If boldly tackling air pollution should be the No 1 priority in the upcoming budget, reaching out to support the working poor comes a close second.
The growing gap between the haves and the have-nots is seriously undermining social harmony in our city. There is an increasing sense of cynicism, a feeling that the dice are loaded in favour of a handful of property-related billionaires and that the little guy can no longer break out of the cycle of poverty.
Many of our young people no longer look on Hong Kong as the land of opportunity, as it was seen by their parents and grandparents.
This malaise manifests itself in a number of disparate ways: violent protests against fairly routine infrastructure projects; growing support at the polls for candidates of a manifest anarchic persuasion; media turning away from issues of substance and focusing on gossip items involving self-professed celebrities, to name but a few.
One of the remarkable features of our community at the moment is the very large number of people who choose to carry on working when they would probably be better off from a narrow financial perspective relying on social welfare. They prefer to maintain their dignity and self-respect by working.
The new minimum wage legislation will help some of these people to a modest extent. But, in truth, the effect will not be great and will be partly offset by some people losing their jobs altogether.
Governments in some other parts of the world have found ways to give direct assistance to the working poor by introducing a variant of a scheme whereby the tax authorities actually pay out money to people who earn less than a certain figure. Hence, the name 'negative income tax'.