Wee Shu Min [Politiks][Singapore][Policy]

[BlueFlix]

The answer is community moderation

http://callantham.org/blog/2010/4/15/th ... ation.html

The author of this letter seems very confused, thinking that the only way for people to be accountable for their online comments is to strip away the anonymity afforded by the web.

I would recommend that those who wish to participate in news forums have to register and provide a contact number which has to be verified before access is granted. Unlike club forums, local news forums have a responsibility to the public. Even a pen name has to have a real person behind it.

This will help instill integrity in the replies posted as the posters will ultimately be responsible for their comments. This will also weed out "flamers" who regularly post profane replies or are unconstructively sarcastic.

First, a nit-pick. An anonymous post or comment does have a real person behind it, just like a pen name the writer cited. Unless Skynet just went live.

The writer ignores the positive aspects of anonymity and chose to focus on the negative, and proposes a draconian and privacy-busting registration method to control feedback. This accomplishes a few things:

* It will reduce the number of willing participants, as many are loathe compromising their privacy just to participate in online discussion
* It gives the forum owner (in this case, the press) a massive contact database, and no one knows how securely that database is guarded.
* The quality of online discussion drops, due to fewer willing participants, further choking off alternative viewpoints.

That "cloak of anonymity" is a convenient excuse, but let's not forget that many people would feel more comfortable, and be more forthright, about their views if they can keep that separate from their professional lives. I would rather live with a higher noise-to-signal ratio than have to choke off access and discussion.

I do, however, acknowledge that a higher signal-to-noise ratio is necessary for constructive debate, and that flames and offensive, violence-inciting comments to be deleted. For that to happen I would depend on the community. A registration system should be set up, but should not be made mandatory, nor should it ask for sensitive information such as phone numbers. Those who register are given the right to rate comments up (+1) or down (-1), effectively implementing a marketplace of ideas.

If you use YouTube, you will understand what I mean. I personally prefer the Slashdot version of community moderation and meta-moderation, used with a more restrictive filter. It significantly improves the signal-to-noise ratio, and is more robust against manipulation.

That is your answer, community moderation. Forum owners, bloggers and anyone who create online content knows that comments are the lifeblood, and that moderation is key. If you want to have a forum and not moderate, don't allow comments to be posted; slowly see your audience disappear. That is the price to pay.

To implement what Yeo Shuan Chee said would asphyxiate active participation and engagement, turning any forum into an echo chamber, which defeats the purpose of a forum. People would do well to understand that.

[BlueFlix]

Worry about business competitiveness? Yeah right

http://chantc.blogspot.com/2010/04/worr ... eness.html

The labour movement has today highlighted that the CPF for employers should be raised from 14.5% to 16%, which is the long term average that the government is aiming for. However, companies are worried about business competitiveness and whether the turnaround is sustainable.

First of all, turnarounds are NEVER sustainable. If they are, there won't be a downturn in 2000, 2003 and 2008-2009. Turnarounds are sustainable if your business is agile enough to adapt to the environment. How do some companies continue to make profits (I'm not talking about banks) from 2007 to now? Look at the annual reports of some companies and you can find a handful increasing their revenue and profits during this period.

Increasing of CPF decrease their business competitiveness? Then high bonuses to the bosses and upper management doesn't dent business competitiveness? Just today, I think I saw the CEO of Singtel purchasing about 900,000 lots of Singtel shares. Is it purchase or part of the payment package? That's like about 2.9million. Enough said.

There is never a good time to increase any wages. It's how your business adapt to this change.

[BlueFlix]

Confidence in leaders

http://tankinlian.blogspot.com/2010/04/ ... aders.html

Dear Mr. Tan,

I fully agree with an article on your blog (The future of our country). I have very little confidence in the next generation of leaders. All of them have never contested in a fair and open election, thanks to the grossly unleveled playing field (eg. GRC, ruling party's use of the entire govt machinery against the opposition party cadres, heavily biased and tightly controlled mainstream media).

How can they claim to represent the people if they are not elected by the people? This explains why they don't have any clue what the people feel/think. They just enact policies according to their liking. They think they know best. They don't have the decency to apologise when they are wrong.

This sad state of affairs worries me. I now seriously wonder if I should get PR status in say Australia. Having a team of "strawberry" leaders, who make policies out of an ivory yower, steering this country scares me like hell.


I am a Singgie said...

Yes, go to Perth!.. there is a mini Ang Moh Kio town already.. has everything.. lemon grass, kunyit, pandan leaves, laksa leaves, and a road that you can drive for the next 24 hrs without seeing another car.
and no ERP too!

But school for kids is expensive and you'll have to be selective.. public schools are notorious for bad behaviour. Domestic waste is cleared once a week ( some places )

Eating out is costly, which means cooking at home.. which means many Singgies have to learn how to deal with chicken, pork and fish.

It is very suburban.. before you make a decision, stay there for at least 1 month, simulate applying for electricity, water, telephone ( mobile phone plans are expensive ) waste removal, school enrolment and visit the medical services for a imaginary ailment.

Next, simulate looking for a job, and how much income tax to pay.
Simulate looking for a home, buying a car and insurance for both.

Look for a dentist, barber, hairdresser, facials, supermarket and... lots to do eh?

Not so easy friend!.. talk is easy
Most Singgies go to Aussie land because their kids studied and worked there or they have had some business dealings and are able to move there with confidence. More than 90% are PRs only.. they return to SIN very often, to shop or to visit medical services here.

Ask them if they still have a CPF account.. many will not tell you that they still do. They did not burn the bridge.. ask them why.

My sister lives in Canada, over 25 years.. she still hold a SIN passport, she returns annually for medical services. She is married with kids and lives in a huge bungalow with 3 cars.. envious yah?
No maid, no gardener and every winter she has to clear her drive way of snow including the side walks because if she does not, she will be sued for causing danger to the public as they walk thru the side walks.

This our home. Lets defend it. Change the administrators if need be... but do not abandon our home.
Its hot, humid and crowded, but its still home.

We can make all the difference.
Stand up for your chicken rice!

April 14, 2010 11:18 AM

[BlueFlix]

The future for our country

http://tankinlian.blogspot.com/2010/04/ ... untry.html

A met a nurse at a wake. I said that the current government had done a lot of good for the people and the country during the first 30 years after independence. During the next 15 years, the policies have been bad for the people, as they led to high cost of living, stagnant wages and wide disparity of income. The government leaders are not working for the welfare of the people and appear to be looking after the intrest of big business and their own interest.

Most people have been quite unfair in judging the "poor quality" of the opposition politicians, as their main source of information is the mainstream media.

I know many of these politicians personally and appreciate their personal sacrifices in being willing to take a stand against the ruling party. Many of them are quite well educated and decent people, quite moderate in their thinking and feel strongly for Singapore. Some people think that they only appear at election time. This is not true. They do spend time on the ground work, but are not reported in the media. We must remember that they have to make a living and have to face difficulty in the business or at work.

She was surprised at my frankness. She started to express her own feelings of doubt about the future of our country and the direction that it is heading. She lamented that many Singaporeans are not able to think about what is good for the country and are afraid to think differently from what has been told to them in the media.

Tan Kin Lian

[BlueFlix]

Where religious freedom ends

http://www.yawningbread.org/arch_2010/yax-1099.htm

One night a few weeks ago in China, our group had dinner in a Muslim restaurant. After we had settled down and ordered from the menu, the staff posed the question: Would we like some alcohol for beverage?

They had a fair selection in their bar. We chose some strong local spirits.

It wasn't long before the food and drink arrived. So did a dog, which sat at each diner's feet in turn, begging for scraps.

* * * * *

Would Muslim restaurants in Singapore have alcohol on the menu? Would there be a pet dog having the run of the place?

Evidently, there is religion and there is religion. Singaporeans, particularly Muslims and Christians, seem to prefer strict interpretations. Sure, how one prefers to shape one's own life is nobody's business but his own, but especially with exclusionary religions (as opposed to the syncretic ones like Hindusim and Buddhism) that claim a monopoly on a revealed truth, it doesn't take much for believers of one religion to rub against others.

Thus Deputy Prime Minister Wong Kan Seng's inclusion of religious friction among three serious threats facing Singapore that he chose to highlight recently. The others were terrorism (which is often also religiously-inspired) and cyber espionage.

He too noted that there has been a trend towards zealousness and defensiveness. "Unlike previously, devotees of the different faiths today appear to be less tolerant over perceived slights to their religion, and are more ready to retaliate," he was quoted by the Straits Times as saying. (Straits Times, 15 April 2010, DPM red-flags religious friction)

Friction is not only between one religious group and another, but also between one or more religious groups and the state. "However, there could be flashpoints when groups go too far in advocating their cause and make unfounded allegations, whip up the emotions of their followers, or mobilise them," he added. "They could heighten tensions between the religious community and the state."

Then he pussy-footed around the necessary response. He said the government would continue to ensure it keeps a big enough neutral, common space where different communities can engage, free of religious considerations and sensitivities.

This is an inadequate response. It's all very well to strive to maintain common neutral spaces where different communities can engage, but ability to engage is not the issue. They can engage, but quite often, they won't.

It is a well-documented problem. The most extreme religious groups refuse to participate in inter-faith dialogue, for example. Even among those that are nominally participating, I wonder how much substantive dialogue takes place. Another example: The most religious parents prefer either home-schooling or strict faith schools. Religious zealousness typically comes with a desire for isolation, except when the impulse is to spread the faith.

And then when spreading the faith, believers easily slip into the habit of denigrating other faiths, or, even more commonly, attacking secularism.

Wong is right to see this as a potentially serious threat to social stability and the integrity of the State. It's his response that falls short. Effectively, he's saying: Be as religious as you want, but don't fight. Not only was it a weak message, coupled with his mention that the constitution protects the right to propagate the faith, Wong's was a mixed message.

The developing situation calls for a stronger stand by the government. He should have drawn some red lines in the sand.

* * * * *

To begin with, we need better clarity about the issue. It isn't faith, it isn't spirituality. Indeed, one can choose to have as much of those as one wants. The problems begin with public religiosity, which manifests in a number of ways:

1. Demonstrate publicly one's adherence to the faith -- to signal one's presence to other like-minded believers, to urine-mark the religion's presence in the community, and to assert one's right to piety.

2. Proclaim the superiority of one's beliefs and find ways to obtain recognition of that superiority, for which there are no better proofs than conversion of others and the adoption of the religion by the state as the officially-sanctioned religion.

3. Ensure that nominal members of the same religion are kept in line -- this is done either through disciplinary rules and actions, or through internal indoctrination (e.g. religious classes for children) and socialisation (e.g. all sorts of group activities for older members).

4. Modify the environment around the believer so that his living space, not just his private self, conforms to his beliefs; in other words, to shape the laws and axioms of state and society to be consistent with the tenets of the faith.

As you can see, these impulses range from the relatively harmless to the conflict-certain. They are driven more by a quest for power over others than for spirituality within the self. Inevitably, any quest for power must run up against others, and against a state that defines itself as secular,

Wong should have drawn three red lines in the sand.

1. No religion may contest the secular foundations of the state, and "secular foundations" should have a broad meaning. All actions of the state shall be based on secular public reasoning. Wherever, for example, the state has to adjudicate between good and bad, right and wrong, prohibition and permission, such judgements shall be free from any religiously-motivated inputs. This is a necessary clarification of the "no religion in politics" rule.

2. No religion may carve out more and more public space for itself, where "public space" again has a broad meaning. This means that taking over other civic groups, buying over commercial property, muscling in on education services or dominating airwaves will be considered beyond the pale.

3. Any religion or member of such who goes out to propagate hate, discrimination and ill-will against any other group of people, will be considered to be challenging the secular principle of equality and non-discrimination, and the human rights of the target group, and will be dealt with with the full force of the law.

And for good measure, Wong should not only have mentioned that the constitution protects the right to propagate one's faith (Article 15 clause 1), but that clause 4 circumscribes this right and more generally, the freedom to practice one's faith. Clause 4 says: "This Article does not authorise any act contrary to any general law relating to public order, public health or morality".

Clearly, religious freedom is not an unlimited freedom. In fact, I would argue that it should be seen as limited only to a freedom of conscience and a freedom to worship. Public religiously has to be conditional and subject to the imperatives of public order and civil peace in the context of a society with diverse beliefs, including atheism.

Wong should have said so without mincing his words.

[BlueFlix]

Escalating property prices

http://tankinlian.blogspot.com/2010/04/ ... rices.html

The root cause is the low interest rate. It gave the impression that the high property prices are still affordable. At an interest rate of 2% on a property of $500,000 payable over 30 years, the monthly installment looks affordable at $1,966 a month. If interest rate increases to 5%, which is a more realistic level, the monthly installment increases by 31% to $2,581. Many people cannot afford this type of increase on a tight budget. But, it will come. Low interest rate cannot continue forever.

Look at it from another angle. The property prices should have been 30% lower, to be realistic based on the affordability of the population. During a period of low interest rate, the property developers increase the price and their marketing approach was to convince the buyer that it is affordable. It took a while for the buyers to buy into this thinking. The foreign buyers enter into the picture and started to move the property market.

This is followed by the speculators who see the chance to make a big profit. They buy the properties at the prevailing prices and expect to make a big profit by flipping over the properties on resale. Their demand pushes up the price. More people jump into the fray. This is called the "greed" factor.

The next batch of buyers are from the genuine end users who buy the prices at inflated value because they were afraid that they would increase further and be out of their financial reach. They jumped in and accept the high prices. This is called the "fear" factor. This is how the low interest rate could increase the property prices by 30%.

The next level of increase comes from stretching the repayment period from the prudent level of 20 years to a more risky level of 30 years. It accounts for another 23% of increase. So, it is possible for the property prices to be 60% higher than the affordable level. The high property prices mean that most households are spending too much of their money on their homes, leaving less money for other types of spending and for their retirement.

Are high property prices sustainable? Just look at what happened to Japan 20 years ago. The crash of the property market put the economy in the doldrums for 20 years. Look at what is happening in America and UK today. They will suffer the same fate. Do you think that Singapore will be any diffferent?

Tan Kin Lian


Anonymous said...

A relative of mine sold his little 4 room hdb flat in Holland Crescent at 655k some months ago. It is not a new flat at all but some folks are willing to part more than half a mil for such a small flat.

There is simply no logic in housing market.

April 12, 2010 8:42 AM


Anonymous said...

Dear Mr Mah,

The current phenomenon of prices of flats, condos and houses shooting thru the roof is primary due to 2 reasons :

HDB and URA have cut down supply of land and flats far too much over the last 5 yrs.

BOT scheme rolls out flats too slowly & cannot meet demand during property boom

Population has grown from 3 millions to 5 millions in the last 5 yrs and MND & MHA did not cater for this huge growth.

MND made a serious repeated mistake by deliberately pushing up property prices instead of letting market forces decide..

MND has been ignoring strong ground feedback and clear &strong signs of problems

Most Singaporeans just cannot understand why the PAP govt can make such stupid and terrible mistake.. The govt shd from learn the mistake it made in 1990s by artificially pushing up property prices in wanting to enhance the asset value of Singaporeans. The property market burst in 1997 and prices of flats bought during the peak have not recovered until today.

Never never push up asset prices beyond it's economic fundamental. It just puzzles us why our govt has forgotten so qkly about the US sub prime crisis and the Japan's long drawn property-bubble induced deflation.

When Singaporeans have been crying out to you to lower the HDB flat prices since 2006, you keep insisting flats are still affordable. Even when we were hit by the most severe recession in history, our salary has dropped significantly and prices of property continue to shoot up, you still foolishly insist flats are still affordable and flat prices will continue to rise. How stupid and silly can you be?

Let us tell you, the mild property curbing measures you implemented will not work. Even the developers are telling you, with tongue in cheek, that MND must sell more land and HDB must release more BTO flats more quickly and not at the current pace as their land bank has dried up and demand is super strong due to several factors we all know..

Next MND must implement stronger measures like 50% capital gain tax for sellers who sell their property within 3 yrs and higher stamp duty up front and 50% loan for 2nd property for both HDB and private property immediately. Your callibrated and step-by-step approach will be disastrous. In a year's time, the propetry prices will rise to a very dangerous level by more than 30% if nothing concrete is done.

People are now saying MBT have helped the developers, the govt and the wealthy people who own multiple properties to make so much money, even during recession, at the expense of the average Singaporeans whose salary have been depressed and can't even buy a HDB flat. They even say MBT own a lot of properties and that is why he is selfishly and purposely pushing up the property prices to make a huge profit before he retires.

Why shd Singaporeans VOTE for MBT? Indeed, please give us 10 good reasons why Singaporeans shd vote for you and the PAP govt? The PRs and new citizens are taking away the good jobs, deprive our children a place in the good schools, crowding out Singaporeans from the govt hospitals, congesting our transport system and deprive us of our basic housing. Living cost is getting higher and higher. All the govt can tell us is that Singaporeans themselves are to be blamed because we are choosy, lazy and demanding. So the govt is clearly telling us they value PRs and new citizens more than the naughty Singaporeans.

Honestly, how can the ministers and top govt servants who are making $1.8 million a year plus MP's pay (tax exempted) understand and emphatise with average Singaporeans who are making a meagre $60,000 a year and struggles to make ends meet to feed a family of 4 to 6 persons with such high living costs.

Pure Bred Singapore Citizens
April 12, 2010 8:02 PM

[BlueFlix]

Goldman charged with fraud by SEC

http://singaporemind.blogspot.com/2010/ ... y-sec.html

US regulators, the SEC, has sued Goldman Sachs for fraud. The details of the case can be found in the Reuters article I attached below. The case relate to a deal known as ABACUS in which Goldman sold CDOs to European banks. The SEC has evidence that the Goldman vice-president, Fabrice Tourre, who arranged the deal knew that the structured product marketed was toxic [Link]. Also, the selection of securities for the product was done by hedge fund manager, John Paulson who structured the product so that he can take a huge billion dollar bet that the product will fail - this was not revealed to buyers of the product . If SEC can prove its case, at the minimum, this is a really bad case of conflict of interest and poor disclosure. Technically, the buyers 'knew' the actual securities they bought which was detailed in the contract so it will be a challenge for SEC to prove fraud - maybe misrepresentation or mis-selling is more appropriate.

This case reminds me of the minibond saga in Singapore in which many Singapore investors lost money in structured products. This is the advertising for Pinnacle Notes:

Click on the picture to see when the product was sold to Singaporeans - 29 October 2007. The ABACUS deal in the SEC case against Goldman was sealed in Jan 2007. One piece of evidence SEC has is an email by Fabrice Tourre showing that he knew the securities in ABACUS deal were toxic because the US housing market was about to collapse[Link to article about that email]. By Oct 2007, it is likely that it was common knowledge among American investment bankers that these products were highly toxic. That was when many of these products such as Pinnacle Notes were launched and sold in Singapore to ordinary Singaporeans who were unsophisticated investors by local financial institutions. The question is whether American investment banks sold these products in Asia knowing they were toxic. If that is the case, they probably came to Asia to be out of the clutches of the SEC and other American regulators. If they were caught in America like Goldman, it is almost certain they will be made to pay restitution to investors.

The selling ban for many local banks for structured products has just ended[Link]. I don't think many Singaporeans will start buying these products given the sad memories of Lehman minibonds are still quite fresh in their minds. But 5 or 10 years from today, the lessons will likely be forgotten by investors and new products will make their way here. After the minibond saga, most of the changes to the system came in the form of measures to ensure relationship managers are adequately trained and improvements to sale process of these products[Link].

This recent crisis shows the need for a strong proactive regulator with the expertise to detect and prevent dubious schemes and bad products from entering our market and harming our citizens. Even after the Lehman saga, the MAS still takes a hands-off approach leaving it to the banks to improve their internal selling process. If something goes wrong in the future, you can bet MAS will recite its "buyer beware" mantra - it is the 'do-nothing' approach passing the responsibility to ordinary Singaporeans who are most vulnerable. Proper regulation and better regulators are actually required for our financial hub to thrive because investors like to know before they put their money down, the products are regulated and when something goes wrong, the perpertrators will be caught and prosecuted.

In 2006 & 2007, the SGX courted Chinese companies to list in Singapore to boost trading volume - brokerages and SGX were main beneficiaries. A sizable number of these companies engaged in accounting fraud causing investors hundreds of millions. While accounting fraud cannot be completely prevented, the number of fraud cases among these Chinese companies known as s-chips was very high. When they occur, all that the authorities can do was to blacklist the perpertrators (read article: SGX names 'em and shames 'em) because we have no legal jurisdiction over these companies. Our authorities must be the only ones who think they can prevent fraud by 'naming and shaming' the fraudsters. These guys are probably enjoying their millions in posh KTVs and mansions somewhere in the middle kingdom while Singaporean investors are left holding the empty bag.....buyer beware?....Investors should be aware that nobody looks after your interests but yourself - hidden conflicts of interests possible in our systems, the lack of a proactive watchdog and lack of protection for investors. At the end of the day, many Singaporeans play it safe by over-simplifying their investments sticking to fixed deposits, insurance and property. Not that this is a bad thing for individuals but it does show a lack of trust for anything slightly more complex - if it goes wrong, you don't only lose your money, you may not even get justice...the idea of someone enjoying his life with money stolen from you is just too painful. Where are those Chinese crooks who sold Singaporeans those flaky s-chips with accounting problems?

[BlueFlix]

Singapore Dream : The Scott Huang Story....

http://singaporemind.blogspot.com/2010/ ... story.html

I will write about what has happened to the Singapore Dream later but first read about Scott Huang....and various views of what the Singapore Dream is and how it has evolved. If it is tough for Scott Huang, an Ivy League graduate, ever wonder what it is like for the ordinary Singaporean? What is their Singaporean Dream?

-------------
The Great (unreachable?) S'pore Dream (Straits Times, Insight, 17 April 2010).

IF YOU are compiling a handbook on how to succeed in Singapore, you might be tempted to just cut and paste Mr Scott Huang's story into it.


He studied hard in school, received a prestigious scholarship, attended an American Ivy League university, earned a master's in electrical engineering, and went on to a mid-level job in a large maritime company.

What is supposed to happen next - so goes the Singapore Dream - is that he gets married, owns a car, moves into a condominium, joins a golf club, and settles into a comfortable middle-class life happily ever after.

Yet, as the 30-year-old will testify readily, this age-old formula isn't working like he thought it would.

He intends to marry his fiancee, who works in the media industry, by the end of the year, but that's just about where the wheels start to come off the wagon.

Spiralling prices mean the choice piece of private property he hankers for hangs in the balance. Driving a car of his own has been relegated far down the priority list.

He has now drafted a B-dream just in case the A-dream turns out to be beyond his reach.

'I now have what I call a minimum goal and an ideal goal,' he says. 'The minimum goal is an HDB flat; the ideal goal is a condominium apartment and a car.'

Achieving his ideal goal - which includes an overseas education for his future children - is beginning to sound like an impossible dream.

'It will require major changes in lifestyle. I cannot go out so much and cannot have holidays every year. But I'm trying to stay hopeful,' he says.

Mr Huang's tale of the struggle to achieve the Singapore Dream is one familiar to many young Singaporeans of his cohort: in their mid-20s to mid-30s, tertiary-educated, about to settle down or newly married, on the cusp of life.

An increasingly competitive environment and news of rising car and home prices have led to a feeling that the good life they aspire to is slowly slipping out of reach.

But is that really the case?

After all, the country has encountered such bumps several times in its history and every time, young Singaporeans seem to have emerged with their dreams more or less intact.

In 1996, an impassioned debate took place in Parliament over concerns that the Singapore Dream was dying. Eventually, a basket of measures was uncovered to keep the dream alive, including building executive condominiums to provide affordable condo-style living.

The question now is whether another round of initiatives may be forthcoming to keep the young from losing hope. Or is the current situation just a fleeting feeling of helplessness, a phase, a product of economic cycles?

More pertinently, do the young Singaporeans of today dream the same dream as their parents and grandparents?

Or have they scaled the hierarchy of needs and gone beyond such dreams? Or, given a matured economy with slower growth, should Mr Huang and company scale down their expectations instead?

What is the dream?

ONE early articulation of the Singapore Dream in a 1981 Sunday Times article defined it as: 'A salary of a few thousand dollars a month; enough extra cash to decorate the home with the latest equipment and branded fabrics and furniture; holidays abroad; two children and a promise for the future.'

Sometime in the 1990s, this definition was refined to specify the five Cs - a car, condominium, credit cards, cash, and a country club membership.

Are these dreams still relevant, considering that the country has undergone a complete transformation in the past three decades?

Insight posed this question to a dozen young Singaporeans like Mr Huang, and the answer has largely been, 'Yes'.

Although many responded initially with answers like 'happiness' or 'a good life', the achievement of these goals is predicated on the acquisition of material goods.

Only two stress that the happiness they seek has nothing to do with money.

Mr Colin Lim, who works in the finance industry, feels that it is completely natural for people who have grown up watching their parents get rich to want the same things.

Says the 29-year-old: 'I think any society that is going through a period of economic development would end up dreaming the same things and aspiring to the same material things.'

Indeed, no matter how you attempt to classify it, the Singapore Dream is invariably shoved into a money-lined pigeon hole.

National University of Singapore sociologist Tan Ern Ser is someone who knows a thing or two about the Singapore Dream, having set out to study it in the early 1980s when he did his master's thesis.

He concludes that the Singapore Dream is in many ways similar to its American equivalent in the sense that both have to do with social mobility.

'Essentially, it involves crossing a symbolic public-private divide,' he says, referring to things like housing and transport.

He adds that the Singapore version has not changed much over the years because the Singapore project has not changed either.

'Apart from the project of building a nation populated by people with a strong sense of national identity, the Singapore project aims to create a middle-class society. These two components are best seen as works-in-progress, and likely to remain so for a long time to come,' he says.

Political observer Eugene Tan, a law lecturer at the Singapore Management University, links it to the Government's emphasis on the economy.

'The five Cs are still very much regarded as the benchmark of success, and government policy entrenches the mindset that expanding economic opportunity is critical to the nation, the family and the individual's well-being.'

He adds: 'Societal conditioning and political socialisation mean that the Dream has a powerful effect on Singaporeans' value systems, attitudes, aspirations, and ambitions.'

Many also point to the sort of role models society and the media tend to present here.

Singaporeans invited to schools to give talks tend to be financially successful people in the mainstream, not a stay-at-home mum or an avant-garde artist living in a Little India walk-up.

Of course, it cannot be generalised that young Singaporeans care only about things related to money. Probe further and many list more intangible things, like raising good children or having a good work-life balance, as close seconds on the dream hierarchy.

Says Ms Jamie Lim, 27, who works as a consultant in an accounting firm: 'Raising good children is definitely part of the big picture, but of course, when people think of children, they also have to think of money.'

Then there are some who dance to a different drum beat. Like Miss Li Hanyi, 28, an art director in an advertising agency, who says simply that the thought of being tied to a house, kids and money is 'everything I don't want in life'.

She dreams of a more open society: 'I want the vibrancy of New York but with all the things I like about Singapore.'

Mr Eugene Tan thinks that such dreams will creep slowly into the Singaporean's consciousness but that it will be some time before materialism is usurped: 'The Dream has evolved but the innate vulnerability of our society continues to persist and that heightens the drive towards continuous striving as a hedge against being irrelevant. Being poor carries a heavy social stigma.'
IT MAY not be the most unbiased view, but nearly every young Singaporean interviewed is convinced he is facing a harder struggle and a steeper climb than the preceding generation.

Teacher Ross Nasir, 24, is certainly feeling the strain. She is hopeful that she will one day match the executive maisonette her businessman father bought when he was in his 40s, but it just seems very bleak to her right now. 'Everything seems to be getting inaccessible. It's like striking Toto,' she sighed.

This exaggerated sense of hopelessness is common, even if not completely valid as each generation has to slog to achieve its dreams.

It is true to say, however, that earlier generations generally enjoyed greater social mobility than later ones.

Professor Tan Ern Ser calls the late 1970s and early 1980s the 'golden age of the Singapore Dream'. Since then, he says, the playing field has become more crowded, with more higher-educated middle-class families all jostling to get ahead in the 'mobility game'.

Mr Eugene Tan puts it this way: 'A degree earned a generation or two ago was a passport to a good life but a degree today is no guarantee.'

Indeed, the sort of asset appreciation the older 'lucky generation' enjoyed is mind-boggling to the young professionals of today.

In 1965, half the labour force earned less than $150 per month. By 1985, this had shot up to between $600 and $1,500, an increase by up to 10 times.

An average young professional starting a job today with a $2,000 salary would not dare dream that it will turn into $20,000, no matter how long he works.

The same goes for property. Those who bought HDB flats in the 1960s and 1970s for $10,000 or less would have been able to cash out today at up to $500,000.

Much of this perceived luck can be attributed to the rapid growth Singapore went through in that period. With a mature economy comes slower, productivity-related growth.

For today's young, that simply means good wage increases and asset appreciation cannot be taken for granted.


Says Prof Tan: 'The journey is perceived as becoming somewhat more hazardous, competitive, insecure, and uncertain, brought about by globalisation and economic competition and fluctuations.

'Moreover, even as Singaporeans seek to enhance their assets, those in the sandwiched generation may find themselves having to handle various big-ticket items, such as parents' health-care costs and children's education costs, notwithstanding government subsidies for these items.'

But older Singaporeans point out that this hopelessness is just another phase of life. Everyone, baby boomers included, started out fretting that they would never be able to reach their dreams.

Parents of twenty-somethings speak of how their early days were spent in modest rented flats, slowly saving up to bigger and better things.

And even if the comparisons with baby boomers are cast aside, it may not be all bad news.

Yes, car and home prices may be high now, but this is not the first time they have hit these heights. Just like the economy, the affordability of the Singapore Dream follows the fluctuations of the market.

As Prof Ivan Png, professor of information systems and economics at NUS, puts it: 'Affordability is cyclical. So, yes, one strategy would be to wait until affordability improves. The challenge is to predict the cycle.'

Also, if the experience of the elders are anything to go by, there is always hope.

Keeping the dream alive

IF THE Government's action in 1996 is any guide, it is clearly concerned about keeping the Singapore Dream alive for the young. This is why it is monitoring the public housing market very closely and making sure that prices remain affordable.

Explaining why this is very much an important political issue for the Government, Mr Eugene Tan says: 'Having substantial buy-in of the Singapore Dream is fundamental to the Government's legitimacy, popularity and power. Being able to mould the Dream gives the Government considerable leverage and influence over the lives of the average Singaporean.

'If the Dream loses its standing, then the way of life promoted by the Government will lose its efficacy and effectiveness.'

Dr Gillian Koh of the Institute of Policy Studies, in turn, notes that part of the Government's commitment to help innovation and entrepreneurship flourish is driven by the recognition that those are the only vehicles that can provide the exponential wage increases Singaporeans want.

She says the Government's approach to the dream problem is to make sure that it provides a certain minimum, such as good, affordable housing and health care for the masses.

'It has to draw a line in providing some of the basics as its social compact, a line established at where a relatively large portion of the population can benefit, that is fair, and will not bankrupt the system,' she says.

Ultimately, she stresses, everyone's destiny lies in his or her own hands: 'Even if the public makes the Government promise more, I am sure most people do eventually want to go well beyond that and set higher targets for themselves - to do things where their passions lie and let that pay for itself - today the bus, tomorrow a Ferrari?

[BlueFlix]

Survey - expenses of a retired couple

http://tankinlian.blogspot.com/2010/04/ ... ouple.html

How much does a retired couple have to spend each month to live in Singapore? Give your views in this survey.

I estimate that the expenses for a retired couple with a home for an adequate lifestyle is $1,200 a month and the bare minimum is $800. What do you think?


Anonymous said...

$1.2K for a couple is rather tight --- $600 per person per month -- $20 per day.

Cannot be sickly, thrifty with day-to-day spending, watch the utility usage especially electricity and air-con, minimise travelling even with public transport, 1 or 2 times holiday in Indonesia, M'sia, Thailand or Philippines, couple of times eating out each month and take advantage of cheaper weekday restaurant lunches.

Although I'm not a retiree, but almost like one -- 50+ retrenched PMET, working as security guard for past 2 years, home fully paid up, no car, no children, no debts. Take home pay of $1,200 per month is more than enough for myself. But still, I estimate my monthly expenses to be about $750-$800, if average out things like cheap holidays, CNY ang paos, once a year dental, couple of times see GP, once in a while eat at restaurant/hotel buffet.

I think $800 per retiree per month or $1,600 per couple will be more manageable. i.e. still can enjoy a "retirement lifestyle".

April 11, 2010 4:51 PM


jamesneo said...

Let me calculate: if got cable TV(depend on packages)+cable internet= $111.28 per month

handphone= 24 per person

normal food= (1+3+3+2 drinks)*30=270 per person

electricity +water bill depending usage from $100-300

NO CAR use only public transport and only go out 3 times per week 1.50(for one bus plus one mrt and for senior citizen concession)*3*2=$9 per week $36 per month per person

My calculations give me 871.28-1071.28 total for two person. This does not include tv license, s@c charges and any insurance.

We can see that 800 will be a bit stretch. If want to take taxi like two times only per month then additional $20 at least. If want to eat at normal restaurant for twice a month then additional $60-80 total for two person

Hence i think 1300 might be minimal for me if the couple do exactly above with no holiday. But only spending like above with zero luxury like buying ice-cream or drinking coffee or going for movies etc seem sad. So $1500-1600 might be a better figure.

April 11, 2010 10:52 PM


Anonymous said...

$1600 is probably just enough today, after factoring in insurance. However it will not be enough 10 years down the road due to inflation. I personally think $1600 today with 5% yearly inflation (or more) to just cover the expenses.

April 12, 2010 1:35 PM


James said...

1) Bare minimum (cannot afford to waste any money) - $800

2) Adequate (do not need to watch every cent) - $2000

3) Comfortable (can afford to have holidays and entertainment) - $4000

April 13, 2010 10:32 AM


Ex-Con said...

The factor proposed by Mr Tan is 300. I.e. If the size of your retirement fund is at least 300 X (monthly expenses needed), then you can construct your own retirement pension using low-cost diversified funds. I would probably use a factor of 350 for greater assurance, otherwise lower your monthly expenses.

Why 300? Go and do your own research to find out why. Or buy Mr Tan's book to gain financial knowledge.

For myself, I would construct a 50:50 portfolio of diversified blue-chip equities and investment-grade bonds. For equities, you can either buy direct or use low-cost ETF like STI ETF. For bonds hard to buy direct due to large minimum lot size. Unfortunately, there is only 1 S'pore-centric bond ETF on SGX that is rather stagnant and illiquid. So my preference would be the ABF Asian Bond ETF listed on HKSE and/or some of the better investment-grade global and/or local bond UTs.

Unfortunately this can only work if you are DISCIPLINED. Must do rebalancing once a year no matter what. Cannot panic sell during market lows like Oct 2008 or Mar 2009. And in the first place, how many people are disciplined enough to accumulate retirement fund of at least 300 X (monthly expenses)?

Govt knows 90% of singaporeans cannot do this. That's why their solution: Work for as long as you can, and don't expect handouts.

April 13, 2010 2:48 PM

[BlueFlix]

Retirement savings

http://tankinlian.blogspot.com/2010/04/ ... vings.html

Read this article,

http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2010/ ... -you-need/

My view.

It seems that the average amount that most people need for retirement in the USA is $1 million. I suppose that this include the value of the house. A similar amount will be needed in Singapore, i.e. $500,000 as value of house and $500,000 cash for retirement. At 4% yield (hopefully), $500,000 will produce $20,000 a year or $1,600 a month. This is similar to what most people comments in an earlier article in my blog.

However, if I am mistaken and most people expect $1 million cash on top of a fully paid house, then they are looking at monthly expenses of $3,200.


Anonymous said...

Personally I wouldn't feel safe with just $500,000 to retire for husband and wife. The standard of living in Singapore is getting too expensive. A better way is to save $500,000 and than retire in another lower cost country.

April 14, 2010 8:20 AM


Retired said...

Never include your home as an asset.

Yes, one million cash (or highly liquid assets ) excluding the home is far more realistic.

The anticipated 4% yield is not a sure thing and there is inflation and medical issues. Therefore $3200
a month is a good figure to start and to ride out all these unknowns over 30 years.

In America, the income tax rates are higher ( although, some other living costs are lower )including for retirees.

It also depends on the city that you intend to live in. Manhattan in New York is very expensive.

Hopefully, people here will understand that saving and preparing for their golden years is a serious matter, not to be left to the Government or anybody else.

I have friends who believe that their children will house them and give them pocket money.. it is a view that I find puzzling. Although it is a very Confusionist concept of filial duty, the current generation has mostly embraced very western practices, and I am doubtful if our children will want to do it.

Ours is a very urban society and an expensive one too. It will most unfair and unwise to depend on the next generation to help us.

I am 54, married, with 2 sons. I do not expect my kids to look after me. I plan to have my own home and die in it, have my own funeral expenses paid from my own account.

Do not count on the kids.
Do not count on the Gov

Do prepare for retirement, gracefully.

April 14, 2010 10:51 AM


Ex-Con said...

Thanks Mr Tan, that was a balanced and easy to read article on retirement savings. Some parts may be too US-oriented such as moving to lower cost part of the country. For singaporeans, we can only move to Jurong West, Punggol (foodstalls here not really cheap), or Woodlands. Maybe more adventurous and better planned will be willing to consider Penang or Chiang Mai (hey, you can be Marc Faber's neighbour!).

Readers have mentioned in previous post that the predicament is very low interest returns in Singapore, even GLC and stat board bonds now yield not more than 4%pa. Also not easy to buy such bonds. Well, if you are retiring and have managed to save $500,000 you can actually buy 2 lots of such bonds, from banks or stockbrokers. You need to pay service fees and transaction fees. But if you DIY online, you just need to pay transaction fee around 0.3%. You will have guaranteed let's say 4%pa interest to live on for the next 20-30yrs.

But is this such a good idea? There are a number of problems:

1) For coupon of 4%pa from GLC and stat board, the bond maturity will be at least 20 yrs, maybe 30 yrs. Such long dated bonds are incredibly sensitive to inflation or interest rate movements. If interest rates go up 1%, such bonds will go down by 10% in market value. And don't forget interest rates are now at their lowest in decades. The only direction for interest rates and inflation is now UP. Very high chance your bonds will become negative territory for 20+ years. And never say you will never sell the bonds halfway --- what IF you need a lump sum of money suddenly?

2) You are locking yourself in for 20-30yrs on a fixed coupon. The principal value of the bonds also remain the same upon maturity. There is no chance of capital appreciation. With very high chance of higher inflation and rising interest rates in future, your coupon income will be eroded by inflation. i.e. In 2010, you get average $1,600 per month. In 2030 you still getting $1,600 per month. You think kopi-O will still be at 70cents 20-to-30 years down the road?!?

3) Becoz of the large minimum lot size, your $500K egg is all in 1 basket. You are tying your 30-yr retirement to the future of Singapore and to some extent the PAP govt too. Private companies and MNCs are always mobile and relocating to the best places to do business. Stat boards? No way. Even for GLCs, if Singapore was to deteriorate in the future, many are not that efficient and will also go down.

Therefore, having a well diversified low-cost blue-chip equities as the foundation for your retirement fund is crucial if you (1) want your retirement fund to last for 30+ years and (2) have retirement income that can increase along with inflation.

And yes, even a 70 yr old should have about 35% to 40% of his retirement funds in equities.

For further testing, you can use T Rowe Price's retirement calculator to estimate what you can have in inflation-adjusted retirement income. They use Monte Carlo simulation to derive the results, and this online application has already been around for last 10 years. I first used it in 2000.

http://www3.troweprice.com/ric/ric/public/ric.do

April 14, 2010 1:27 PM


Ex-Con said...

From my observations here, you cannot simply plan your retirement funds with just a fixed amount like $2000 per month, and then sitting on it. Your retirement funds must allow that $2000 per month to increase with inflation e.g. if inflation is 3% over the next 12 months, then starting in Jan 2011 you will need to draw $2060 per month, and so on.

Neither can you be so conservative or gung-ho (I don't know what is the right word) to say that you will accumulate sufficient retirement funds to give you $4000 per month (IN TODAY'S DOLLARS), even though you need only $2000 (IN TODAY'S DOLLARS), just becoz to cater for future inflation. Coz this means you need to over-save in order to double the size of your retirement funding.

Most people already have trouble saving 300 X (monthly expenses). You want to accumulate 600 X (monthly expenses)? The trick is to be able to structure your retirement funds to provide income and also with good chance of capital appreciation to allow inflation increments.

Please take note that all the talking we've done so far about needing $XXXX for retirement is in TODAY's dollars i.e. as if you are retiring NOW. If your projected retirement is 20 yrs later and you calculate you are spending $2000 per month NOW (minus away the mortgage), then in 20 yrs time assuming average 3% inflation, you will be needing $3612 per month -- and this is just in the FIRST YEAR. Next year you need to increase upwards for inflation (just like pay increment).

April 14, 2010 3:38 PM


Retired said...

My view is: the required retirement amount (CASH, not including asset like houses) will depend on the age who this person (single) or couple want to retire (could be any age). Some assumption have to be made.

Assumption are:
1) All loans are fully paid ie. Housing, education. No more dependent allowances and expenses to worry about. It will be difficult to talk about retirement if loans/debt are not cleared.
2) Inflation: average 2% annum
3) Optimistic Investment return: 4% annum (ie. SGS bonds)
4) Assuming a person life span of 80 years old.
5) Assuming CPF RA minimum amount reached - S$117,000.

Retirement age at ie. 50years old
A) For Single - $600K CASH
$600K at 4% - $24K passive income

B) For retired couple -$900K CASH
$900K at 4% - $36K passive income
[Left over from passive income to be re-invested to SGS bonds]
[Remember that at 65years old, CPF RA will be able to be utilised]

Retirement age at ie. 60years old
A) For Single - $500K CASH
$500K at 4% - $20K passive income
B) For retired couple - $700K CASH
$700K at 4% - $28K passive income
[Left over from passive income to be re-invested to SGS bonds]
[Remember that at 65years old, CPF RA will be able to be utilised]

April 15, 2010 11:57 AM

[BlueFlix]

Understanding the Singaporean Dream

http://singaporemind.blogspot.com/2010/ ... dream.html

"Well, as I said, because so many more are getting higher education, the scarcity value of a degree is less. Furthermore, the overall inequality in the society is much less than when 3 or 5 % were getting degrees and they were in great demand. If you had a degree, you could easily buy a house or a car, and it was no problem because that was your pulling power. Now, with 20% getting degrees and more tertiary educated, they are earning more than those who didn't go to university. But university graduates are not as few as before and, therefore, make less."
- PM Lee Hsien Loong, Harvard Interview[Link]
.
The Singapore Dream was once defined as 5Cs - Cars, Cash, Condo, Club Membership, Credit Card. These days they market credit cards to anyone with a heartbeat so you can drop that - overspending on your credit card can easily result in a nightmare. Club membership and cash is quite ill-defined - you can take club membership to be at one of the exclusive country clubs with golf not your NTUC Fairprice membership and cash to be something like $1-$2M in today's dollars. The Cs are still relevant today at least for a large segment of our population whose values have been shaped by materialistic orientation of today's society. I'll get back to the 5Cs but first I would like to share something from my childhood...
.
One of the fondest memories from my childhood is that of my dad driving the whole family to a drive-in cinema somewhere in Jurong. I can't remember what movie was screened but that day, my sister and I got to sit on the bonnet and roof of the car to watch the movie. In those days, I lived in a kampung but my dad owned a car so we get to go places - weekend was spent fishing at Bedok Jetty, the beautiful beaches, rustic Sentosa, movies etc. Children did not get much homework in those days - I was an undisciplined student who did not submit 90% of his homework even when required. Those days the teachers did not bother, my father did not bother as long as I passed and I had this thinking that if I understood the stuff they were teaching, homework wasn't important - PSLE was a pass/fail thing i.e. no marks involved. You can take it that I had a childhood - a happy one. My dad worked as a technician all his life after he earned his 'O' level attending night school. Degrees were rare in the 60s when a large part of the population was uneducated. My dad's story is one of spectacular social mobility. We left the kampung in the late 70s when my dad bought a HDB flat. It was fully paid in a few years and my dad was debt free. In the late 80s there was nasty recession and housing prices plummeted. My dad bought a terrace house and serviced his loan with his technician pay. My parents still stay in the terrace house today. Our neighbors have moved and sold their properties. The house on the left was sold to a rich lawyer and the one on the right was sold to a rich specialist doctor. You may be asking - what is so spectacular about that? Many people were able to do that in those days. See my dad had one of the worst starting point possible - he was an orphan and had to support himself working when he was still a child. Owning a landed property and putting all this children through university exceeded his wildest dreams....and he did it working as a technician. Two years ago, my dad asked me to buy the neighbor's house. Our neighbor's son got into some financial trouble and he had to sell the house to help his son out. I couldn't match the price offered by the rich lawyer and was priced out....actually I didn't come that close to being able to buy it because I realised later when I got to know the lawyer better that he is ...to put it bluntly 'filthy rich' and would have offered a much higher price because he liked the location. I was priced out 2 years ago and at today's prices, I'm completely priced out. But that is just a small disappointment not being able to own the same type of housing as my dad - the challenges for our younger generation is much bigger than mine - life is tough even for an Ivy Leaguer like Scott Huang (see previous post).
.
There is one C that describes our society so well - that C is COMPETITION. Intense competition that one cannot avoid. If you look at attaining the 5 Cs as a form of success, then a high rate of failure is built into the system - number of cars are dictated by a quota so most people will not own one and only 20% of the population will live in private property as land is scarce. Working hard alone will not do. You have to make more money than the other 80%. As if it is not intense enough, the PAP govt make sure the spurs are in your hide by importing people at a high rate at all levels. Today 80% of the 1st class honours in engineering are foreigners because the govt goes overseas through Contact Singapore and other means to hand out scholarships to bring in foreign students in large numbers. Among the 2 billion people in China & India, you can always find a large number of smart people willing to come here for a fully paid education. Don't be so simplistic to think that the local guys are not good enough to do well - when you have a quota and you have to grade people, people get knocked off simply due to the quota - the differentiation can be inaccurate and artificial. You can extend to the rest of society - people make a mistake when they think that this intense competition and our meritocracy goes hand in hand ...but this idea of doing better when you work smarter and harder is only true up to a certain level of competition. When competition becomes too intense and working hard alone is not enough to attain your dreams - people will resort to excessive risk taking, unethnical, unfair, unhealthy & immoral ways to get what they want. What emerges out of this intense competition is not a better, stronger and cohesive society that can take on world but a selfish, unhappy one that is bogged down by the numerous failures it creates internally. Our FT policy went from one to import only the best carefully selected people to elevate Singaporeans to one that brought in so many people that it can only depress Singaporeans. PAP policies has caused the dreams of Singaporeans to become less attainable and the intense competition is now a source of great unhappiness in our society....and there is now plenty of unhappinessness with the PAP.
.
While many Singaporeans still dream of the 5Cs, a growing number dream about having more freedom, democracy, equality and justice in our society. The 2 dreams are ultimately linked and whatever stands in the way of one is also standing the way of the other. A growing number of Singaporeans do not want to wait any longer - they are leaving. The other day, there was great dismay in my company when we found out that an employee from one of our associates had applied to emigrate to New Zealand. My company had invested a large sum to have him trained for something very high tech and uncommon. I was asked to find out what was going on. He told me that our investment is safe because he has no plans to leave in the next 5 years. He was getting a head start because such applications can take a very long time. I asked him why he wanted to leave when he is actually doing quite well for himself in Singapore. He told me that looking ahead there is great uncertainty for his children - they are average students and may not have the same capabilities as him.....there is great uncertainty how well they will do given the extremely intense competition here. I asked him, "why New Zealand?". He told me that any place where an average person can lead a high quality of life would be okay....and that is probably what it takes to keep good people in Singapore. It is not just about attaining our own dreams but also a system that will give our children a good chance to do well in life.

[BlueFlix]

Turning 55 in year 2013

http://www.sammyboy.com/showthread.php? ... 225&page=4

Effective last year, if you sell your HDB flat after age 55 to downgrade to a smaller flat and to monetise your flat for retirement, any CPF utilised plus accrued interest has to be returned to the CPF account if the CPF Minimum Sum (MS) has not been met.

With the current MS at $117,000, what this policy change means is that this sum cannot be used to purchase the smaller flat downgrade.

Why are we making it harder for Singaporeans to downgrade to monetise their flat for retirement?

Many Singaporeans subscribed to the call for asset enhancement by purchasing HDB flats – only to be hit by the policy change now, which in effect, may result in their inability to cash out of their “enhanced” HDB asset.

The CPF Minimun Sum (MS) was raised from July 1, 2009, for those aged 55 years, to $117,000, up from $106,000. 

This is an increase of 10.4 per cent, much more than the inflation rate for the previous year, which was 6.5 per cent. How can the increase in MS be “an adjustment for inflation, is to ensure that Singaporeans set aside sufficient savings for their retirement?”

Similarly, the MS was increased by 6.4 per cent in July 2008, from $99,600 to $106,000, when inflation was only 2.1 per cent in 2007.

With the current recession, some of those reaching age 55, may have lost their jobs or failed in their businesses, and thus a large increase in the MS, may cause some financial stress to them. 

As last year’s increase is the highest in the history of the MS scheme, at its current quantum of increase, does it mean that by 2013, the MS may be about $161,000 ($117,000 now plus $11,000 increase for 4 years)?

The Longevity Insurance Committee’s (LIC) CPF Life report last year only projected a MS of $134,000 in 2013 (chapter 4). 

Adding the projected Medisave Required Amount (MRA) of $36,000 in 2013, does it mean that those reaching age 55 may only be able to withdraw $5,000, if they have less than $197,000 (MS $161,000 plus MRA $36,000) in their CPF? 

How many Singaporeans will have more than $197,000 in their CPF in 2013?

The answer can be found in the LIC report: only 60 per cent are projected to have at least $67,000 in their CPF in 2013.

At the current rate of increase of $15,500 per year ($11,000 MS + $4,500 MRA), will the combined MS and MRA be $352,000 and $507,000 in 2023 and 2033 respectively?

Leong Sze Hian

[BlueFlix]

Best place to live in but how many are leaving?
Leong Sze Hian / Columnist

http://www.sammyboy.com/showthread.php?p=9161#post9161

I refer to the report “About 1,000 give up citizenship annually” (My Paper, Jul 22).

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, emigrate means “to leave one’s place of residence or country to live elsewhere”. So, I think Non-Constituency Member of Parliament (NCMP) Sylvia Lim’s question may not have been answered adequately.

The foreign missions in Singapore have statistics on the number of Singaporeans who emigrate. For example, I understand that about 4,000 Singaporeans migrate to Australia in a year. The majority of emigrants may not show up in the “surrender citizenship” statistics, because the CPF board will only allow emigrants to withdraw their CPF, when they have obtained citizenship from another country. I have friends who have emigrated to Canada and Australia, and are still waiting to be granted citizenship after many years.

I believe in countries like Thailand and Malaysia, Singaporean emigrants generally are never given citizenship. As many countries allow dual citizenship, unlike Singapore, some emigrants may never surrender their Singapore citizenship.

Does the CPF board have statistics of enquiries that it receives from Singaporeans abroad regarding their CPF withdrawal ?

I would like to suggest that we compile the emigration statistics from the foreign missions, as well as the CPF statistics, so that we have a more realistic estimate of emigration. I feel that we should not in a sense, be complacent, by assuming that only those who give up their citizenship have emigrated. From my experience as the Honorary Consul of a foreign country in Singapore, I believe a simple diplomatic note to the foreign missions requesting for this statistic may suffice.

According to the Overseas Singaporean Unit (OSU), there are 150,000 Singaporeans residing overseas.

How many of these are emigrants ?

According to a Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) survey in 2006, 53 per cent of Singaporean teens want to leave Singapore permanently. The Prime Minister also said in April 2008, that 1 in 4 top A-level students settles abroad every year. Our former PM also said in October 1999 that 2,000 emigrate each year.

In the 1990 population census, the Singapore diaspora was 36,000. What is this statistic in the most recent population census?

More accurate and comprehensive data may also be helpful to the OSU in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) set up in August last year, to do analysis and planning to woo and help Singaporeans return to reside in Singapore.

Since Singapore has been ranked as the best place in the world to live in by expatriates, does it not beg the question as to why so many Singaporeans are emigrating, and more than half our teens want to leave too – if they could?

[BlueFlix]

Seeing Stars: Uniquely Singapore - Progress
Leong Sze Hian / Senior Writer

http://www.sammyboy.com/showthread.php?p=9822#post9822

In this special series of Uniquely Singapore, Leong Sze Hian takes a look at the 5 stars of our flag and how it relates to certain issues. This first article focuses on “Progress”.

I refer to the Ministry of Manpower’s (MOM) report, “Focus on older people in and out of employment”, released at the end of July.

67 per cent of older workers (age 50 and over) worked as production, cleaners, labourers and related workers.

According to the MOM’s Report on Wages in Singapore 2007, the lowest paid category of workers, was the group comprising cleaners, labourers and related workers, with a median gross pay of $ 968.

The annualised wage change for this group was zero, from 1997 to 2007.

In the case of cleaners, labourers and related workers, the wages were largely flat in the earlier age groups, before declining for those in their 40s onwards to a low of 0.63 for the 60 - 64 age group.

Since the median gross pay for this group was only $ 968, does it mean that older workers are paid even less ?

The gender wage difference was 30.8 per cent for the age 35 - 39 group.

Does this gender wage gap occur for the older age group too ?

So, how much less are elderly women workers paid ?

With 469,000 employed residents age 50 and over being employed in June 2007, it means that about 314,230 (67% of 469,000) elderly Singaporeans work as production, cleaners, labourers and related workers.

And since elderly workers constitute 26 per cent of the resident workforce, it means that about 17 out of 100 (314,230 divided by 314,230 divided by 0.26) workers are elderly production, cleaners, labourers and related workers.

If we include such workers who are younger than 50, how many Singaporeans are cleaners, labourers and related workers, who earn a median gross pay of only $ 968 ?

The long term unemployment rate for older workers at 0.9 per cent is about double that of younger workers, at 0.4 - 0.7 per cent.

27 and 10 per cent of older workers are self-employed and part-time workers, respectively, compared to 4 and 4.8 per cent respectively for younger workers.

66 per cent of older workers cited their reason for working as needing money for current expenses. 12 per cent worked for their future financial security, and only 16.3 per cent worked for non-monetary reasons.

In June 2006, 76 per cent of economically inactive residents mainly relied on income support from family members.

In the MOM’s second quarter employment report released at the end of July, the non-seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for residents increased by 54 per cent from 2.6 in March to 4.0 in June, compared to 1.8 to 2.9 for the overall (including foreigners) unemployment rate.

The above statistics may indicate an urgent need to address the plight of older Singaporean workers ; for a review of policies to reverse these alarming trends, particularly in the light of calls not to increase wages to cope with inflation because of the fear of wage-inflationary pressures, relative to productivity growth.

Glowing and repeated reports of good job growth and economic growth may mask some of the underlying issues that older Singaporeans face.

Finally, if residents comprise 69 per cent of the total number of employed, why is it that 95 per cent of the unemployed are residents ?

If we make an adjustment for permanent residents (PRs) in the residents statistics, what percentage of the unemployed are Singaporeans ?

[BlueFlix]

COE and car prices

http://tankinlian.blogspot.com/2010/04/ ... rices.html

I spoke to someone, who is familiar with the motor trade. He made the following points:

a. The recent change resulted in a drop of 40% in COE allocation. This caused COE prices to shoot up due to the cut and also to increased demand generated by fear of further price increases. It is better to have a more stable market, rather than fluctuating prices to drive consumer behavior.

b. Taxis are now in the same category as private cars. They should be kept in a spearate category as the owners of taxis are driven by commercial consideration.

c. There is need to improve the feeder services, so that more people will take the train and buses at the interchanges.

d. Taxis should be considered as public transport. They are more efficient than cars and do not require parking spaces. The taxi fares should be simplified into a flat rate structure. Taxi drivers should be allowed to own a taxi licence and build a taxi business, rather than be renters of taxis.

I agree with these points and will bring them up at the TV program tonight. I will also raise them in other occasions in my blog.

Tan Kin Lian

[BlueFlix]

Politics where I can see it.

http://kixes.wordpress.com/2010/04/17/p ... an-see-it/

I am watching The First Election Debate in the UK. Do you know what I feel?

ENVY, ENVY, ENVY.

Yes, the United Kingdom has a lot of problems. The NHS has been accused of being inefficient. The whole House of Lords, House of Commons, House of Pancakes (oops, wrong) system is confusing. Their MPs have been caught with their hands, feet AND bums in the cookie jar. London is jam-packed with immigration problems and Gordon Brown has Lego hair. But still I envy them. Why?
Because they are talking about it IN THE OPEN.

(Except the hair. That seems to be a no-go area. Or maybe I’m the only one who sees it.)

Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg are standing there in front of an audience, in front of the cameras, and they are slugging it out. Sure, most of it might just be words aimed to persuade voters who are currently sitting on the fence, but at least there is openness and different parties putting forth their ideas and strategies. And they are doing it where citizens can see for themselves and make their own decisions. And although there is a difference between what they say and what they will ultimately do, there is some level of accountability involved because after the citizens have voted they will expect to collect. If they don’t get to collect on your promises, you’re not going to get re-elected, so you better be careful.

At least they aren’t trying to pretend that there is no problem at all, or subtly/blatantly blaming the citizens, or trying to curb political discussion, or trying to stamp on the freedom of the press. I’m not saying that none of this less-than-desirable stuff happens in the UK, but at least they get to talk about it in the open and in the media instead of being reduced to muttered grumbles and online blog rants (such as this one). Their problems seem to me to be surmountable because there is a willingness – or rather, a necessity – to man up and face them. If you don’t, another party can stand up and take you to task, and you will be flamed all over the media and the tabloids and the Internet and the TV. Here, problems seem to be more difficult to solve, because to solve the problem you first have to get over the obstacle of convincing the government that there is one in the first place. And then you have to convince them that it is something they should care about, and not just the result of a group of irresponsible people who “had it coming”. It is an exhausting – and very often, futile – process, and so we become a society where we maintain a thin façade of Utopian ideals and perfection to hide the resentment and dissatisfaction.

I used to get quite prickly when non-Singaporean friends would say things like, “No offense, but you don’t live in a democratic country.” I would get all defensive and retort, “What do you mean? Of course we do! It’s just… one party, that’s all! Mind your own business!” But now I see what they mean; until Singapore has a General Election where every Singaporean has had the chance to vote – instead of the lucky ones who live in contested areas – we cannot boast about living in a democratic nation. Until everyone has been given a choice, and has had their opportunity to have their voice heard, can we truly say that our government has been elected. Elected-by-default doesn’t count. (In fact, this is probably something I have known all along but did not want to admit to, which would explain the defensive attitude I adopted.)

I wish the government in Singapore would realise that it’s okay for them to admit to their mistakes and apologise. We’ll grumble and complain, but at the end of the day they will patch things up and we will forgive. It is infinitely worse for them to make mistakes and then sweep it under the rug and deny deny deny, because then there is no accountability. If they don’t admit that there are flaws in the system and that there are problems, then things will only get worse because there is no cause for them to fix the problems that don’t exist. They need to learn that it is not necessarily bad governance if they make mistakes; every political party in the world makes mistakes. (Hell, I am sure that even Obama’s administration will make mistakes, if he hasn’t already, and he is supposed to be like SuperJesus or something.) But it is definitely bad governance if they make mistakes but refuse to recognise it, or try to turn the tables and point the finger at something or someone else. It’s not even just bad governance, it’s bad ethics as well, and breeds an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust that no country needs. This is a lesson that our government needs to learn, and I believe that it can only learn this if we had stronger opposition parties in Singapore – ones that can’t be too easily beaten into the ground – poised to hold the government accountable.

I have faith in my country. I even have faith in my country’s government. They have done good things for us, made us strong when outsiders thought we would fail. But they also need to realise that the success of the past does not make them infallible today. However, if only the government would be more willing to be open with the people, and more willing to accept criticism and change, then they would find the people a lot less resentful, and a lot more forgiving. At the end of the day, openness in politics can be their gain as much as it can be ours.

[BlueFlix]

Singapore's political system a one-legged stool


The Straits Times last Friday [1] carried excerpts of an interview by US television journalist Charlie Rose with Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. I found Lee's answer to two questions very interesting. The first answer was almost curt, the second rather circumlocutory.

Rose: You seem to be sensitive to the issue of what's called nepotism.

Lee: We are very sensitive.

Rose: Tell me about this sensitivity.

Lee: The whole of our system is founded on a basic concept of meritocracy. You are where you are because you are the best man for the job, and not because of your connections or your parents or your relatives.

And if anybody doubts that I as Prime Minister am here not because I'm the best man for the job but because my father fixed it, or that my wife runs Temasek because I put her there and not because she's the best woman for the job, then my entire credibility and moral authority is destroyed because I'm not fit to be where I am.

And it is a fundamental issue of fitness to govern.

First, you must have the moral right, then you can make the right decisions. It's a basic Confucian precept.

Only when you have the moral right then can you govern and make the country right. In Singapore, people expect that. And if there's any doubt that this is so, and people believe that I'm there because my father fixed it, or the whole system is just make-believe, then the system would come down.

It's not tenable. If it's true, it'd better be proven and it better be kicked out. If it's not true, it'd better also be proven to be not true and the matter put to rest.

It was obvious that Rose's question was at least partly aimed at Lee's own position as prime minister, an angle that Lee himself sensed, as you can tell from the way he said he was the "best man for the job". What I found interesting was that at no point did Lee defend himself by saying he was elected to the post fair and square.

Yet Singapore claims to be a democracy. It is possible in a democracy for sons to take the top job -- a recent example would be George Bush 43 becoming US president after George Bush 41 --, but it would be very odd if such a leader, asked to defend his claim to the job, avoided all mention of being elected to office in an open and competitive election.

And yet, we have this reply (above) from Lee to Rose.

Lee spoke about having the "moral right", but other than referring to "meritocracy" and being the "best man", he did not explain where that "moral right" came from. How does one know if so and so is the "best man" for the job in a supposed democracy?

Instead, in much of his reply, he spoke about why it was important to quash all doubts (I would say skepticism or criticism), which only opened the subject of the government's use of defamation laws.

* * * * *


Just the other night, I watched on Youtube, a program called The Red Tide. In it, the current Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva defended his country's lèse majesté law by saying "other people are also protected by the law against defamation, slander, and surely we don't want the case where the monarchy has to bring charges against people because the monarchy is above all conflicts." The rationale therefore is that where under defamation law, the person who feels he has been defamed has to take action against his accuser, it is unseemly for a monarch to do so, therefore the state does it for him.

On the surface, it sounds beguilingly understandable, but as Paul Handley, in the same program, pointed out, the problem lies in having a monarch in the first place. In such a system, it is in a way essential to have and use such a law, because ultimately, the set-up is "based on a myth, on a story that tells people that this is why this person who is not elected, not chosen by the people, is the king, is the leader..."

Now we all know that there is a huge uproar right now about Thailand's lèse majesté law, and how it curtails freedom of expression and an otherwise healthy discussion of an important issue. An outspoken woman -- I can't remember her name -- is currently serving 15 years in jail for saying the king has been ill-advised by those around him!

It has long been argued that far from protecting the institution of the monarchy, the law actually damages it.

Coming back to Singapore, is it not also true that far from protecting the legitimacy of our system of government, heavy-handed use of defamation law against what would, in other liberal democracies, be considered fair comment, likewise damages it?

* * * * *


A few days ago, at a private forum, an important point about Singapore was made by Tian Chua, a Malaysian opposition politician, and Larry Diamond, a leading contemporary scholar in the field of democracy studies and Professor of Sociology and Political Science at Stanford University. It was that Singapore's political system was just one economic crisis away from collapse.

The reason is that the government justifies its "right to rule" on delivering economic progress, not on winning elections fair and square. This justification is similar to the arguments about being the "best man for the job" and "moral right" per Confucian concepts.

Thus, besides smothering criticism over the democratic deficit -- the intimidatory measures are too many and well-known list, including as they do, a strict media licensing regime and defamation suits -- there is the annoyingly grating citation after citation of economic data and selected world ranking indices. Thus also the constantly changing choice of tables displayed by our Statistics Department on their website, and the prickliness shown by government ministers whenever adverse data is highlighted by outsiders, e.g. when it was pointed out a few years ago that the bottom two deciles had actually gotten poorer over the years.

The claim to legitimacy of the government -- and of the entire political system they have set up -- has rested more and more narrowly on the economic as the democratic deficit has grown.

Yet, how realistic is it that we will always show stellar economic growth, or that we will come out of every economic downturn quickly? And if we don't? An economic crisis would quickly spiral into a political crisis. The government's legitimacy, so dependent on delivering economic results, collapses, but with it also the legitimacy of the political system that is so identified with such a government.

I am reminded here of the time when the authoritarian Suharto government in Indonesia fell in the wake of the Asian economic crisis of 1997. The whole political system that Suharto had set up collapsed with it and Indonesia was engulfed in violent chaos for a while.

Tian Chua had another interesting point to make: Knowing how existential is the threat of a deep economic downturn to the People's Action Party (PAP) government and the entire political system, the government keeps pushing the civil service to work ever harder to deliver economic results. At what point, he asked, would civil servants, overwhelmed by stress, begin to leave in droves, abandoning the system?

That the Singapore system is extremely fragile is often attributed to our small size and lack of strategic depth (in both security and economic terms). This has created a siege mentality, no doubt one that is very useful to keeping the PAP government in power, but a part of that fragility is really due to the democratic deficit the government has consciously created in its own self-interest. We have hitched our political stability to never-ending economic progress. Why? Why are we like gamblers, hitching our overall well-being to the roll of the dice? Why can't we have a system that is stable in good times and bad?

[BlueFlix]

Differentiating between PRs and S’poreans?

http://theonlinecitizen.com/2010/04/dif ... -sporeans/

I refer to the report, “HDB to spend $1 billion on upgrading; 85,000 households to benefit” (Today, Apr 19).

It reported:

“Deputy Prime Minister and Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng said this comes up to nearly $12,000 of upgrading benefits per household. The funds come on top of HDB’s contribution of $3.4 billion for the eight towns since 1990. When asked, the HDB did not elaborate on the time frame during which the fresh $1 billion would be spent”.

Given that ” the HDB did not elaborate on the time frame during which the fresh $1 billion would be spent”, if it took 20 years since 1990 to use $3.4 billion, will the $1 billion be spent in 6, 10 or 20 years?

It may be akin to saying I will give you money, but how much a year, exactly what type of upgrading, which area, I can’t tell you!

Surely, the HDB should have worked out the details to derive the $1 billion, instead of shrouding it in secrecy.

How long do we have to wait for the details and time frame to be made public?

As the HDB’s last annual report said it had a deficit of $2 billion, will its next report say a deficit of $3 billion?

Will upgrading lead to even higher Service and Conservancy Charges (S & CC)?

Although upgrading was announced last year for the two opposition wards, I understand that it has not started yet. So, will the 85,000 that will benefit from this new $1 billion, be started only after the two opposition wards go first?

If we ask Singaporeans as to how they may prefer the $1 billion to be spent, I think many may prefer to have HDB Concessionary loans for all HDB flats, lower new HDB flat prices, higher valuation than the 90 per cent that the HDB uses when it compulsorily acquires flats of those who can’t pay their HDB loans, etc.

Although Singaporeans pay less for upgrading, compared to permanent residents (PRs), in line with the policy to widen the differentiation between citizens and PRs, why not charge citizens less than PRs for this upgrading too, instead of using the same formula currently?

Whilst we are on the subject of differentiation, why is it that almost every time that a policy is changed to widen the differentiation between Singaporeans and PRs, the outcome may be that no Singaporeans are better off and some Singaporeans are worst off?

For example, the change in HDB rules that Singaporeans with PR spouses will get $10,000 less in the housing grant means that some Singaporeans are worse off.

With 39 per cent of Singaporeans marrying non-citizens, this may increasingly affect quite a lot of Singaporeans.

Singaporeans and PRs buying resale flats with bank loans or HDB loans will have their Minimum Occupation Period (MOP) extended from the current one and 2.5 years respectively, to three years.

This also means that no Singaporean is better off than a PR. In fact, Singaporeans with resale flat HDB loans are worse off as the current 2.5 years will become three years.

In order for there to be a real differentiation in this respect, perhaps the MOP for PRs should be six months longer than citizens, or that for citizens should be at 2.5 years.

The new eight per cent ethnic quota on non-Malaysian PRs in HDB blocks, may actually affect Singaporeans more, because when the quota is reached, Singaporeans cannot sell to PRs who may be able to pay at higher prices.

On the other hand, PRs can sell to PRs as well as Singaporeans, and thus may be able to get relatively higher prices.

Perhaps PRs should not be allowed to sell to PRs once the quota is reached, so that there will always be a “one flat” buffer, so that Singaporeans may not be relatively worse off.

Another example is the reduction in medical fee subsidy by another five per cent next year, and another five per cent the following year.

This means that PRs staying in a Class C hospital ward will be paying 16.7 and 33 per cent more eventually.

Singaporeans with PR spouses, dependents or employees, may have to bear the brunt of the increase of up to 100 per cent more compared to the former 80 per cent subsidy which applied to both citizens and PRs.

So, no Singaporean is better off, and some Singaporeans may be worse off.

Perhaps a half per cent gesturic increase in subsidy for Singaporeans, could at least make the policy change not another “no Singaporean is better off” policy.

Another example is the increase in universities, polytechnic and Institute of Technical Education (ITE) fees, whereby everyone has to pay more.

Why not just increase fees for PRs and foreigners, such that Singaporeans still pay the same fees?

Whilst having nothing to do with differentiation, the new HDB rule that market interest rates will be changed on HDB loans until the existing flat is sold, means that Singaporeans who currently enjoy HDB concessionary loan rates for up to the six months that is given to sell their existing flats when they change to another one, will pay more in future.

So, why charge everyone more, when the second HDB concessionary loan policy is now relaxed to include down-graders as well, instead of just up-graders under the existing rules?

In all the examples given above, policy changes have resulted in increased revenues by way of housing subsidy reduction, increase in medical fees, increase in school fees, and higher HDB housing loan market rates.

Surely, the outcome of differentiation policy changes should be that at least some Singaporeans are better off.

But it doesn’t look like they are.

Leong Sze Hian

[BlueFlix]

CPF restoration now – is it really good news?

http://theonlinecitizen.com/2010/04/cpf ... -good-new/

NTUC Chief Lim Swee Say recently speaking on behalf of his labour movement said that, “given the strong recovery and performance of the economy in the first quarter as well as the healthy outlook for the rest of the year, and given the healthy low unemployment situation, we think that in a way this is a good opportunity for us to consider some form of CPF restoration.”

In the almost the same breath, he added “in other words, as we continue to grow our economy and upgrade our productivity, wage pressure will go up. But it’s important we don’t put all these wage increases into our pockets and spend them for today. We must recognise that with longer lifespan and with programmes like CPF Life, the Ministry of Health has highlighted many times that we need to have more money for he althcare in the future”.

The above statements appear to hint that the bulk of any CPF restoration may go to the CPF Special (SA) and Medisave (MA) Accounts.

If this is indeed the outcome of any eventual CPF restoration, is it good news for workers?

Well, the SA may only be available for withdrawal as a monthly life annuity from age 65 under the CPF Life scheme, and the MA can only be utilised for medical expenses and medical and Eldershield insurance premiums.

Hence, from the perspective of higher wages by way of higher cash disposable income or higher Ordinary Account (OA) contribution which can be used for housing or tertiary education fees, workers may benefit not very much from such a CPF restoration.

Even if the 1.5 per cent CPF restoration in distributed to the three CPF accounts under the current rules, only about one per cent will go to the OA.

The remarks, “However, the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry feels any increase in the CPF rate may lead to an upward pressure on wages and hopes Singapore’s long-term competitiveness would be taken into account before a decision is made”, may give us a hint that some employers may take the CPF restoration as a factor in their overall labour costs, and may thus delay or reduce the restoration of wage cuts and bonuses during the recent economic downturn.

Also, wage increases may be reduced by some employers to factor in the 1.5 per cent CPF restoration.
To illustrate this using a simplistic example, an employer may just reduce the originally planned wage cut restoration or wage increase by 1.5 per cent to neutralise the 1.5 per cent CPF increase.

Therefore, in the light that some of the wage cuts during the downturn may have yet to be restored, is it good news for workers?

Another way of looking at it may be whether increasing cash wages is more important to workers now, or restoring their CPF?

Also, since employers do not make CPF contributions for foreign employees, the level playing field between Singaporean and foreign workers may widen even further.

Will businesses pass on the increased business cost to consumers, which may be the last thing we need, as Singapore is just coming out of its worst recession?

Let’s look at other labour issues which in my view, should demand more of the labour movement’s attention, perhaps more so than asking for CPF restoration now.

Re-employment of workers at retirement age

I refer to the article “Heng Chee How on wages, labour” (Today, Apr 6).

It states that “Firms will have to offer to re-hire a worker once he reaches retirement age, provided he is medically fit and has been satisfactory in his work performance. But the NTUC said, it is seeing more men quitting the workforce once they reach their 50s’”.

The original proposal to have legislation requiring employers to re-employ workers when they reach 62 years old, is now expected to be passed only by 2012. Employers have to give an Employment Assistance Payment (EAP) of (between) $4,500 to $10,000, if the employer decides not to re-employ the worker.

The Manpower Minister’s remarks in Parliament recently, that employers and employees should exercise flexibility in determining the actual EAP amount, using these levels as references, may be of little comfort to workers, as it would mainly be the employer’s prerogative.

Many employers may just opt for the minimum EAP of $4,500, regardless of the length of service or last drawn pay. Moreover, the outcome of the “EAP” solution hedged out by the Tripartite Implementation Workgroup (TIWG), may be that older lower-income workers who are a few years away from reaching age 62, may find it even harder to get a job, as employers may be reluctant, knowing that an EAP will be due.

What safeguards are there to prevent employers from terminating workers before they reach 62, to avoid paying the EAP?

Instead of using the minimum EAP of $4,500 which is based on three months of salary of 25 per cent of workers, and the cap of $10,000 based on the salary of two-thirds of workers, why not use the salary of all workers at age 62 instead of all workers of all ages?

Surely, the salary of the worker who are aged 62, is a better and fairer benchmark, than that of all workers which may be lower.

For those who are unable to find another job, or have insufficient cash savings, how do they cover their family’s expenses, for the balance two years and nine months until age 65, when their three-month EAP runs out?

Without the original proposed re-employment legislation, and short of a better and more “assured” solution than the “flexibility” of the EAP from the workers’ perspective, there is now a mis-match between the CPF Life or CPF Minimum Sum payout draw-down age of 65 and the age 62 EAP, for those turning 55 from this year, compared to the 62 CPF draw-down age in the past.

By: Leong Sze Hian

[BlueFlix]

On housing and wealth creation

http://singaporeaspirations.blogspot.co ... ation.html

This author recently came across a 2009 Herald article

http://www.heraldscotland.com/curb-prop ... r-1.910898

which provided an excellent, incisive critique of the real estate bubble in the United Kingdom.

These paragraphs gave this author the chills when read.. because the situation in the United Kingdom is so strikingly similar to Singapore's:

“Between 1997 and 2001, house prices nearly doubled. They nearly doubled again by 2005. It was as if the government had given every homeowner an average of £100,000. No wonder they voted Labour. We were all corrupted by the housing boom, to some extent.

People talked endlessly about how their houses were earning more than they did, never asking where all this free money was coming from. Well the truth is that it was being stolen from the next generation.

Houses don't produce wealth, they merely transfer it from the young to the old - from the coming generation of families who have to burden themselves with colossal debts if they want to get a roof over their heads, to the baby boomers who are about to retire and live on the cash they make when they downsize.

MPs were the most egregious example of this, but in a sense we were all invested in the housing scam. Well, it's time to call a halt. Our property obsession has been an economic and political disaster.”

[BlueFlix]

Property market fever: What can we do?

http://onnationandstate.wordpress.com/2 ... can-we-do/

While population might have been a significant factor behind the price movements in previous years, the recent property boom has entirely been out of proportion of the corresponding population increase.

So, while others are quick to say that the government’s immigration policy is causing the current crisis, I think the data makes it quite clear that speculation, not immigration, is the real cause.

I have always found the government policy of letting HDB prices appreciate in real value over time a bad policy. Firstly, it creates the unhealthy expectation that property is a safe investment in which you will always profit, helping to create the sort of bubbles we are seeing right now. Also, it is not effective in achieving the policy’s aim of fostering a sense of belonging to the country. Money can buy material goods, but it cannot buy true loyalty.

Similarly, I think the government can and should do more to restrain this speculative bubble. Sharp fluctuations in property prices are not healthy signs in any economy. And while increased wealth from a house is good, we need to ask if the increased prices are sustainable. If not, this temporary wealth has little benefit or can even be harmful, as this encourages owners to mortgage their homes for instant money. If housing prices subsequently plummet, these owners may find themselves unable to repay the loan even after selling off their homes, just as what happened with the US subprime crisis.

Given the immense harm speculation in the property market can cause, I think the system should be designed to deter speculation. In particular, we could adopt the MAS strategy of a band system, where the Sing dollar is allowed to fluctuate between a band set by a basket of currencies.

Similarly, we could let the RPI or SRPI fluctuate within an undisclosed band, determined by economic factors like inflation and median household income. In order to influence and maintain prices within the band, a sizable but self-sustaining fund with a pool of reserve homes (preferably within the HDB) could buy up excess property when prices hit the lower bound, and release homes into the mass market when prices spike above the upper bound.

A major difficulty with this policy would be the fact that the reserve homes would be unused during this period, presumably wasting taxpayer resources. I have two suggestions for these houses:

* Homes for rent to the needy.

Suitable means-tested and homeless candidates can apply for homes for a nominal fee for short periods ( 1 to 6 months). These leases are renewable subject to availability of homes and are conditional on the good maintenance of the home.

* As commercial office space in the heartlands.

Any excess capacity remaining could then be leased out to startups and businesses, with rents determined by auction. Again, the leases are renewable and extremely short so as to facilitate their quick release into the housing market if necessary.

This is not a perfect solution. In particular, with this scheme, extreme price spikes may have the unfortunate effect of requiring drastic intervention into the housing market, displacing many existing homeless people from their rental homes.

But something needs to be done.

To those whom prefer laissez faire and fear that excessive government intervention could worsen the situation, I think the past year has shown the damage that a burst housing bubble can do to developed economies like the US. In this case, government intervention may be the only way to make sure the free market works properly and fairly for all.

It may sound contradictory, but it is fundamentally true.

We need means to contain speculation, and some form of government action is necessary now.

[BlueFlix]

On the COE and the current overreaction

http://onnationandstate.wordpress.com/2 ... rreaction/

I refer to Mr Leong Sze Hian’s article “COE may stall economic recovery”

It is one thing to argue that the current transportation policy is flawed. It is quite another to argue that it will choke off the recovery.

Frankly, not only does the article commit several factual errors, I find it poorly thought out, self-contradictory and thus shoddily written.

Firstly, he assumes that the Ministry of Transport gains from this whole fiasco by an increase in COE revenue, when some rough calculation from the data in his article would show this to be false. Since there are 40% less COEs out in the market, leading to a price increase ranging from 26.1% to 11%, simple arithmetic would show that the total revenue would at best be at 76% of its previous level. And judging from the fact that some dealers have recorded a 90% fall in sales (again, as per the article), this is far too optimistic.

Further research from the 2010 budget (pdf) supports our rough estimate. We see that government collection of additional registration fees (i.e. COEs) are estimated to fall by nearly a third to $683 M. So no, the government is hurting itself via cutting COE supply.

Why is this the case? In the language of economics, cars are price elastic goods. Simply put, while most want to have a car, when push comes to shove, a car is not a necessity. Also, given the already substantial cost of a car, potential car buyers will take notice of its cost and can thus defer purchases (or skip buying one totally).

The combined effect is that an percentage decrease in COEs released (and thus a fall in the number of cars bought) will lead to a less than proportionate increase in the number of cars bought, causing revenue to drop. So, COE price increases will not necessarily lead to greater COE revenue.

Mr Leong Sze Hian then moves to the heart of his argument. He fears for the economic recovery for two reasons:

* Rising COE prices could stoke inflation

While the point does have some merit, as some firms will increase their prices to break even, the overall effect is likely to be muted. For one, COEs for most purposes can be regarded as one-off costs (You only pay for it when you buy a new vehicle) and thus their effect on the bottomline of firms is likely to be shortlived. Furthermore, transport costs typically form a small proportion of a company’s total costs and thus firms may absorb these costs instead of potentially losing customers to competitors.

However, Mr Leong Sze Hian’s fear of a continually soaring COE price creating further price increases is completely farfetched (and in fact refuted by the data in his article). While some may indeed buy COEs now before they expire in order to avert more price hikes, the vast majority would simply stop purchasing cars, halting this vicious cycle dead in its tracks.

And where do I obtain the confidence that this will be the case? From the fact that some dealers have seen a 90% fall in sales, merely 2 paragraphs before his point!

* Rising COE prices could hurt our global competitiveness

As stated above, transport costs are less significant compared to labour and capital costs. Also, the greatest determinant of the competitiveness of our exports is our exchange rate, which has a far greater capability of shaping the cost of our goods in the eyes of foreigners. Compare this to the COE price increases, whose one-off impact will be further diluted and spread out over the millions of units our firms will export in a single year, causing the resulting price hike to be minimal.

Then he makes an interesting statement :

“The solution to controlling the growth of the vehicle population need not necessarily be higher car prices and costs.”

Sounds true, until you actually try to think about it. Fact is, there is no direct way to control the demand for cars without higher car prices/costs, save for imposing a total ban on new cars on the road (which I am quite sure the writer does not want to see) The government can indirectly reduce its growth by significant improvements to the public transport infrastructure, but in a land where only 52% (pdf) take public transport despite all the punitive taxes associated with owning a car, the required improvements must be nothing short of revolutionary to successfully convince substantial numbers of drivers to ditch their cars.

I fail to see how a price spike that seems likely to abate soon (given the significant falls in demand among car dealers) and only affects those buying a new car (for now) will have such significant repercussions, to the point of choking off the economic recovery. Not only is the article more fiction than fact, it contains basic errors and flawed claims that could have been easily checked by reading through the article.

Furthermore, he fails to see the intent of the COE policy. Scarce mention is given to the serious congestion issues that plague our roads, which needs to be addressed.

The government thinks that the solution to the problem is via cutting COE quotas. On this aspect, I think many can agree with me that this is is not the best solution.

It is thus up to us to provide a sound and logical refutation of the policy, and come up with an better alternative. Scare stories and poorly researched arguments do no benefit to our case.

So what should our argument be? Here is my take.

We must first take note of the importance of a car in our country (afterall, it is in our 5Cs) But, at some point we will have to choose between our desire to keep cars affordable and the aftereffects of congestion.

What is congestion caused by? In most circumstances, it is due to the usage of cars at inappropriate times, not due to the act of owning a car. It thus makes sense to shift the focus of our taxation regime away from discouraging people from owning cars, and instead focusing on penalizing the cause of congestion. In a nutshell, I would suggest scrapping the COE altogether, but raise ERP charges and fuel taxes so as to discourage excessive driving.

In addition, we need to make public transport more popular, by not only increasing its coverage, but also its capacity. In particular, existing MRT lines are often heavily congested during peak hours. Thus, this should be the immediate focus, especially given our growing population, which will strain the existing MRT network further.

Quite a few will not be pleased at my suggestion of increasing ERP and fuel taxes. But if the opposition wants to govern, it needs to recognise that there are no free lunches in this world.

Politics is not just a game where everyone screams and wails and get nothing done without any consequences. This is serious business that affects the lives of 5 million people. And while we engage in our rants and complaints against the ruling party, things continue to deteriorate.

How can you expect the citizens to trust your management when you cant even make coherent arguments that border upon populism? Indeed, how do you expect to govern?

It is plainly obvious that there are a lot of things broken in our country. I fail to see why is there a need to infuriate and incite when pure reasoning is more than sufficient to reveal the flaws in our system. The politics of anger may be powerful, but it is also corrosive and destructive.

What we need is an opposition that looks forward, one that can give remedies for our current and future problems.

Now is the time to show whether we are serious about our politics. We can choose to be keyboard warriors ranting and raving while the nation sinks, or we can choose to start offering an alternative to our broken politics.

[BlueFlix]

What is a representative government?

http://onnationandstate.wordpress.com/2 ... overnment/

What is a representative government exactly? Is it one that follows the will of the people? Or is it one that acts in their best interests?

The answer to this question is integral to understanding our current political climate.

It is quite obvious what the PAP as a whole thinks about this. The long term national interest trumps all other secondary concerns, and to this end, it is willing to utilize all necessary measures to ensure that our future is secure. Thus, it is more than happy to ram through unpopular measures (like raising the retirement age and changes to the CPF system) to protect the interests of future citizens.

But it know that this alone is not enough. Afterall, an unpopular PAP is ultimately one unable to effect change through the system. To resolve this contradiction, it uses its control of the legislature to rig the system in its favour (e.g. the GRC system etc).

The end result is a streamlined system that is capable of undertaking change where needed. But there is a catch. Dissent is discouraged or overruled (just look at the IRs). Slowly but surely, we the people simply lose interest in the process of governing. Afterall, if we can’t change it, why bother?

Through this, many have forfeited their stake in government. We effectively subcontracted our thinking to the higher authorities. So when they propose seismic changes to the nation (like the construction of new MRT lines), most fail to appreciate their significance. We become indifferent to the revolutions occurring around us, because we don’t feel like we owned it.

The current situation is due to the fear among the PAP that rule by people leads to populist policies that would ultimately sink our small and vulnerable country. The fear is justified and I do share their concerns.

But I think their approach in addressing this latent threat is wrong. If you are afraid that voters may elect a government that is detrimental to our interests, the solution is not by maintaining a permanent stranglehold on the corridors of power. For what gives you the supreme confidence that you are infallible?

Rather, we should focus on making our voters politically aware. For only then will we truly be safe from populism.

To this end, having only policy wonks in our government will not do. We need great communicators, leaders able to deftly shape the public discourse and to rally the populace towards unpalatable but necessary causes. Judging from the discontent in the heartlands, we still have a long way to go in this aspect.

We also need to open up the political system to encourage more participation among our citizens. I will detail my proposals in a separate post, but in short, there is a need to allow citizens means of expressing their will on government even after elections. Only then can our citizens feel invested in government decisions.

Finally, we need to provide means of educating our electorate about policy and government performance. Afterall, how can we reelect a MP that stands for you, if you don’t even know how he has performed over his past term? Again, a more detailed proposal would be forthcoming in a separate post.

To summarise, we need to have faith in the people. For they had faith in you to do the right things for them.

And thus, instead of having a government that focuses on the interests of current and future constituents, we need a government that gets everyone involved in the national effort.

A representative government is not one that blindly follows the people. Nor is it one that forces its proposals onto the nation for their own sake. It is one that convinces the people to do the right thing willingly, one that makes painful but right policy popular.

And sadly, that is not the government we have.

[BlueFlix]

The gravest threat facing the nation

http://onnationandstate.wordpress.com/2 ... he-nation/

While the PAP feels that the nation suffers due to its weak national identity, the opposition feels that the PAP is a threat to national stability. However, I think both parties are wrong. The most serious threat to the nation is one that few realise:

People too often let others do their thinking for them.

Let me explain why this is the insidious danger to the republic.

* People come to expect government to come up with solutions rather than themselves.

Just read a local forum – any forum. You will probably find that much space is devoted to readers complaining about some problem and expecting the government to “take action”. Occasionally, a reader will actually devote a portion of his/her valuable time to suggest solutions, but that is unfortunately few and far between.

Without plenty of citizen input, our politics simply becomes dominated by what the PAP thinks the people want. This causes citizens to feel neglected about policy, causing them effectively cede their stake in government to the PAP.

Simply put, the nation does not feel like it owns the state, and lets the state chart the course of the nation instead of the other way around.

It also creates our culture of complaining about everything and anything. After all, if you don’t feel like you own it, you can criticise it as much as you want.

* We lack a national conversation on critical issues of the day.

In a nutshell, people don’t know what the people really want. When they do know, they are unable to impose their will upon government (mostly due to the above point)

What do Singaporeans want? For contentious issues, ranging from the IRs to ministerial pay raises, the general reaction I get is a sense of both unhappiness and resignation. The popular consensus (or what we think is the popular consensus), simply cannot made itself heard, and most damningly, the people have come to accept this as the status quo.

* Political parties can easily mislead the masses with rhetoric and claims.

The result of a populace that outsources its thinking to politicians is that politicians have the power to put out false claims that are then accepted by the people. And by politicians, I mean politicians of all stripes.

For example, I cannot accepted the PAP’s purported strong economic foundation when it consistently pegs defence spending to 4%-6% of GDP, leading to us spending more than $10 billion dollars every year. And even though the opposition consistently views transparency as a core virtue, there are actually very few concrete policy proposals on this sorely lacking front, leading me to wonder whether this is all just words.

* Lastly but most importantly,when the citizens fall asleep, the politicians come out to play.

Have you recently lamented about how the pro-civil liberties Lee Kuan Yew of yesteryear is so much different than the one we have today?

If yes, has it ever occurred to you that when the opposition finally takes power, what will actually prevent the WP of today from becoming the PAP of tomorrow?

Given the current political climate (see above points), pretty much nothing.

“Absolute power corrupts absolutely”. If we do not significantly address the institutional advantages that the ruling party holds, or hold all our politicians accountable to the public, we will be unable to guarantee the permanence of any human rights that any administration grants to the people.

Which is why we the people must ensure that as representatives of electors, MPs must reflect the will of the people and constantly hold them as a top priority.

In this regard, the political camps of today do nothing (or even capitalise on) this urgent problem. And until one of them recognises and takes action against this grave danger, I cannot support any one of them.

Thus, I hope this blog gets you thinking. It is the only way to protect the republic from its dark side.

[BlueFlix]

Minister Balakrishnan scolds Al Jazeera and bloggers ...Part 2

http://singaporemind.blogspot.com/2010/ ... zeera.html

TOC has replied to Minister Balakrishnan's accusations[ TOC Part 1 & Part 2] of "propagating these falsehood". Please go through TOC's findings and judge for yourself. The truth is sometimes like an onion - it comes in many layers. I went through the comments in my last posting and a few people say its the couple's fault they end up homeless. It is almost always true that when people reach the point that they need to seek govt help, you can examine their lives and find that they could have done much better for themselves. This, I feel, is irrelevant because if everyone manages their life and finances well, nobody will need to go to Minister Balakrishnan's MCYS for help and he can just shut it down. The only relevant questions are whether they really need govt aid and whether, as a society, we want to help them or not. If the govt does not want to render help, there is no point examing their lives to pin the blame on the individuals. At the center of the truth onion are very simple facts : an unmarried couple wants to get a rental flat which is all they can afford but are prevented from doing so by various rules which they cannot overcome so they ended up it a very difficult situation withut a home.

"The people we have who insist on staying in beaches and parks are not first timers and not people who have bought their first flat or first rental flat. These are people who have almost always sold their second flat or a third flat, have unfortunately dissipated the subsidies and cashed them and now have run into problems. .Members would have faced this problem which almost become emotional blackmail" - Vivian Balakrishnan[Link].

You have to read what Minister Balakrishnan said a few times to fully appreciate what he is getting at. So most of our homeless people actually emotional blackmailers? They are blackmailers because they had gotten into financial trouble and were forced to sell their homes to repay creditors? They are blackmailing PAP MPs with the sadness of their situation? That the minister see people losing their homes due to financial difficulties as a form of blackmail says a lot about govt attitude towards those in need.

Singapore is a city-state and like many cities housing is expensive. Because land is scarce in a city, the free market can never bring forth a solution that results in everyone being housed. That is why you find some form of govt/public housing in cities around the world. In Singapore, the majority of the people stay in public housing. Within this public housing system, we have rental flats which is suppose to be the ultimate housing safety net. The govt like to say the people staying in rental flats enjoy subsidies (read the minister's comments) i.e. market subsidies. However, these 'market subsidies' are needed because there is a wide income disparity - which results in a gap between what the poor people can afford and market rental. When the subsidy is large, it is not because the govt is generous but because we have big disparities in income. There are roughly 4500 people in the queue for rental flats. The total stock of rental flats is 42,000 but will increase to 50,000 in 2012 based on current HDB plans. The waiting time for rental flats is 18-30 months long. As the cost of living increase and income gap remains, the demand for rental flats will go up. Some time in the early 90s when we were heading for the Swiss standard of living, demand for rental flats fell and near 100% home ownership was believed to be attainable. But today, we after another 2 decades of GDP growth, we see poverty rising and demand for rental flats increasing because our income gap ballooned and that is what drives the demand for rental flats. You have 2 solutions to fix this problem - (a) reduce the income gap (b) build more rental flats to match the genuine need for these flats. HDB decided to build more rental flats but not enough to meet the demand. So they decided to implement various rules to kick people out of the queues[HDB rule change for rental flats].

" HDB will continue to permanently debar those who have enjoyed 2 housing subsidies. This is a current criteria, and we’ll maintain that. We will also retain the 30-month debarment for those who have just sold their flats. " [Link]

I'm all for rules that disqualify those who are rich and have immediate alternative solutions to rental housing. But barring people who sold their flats for 30 months and permanently barring those who purchased flats twice from HDB just doesn't make sense. How would you know when you bought your 2nd flat from HDB that your business will fail or you will sick and have to use all your money for treatment? It is one of these rules that hit the homeless couple at the beach. Even if you are eligible, you have to wait for 2 years before you're assigned a flat...so what do you do in the meantime? Maybe stay at the govt shelter but shouldn't the govt build enough rental flats so that these people have a proper home?

The govt has adopted an approach to economic development with includes a policy of importing cheap foreign labor that has led to great disparity in income - the highest in the developed world. It is this income gap that drives the need for rental housing and housing subsidies. Instead of meeting the genuine demand for rental housing, the HDB under-supplies leaving those with very real needs to find other solutions - those who are lucky have other family members who stand in for the govt to give help ....others end up at beaches, void decks and govt shelters. Why is there a 2 year queue for public housing for those with a real need when resources are allocated for foreign workers hostels so that foreigners have a place to stay?

This is not a problem the govt cannot fix. The govt has more than enough resources to do this but is limited by ideological belief that 'welfare is a dirty word' and 'subsidies are bad'.....but these subsidies are neccessitated by the huge income gap which is a function of economic policies adopted by the PAP