a better welfare system.

Point#3: Islamic Finance

• Nowadays, we cannot go to the implementation of finance as seen in the day of Rasulullah S.A.W, now we must align with the modernity.
• Islam is rich with concept.
• Now, conventional system has failed (interest, for example)
• Zakat is seen as solution.

• Now there is Islamic Finance Engineering. For example, in creating an Islamic Credit Card.

Other point:

1. The salary of doctors and dentists in the United Kingdom are high, about 5000 pound (~RM 35k)
2. Why? So that doctors wouldn't cheat their patients to expensive treatment or medication.
3. The KPI of private medical institution is how much money you can make. And the highest claim on Takaful / insurance is on medication.
4. There are cases of Islamic doctor prescribing patient to expensive treatment / pills, so that they can get more money.
5. In Malaysia, we spend too much money on political activity.
6. Nowadays, there are also the concept of Islamic Healthcare Economics. The purpose of Islamic Healthcare economics is to; (1) to take care of the health of the poor people and (2) accountability in building heath infrastructure.
7. The current Gross Domestic Product of Malaysia is RM 23,000. And we target to achieve RM 48,000 per capita by 2020. However, the concern by the economic cluster in Majlis Profesor Negara is about health issue and the socioeconomic by 2020. They are concerned that the gap between the rich and the poor will get wider and wider every year. He also mentioned that it is not hard to achieve the status of high income nation by 2020, only how are the poor will become by then?
8. This is mentioned in the book Memoirs of  Lee Kuan Yew.
9. For example, the place of University Utara Malaysia is supposed to be a hospital. But private university makes more money than private hospital.
10. 12 university with double capacity is enough in Malaysia. Now, we have 20 public university and 78 private university. And still, we do not have enough school in Sabah and Sarawak. Source: Wikipedia..ha ha.

That's all