Our money

It was recently announced that the Hong Kong government has a fiscal of HK$ 92 billion for the current financial year.  We have actually been running huge financial surpluses for decades, perhaps one of the very few (perhaps the only) economies to do so.  The result is that we have piled up a fiscal surplus of HK$ 935 billion, which is just sitting there.  The only ones to benefit from it are the banks that manage it.  

In the mean time, we have under-invested in our schools, universities, hospitals, and other social institutions.  What could have been done with the money?  It could have been used to run 10 universities and hire 50,000 teachers for the past 10 years.  Or we could have used half of the money to run 5 universities and hire 25,000 teachers, and still have more than 400 billion to run many hospitals, improve social welfare and many other needed services.  

The result would have been the most intelligent workforce in the world, and much higher productivity.  In turn, we would have generated much increased income for the government, and even bigger surpluses and reserves.  Nothing would have been lost.  But we would have a much happier population, much less conflicts, and a much more harmonious.  

Now, the questions is: Do we want the same people (or people just like them)  to run our government?  A harder question: Do we even have the option to find a set of different people to run our government?