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

[BlueFlix]

Mah Bow Tan exposes reason for low birthrate

http://yawningbread.wordpress.com/2010/ ... birthrate/

Responding to recent cries that prices for Housing and Development Board flats on the resale market have surged, Minister for National Development Mah Bow Tan told Parliament last Monday that prices for new flats still remain affordable. I believe his point is was that there was no need to look to the resale market for a roof over one’s head.

“Ultimately, what matters is whether at all times, first-time home buyers are able to afford HDB flats,” the Straits Times quoted him as saying (27 April 2010, New HDB flats still affordable: Mah).

To “prove” his assertion, Mah referred to a formula called the debt service ratio (DSR), which compares a household’s monthly mortgage instalment to its household income. The average DSR for new flats launched in the last six months when property prices surged ranged from 17 per cent to 25 per cent.

The table below was published in the Straits Times accompanying its report:

Do note that these figures were based on new flats in non-mature estates. For those in more central locations and mature estates, the DSR is around 30 per cent.

Mah said that these DSR figures were within the international benchmark for housing affordability, which ranges from 30 per cent to 35 per cent.

I think that’s a really big chunk of household income. Families may feel so hardpressed about servicing loans that a feeling of financial insecurity sets in. This especially as Singapore’s economy moves in quite dizzy boom and bust cycles. Your DSR may be an “affordable” 25 percent today, but next year when you lose your job, it’s a different matter.The result is that couples will put off having children. We know, for example, that probably the chief reason why couples do not have more than one child is that they feel they cannot afford to do so.

We should ask all ministries to indicate what percentage of household income they expect a typical household to spend on goods and services under their purview assuming they have 2.1 children per family — the population replacement rate — and factoring in the reality that they also need to take care of aged parents. How much does the Health Ministry expect Singaporeans to spend monthly (as a percent of household income) on health services for themselves, their aging parents, and 2.1 children? How much does the Manpower ministry expect households to spend on hiring maids to look after aged parents and young children since the same ministry generally expects both parents to work? How much does the Transport Ministry expect households to set aside for mobility? How much does the Education Ministry expect households to devote to current schooling for their expected 2.1 children, plus saving for higher education. And so on.

Don’t be surprised if all these add up to something approaching 100 percent of household income. What money will be left for food, clothes and the occasional entertainment or holiday?

Something’s got to give, and it is pretty obvious what.

What about the international benchmark then? I’d like to know where that comes from. How many countries with below-replacement birthrates contributed to that figure?

* * * * *

Mah also said: “I have to emphasise that buying an HDB flat is not an expenditure, it is an investment…because when you buy an HDB flat, at the end of the tenure of the flat or towards your retirement, that HDB flat is a very significant store of value.”

He then cited a Department of Statistics survey, the newspaper said, to show that on average a Singaporean family has more than $100,000 in asset value in their flat. If that asset is monetised, they need not fear using up their CPF savings to pay for it.

If.

Is there an efficient market for monetising a flat while the owner is still alive?

Is the $100,000 figure relevant to context? If a person has bought one flat and lived in it for most of his life, by his retirement, the flat would be approaching the end of its 70-year leasehold period. What would be its valuation by then? What market would there be for such a flat?

If the person has repeatedly sold and bought new or resale flats through his life, then he would also have likely topped up repeatedly his expenditure (e.g. taking on new loans). His last flat might be further from the end of the leasehold period, being newer, and may therefore command more market value, but he would have spent more money over his lifetime for housing compared to someone who has lived in the same flat for decades.

This is an area where Mah’s glib response is inadequate. We need a more detailed analysis, sensitive to different income groups, in order to understand our policy implications.

[BlueFlix]

A rising tide lifts all boats?

http://flaneurose.blogspot.com/2010/04/ ... boats.html

The PM recently rubbished income inequality as being of little importance.

There is an excellent book for those who wonder why people like myself are deeply concerned with income inequality and why it matters to modern society - Falling Behind: How Income Inequality Harms the Middle Class, by Robert H. Frank.

Very briefly, Frank argues that there are two kinds of goods, positional, and non-positional, and rising inequality forces people to devote more resources to purchasing positional goods, neglecting the non-positional, and leading to a loss of social welfare across the whole of society.

What are positional goods? They are goods for which the relative rank of what the consumer consumes has importance.

There are lots of good examples in Singapore. Education for instance. A university degree is practically a requirement now for a person to make a decent living. 30 years ago, it wasn't. The reference point for education has shifted upwards so that most people view a university degree as a necessity. Hence the deep unhappiness whenever tutition costs are raised. Housing is another. Oh, we're not talking about luxurious condos or bungalows. But consider this, it is common wisdom in Singapore that because of the 1 km proximity rule, housing that is nearby to "good" schools is considerably more expensive than comparable housing located elsewhere. Clearly, not all HDB flats are built equal. And getting, or rather, not getting, the "best" HDB flats could literally seal the fate of your kids.

And for a more pan-national perspective, we can consider defense spending as the ultimate positional good. To illustrate this, let's rework what the mainstream media article wrote: "Worried about low defense spending? What's important is not the absolute gap between Singapore and Malaysia/Indonesia, but whether Singapore's defense spending is moving up."

Does that statement sound absurd? Of course it does. What matters is how much more we are spending than our neighbors, not how much we are spending in aggregate.

Positional goods are real; concern with the positional nature of goods should not be dismissed or belittled or deemed irrational. Context matters. And it isn't simply just a matter of keeping up with the Joneses or about the politics of envy. It's just that rising inequality raises community standards of what is deemed normative in the community.

So how does rising inequality hurt Singaporeans?

Singaporeans today are spending more on a whole range of positional goods, to their own detriment. It is akin to a positional goods arms race: We are spending more on housing (got to be close to those good schools!), on raising children (think tuition, enrichment classes, childcare), on education (both for our kids and ourselves - retraining, reskilling, postgraduate degrees), and even, basely, on consumer goods.

Think of it this way, at a job interview, who gets hired? The best candidate of course. But all candidates being equal, would you rather hire the guy dressed in the sharp Zegna suit or the typical guy in shirt and slacks? Never mind that the Zegna guy is a trust fund baby and can well afford his threads. The next job interview, everyone shows up in a Zegna suit. Problem is, every other candidate put the suit on their credit card, resulting in four-figure debt.

That's how income inequality hurts the middle class. Rising income inequality stretches the boundaries of what are considered normative, because the rich invariably purchase the things that give them a leg up in whatever they're doing. This isn't about envy, it's about how people try to keep up in order to achieve things that are really important. Jobs, schools, kids' futures, a better quality of life for the family.

In Falling Behind, which speaks specifically to an American audience, Frank lists the ways middle class folks use to "afford" to keep up. The list isn't pretty. They are: working longer hours (to which I would add increasing prevalence of dual income households), reduced savings (that certainly sounds familiar: CPF accounts emptied by housing anyone?), increased indebtedness (ditto), longer commutes (yes, yes, yes), growing sleep deprivation (maybe, maybe not) and public service cutbacks (not so much here).

I would add another way that is more uniquely Singaporean. Fewer kids. Rising income inequality means fewer kids, as Singaporeans marshall their resources to pin their hopes on just one or two offspring. The last I checked, encouraging Singaporeans to have more kids was a government priority. Income inequality isn't important...really?

[BlueFlix]

Is HDB flats really affordable?

http://sgboleh.blogspot.com/2010/05/is- ... dable.html

Been reading abit about the current HDB flats news and happening to spark a topic with my wife's friends regarding purchasing a resale HDB and a BTO HDB for Singaporean and PRs this afternoon.

Now I will like to ask do you really thing HDB flats are really affordable? What about all the new rules and regulation that had been put in place this year by HDB to curb speculation and encourage PRs to take up citizenship, do you think after all these HDB is still affordable?

For me I would say yes and no. Yes, it is affordable but with overloading. Why I say so is because many young families with a combined income is able to afford a nice 4/5 rooms HDB without having much to worry. However the overloading here are that these young families might not be able to afford to have kids in the near future due to the high cost they had already put into their new flat and the high cost of having a baby. Also these young families cannot afford to suffer any retrenchment or any other events which will result in having only 1 income for the family. This is because the HDB flat which they had bought was based on their combined income and losing 1 income will mean that the other party will have a much higher financial burden to bear just to maintain the loan installments and sometime to the extend of not having enough money for living.

No, it is not affordable cos with the new "Lower maximum loan amount for bank loans" rule, it mean that young families will have to cough out 10% of the valuation price more than previously and this for most young families will delay them quite a while to save up enough for this extra 10%, making it not affordable for them. This is especially true for PRs and Singaporean who do not wish to take up HDB loans. Next for those Singaporean-PR families, they will have to pay a $10,000 premium for new BTO HDB flat or if they buy a resale flat, they will get $10,000 less in their housing grant. This once again put HDB into an area where if Singaporan-PR families were to really purchase a HDB, they would have to fork out an extra $10,000 or lose $10,000 in grant both resulting in the HDB flat price more unaffordable by $10,000.

So do you still think HDB is affordable like what the govt had mention? Luckily for me I bought my unit before the new rules set in else I would really not be able to afford my unit 3 years ago when I bought it.

[BlueFlix]

Public housing in Singapore

http://life-in-boston.blogspot.com/2010 ... apore.html

I was chatting with some strangers on the bus in Singapore about the high cost of public housing in Singapore and I was wondering; should public housing be an investment? Or should it be a form of affordable living?

The few people that I was talking to all had homes (with garden and a pool) near Newton area, yet they own HDB flats which most have confessed that they leave it empty for 3 years and then start renting it out as a good form of investment. In their view, it is an entitlement for being a Singaporean to own a HDB flat.

I could see their view that being able to afford a $600,000 home, pay full in cash, then leave it empty for 3 years and later rent it out for $4k is a pretty good investment, but is this trend of home prices appreciating always going to give good returns in profits?

For land scarce Singapore, and getting in so many immigrants and foreign workers, they all need a place to live, and with the increase in rent, there will be an increase in home prices. As long as Singapore continue to open its doors to everyone and anyone, the price of property is simply going to go up, and with that, the cost of living goes up.

Back in 2000, a HDB flat that is worth $200,000 then can easily fetch $400,000 in 2010. There are a lot of examples of HDB prices doubling within the last 10 years. HDB flats in the 70's used to cost $10,000! This is a great move for people to move from living in a village to having a roof. However with more affluence, I feel that the prices of homes have came to an unaffordable point, and HDB has lost it when it decided that home prices should be determined by "market price" and they even sell their new HDB apartments at $700,000?

I do not see the difference of these HDB flat, being a government project to house Singaporeans from private apartments if they cost more or less the same. I don't really understand why the HDB flats being leasehold for 99 years can increase in value even after 50 years. HDB has not set any precedent in taking back units nor has it decided to extend the lease once the 99 years is up.

I believe housing is a basic need for everyone, Singaporean and Foreigners alike, and it is not social for people with means to make a quick buck off those who cannot afford the homes. I am sure there are a lot of homeless people, and I have friends -- lots of them, who are married, but could not afford their own homes. Yet, I know people who are leaving their HDB flats which they bought for "investment" and are leaving it empty because of laws in place.

When private apartments are almost the same price as public housing, and public housing can be close to S$1 million, I would like to propose a new system to curb speculation.

Since there are so many rich and affluent people, let them stay and own their private homes, LET PUBLIC HOUSING BE AFFORDABLE FOR ALL.

I don't really see the point of having "market price" and having public housing as an "appreciating asset" so much that the rich could speculate, only forcing a larger gap between the haves and have-nots. The following can be done.

Build 30 year lease hold HDB flats. (or rather xx amount of years the building will stay up before it is being torn down) At the end of the 30 years, the value of the property is the land price of the new project. These 30 year lease hold properties should be sold at cost (cost of land + building it)

I believe there is a similar project for elderly in Singapore, why not have more such housing? Those that can afford it should go on open market and buy private properties, instead of "investing" and renting out HDB flats. I wonder what is the percentage of HDB flats rented out? I could see that some blocks of flats in Toa Payoh, Bukit Merah and Tiong Barhu area seemed to be highly populated by foreigners.

Young couple who want to start a family probably want their own nest. Having really expensive public housing does not encourage people to start families. The argument about Singaporeans having their HDB flats as their "savings" when they get old does not make sense. With CPF, isn't it supposed to be like pension, where you get to have a sum of money for you when you get old?

The problem now is that HDB flats are simply too expensive that most people do not have much CPF after they own a flat, and even when they retire, they still need a place to live. Moving to a far away land where you need to take a shuttlebus that comes every 30 minutes, and no food or other necessities within 2km is not an ideal place for people who retire.

Perhaps I'm over simplifying things, but I can find an Studio apartment in Manhattan New York, for US$300,000 at the 40's and US$500,000 for a 1BR penthouse. These prices are not that much different from Singapore private apartments, yet there are many public housing available, mixed among the neighborhoods.

In Singapore, only rich people live near the city, even though they own big cars and can drive to work. The other people who live in the city have to take public transportation and travel 2 hours to get to work. A few of them who work in the city even sleep on the streets during weekday nights (near Bras Basah Road) as they cannot afford the commute on their low wages.

There is a great sense of Elitism in Singapore, where children from young are trained to achieve the 5 "C"s - Cars, Condominium, Credit Card, Cash and Career, whether they have it themselves or their partners. Being competitive starts young and everyone likes to compare results of examinations, the cars their parents drive, or the size of their homes. Instead of looking at other who have less than them with compassion, the poor is usually viewed with disdain, and the ones more well off than them, there is jealousy.

I hope as Singapore as transformed from the past from staying in villages to nice and comfortable towns, it can progress into a more caring city with more affordable housing.

[BlueFlix]

New HDB flats still affordable: Mah
By trulysingapore

http://trulysingapore.wordpress.com/201 ... dable-mah/

Dear Mr Mah,

I refer to the Straits Times report of your reply to Mr Lim Biow Chuan in the parliament dated 27 Apr 2010.

First, it was incorrectly reported that the annual increase in median household income from 1999 till last year was 3.9% when it ought to have been 3.3%. Next, even though in percentage terms, the 3.2% increase in resale flat price was marginally lower than the 3.3% increase in median household income, in absolute terms, the increase in resale flat price was a staggering $97,373 compared to an increase of only $1,354 in monthly household income. When we annualise these figures, we find that the yearly increase in resale flat price was $9,737 compared to the yearly increase of $1,625 in annual household income. In other words, over the last decade, resale flat price has been increasing at an average of $9,737 every year while the corresponding increase in annual household income is only $1,625. So clearly, in absolute dollars and cents, growth in resale flat price has far outstripped growth in household incomes by a factor of nearly six times over the past decade.

Also, it is not true, even in percentage terms, that growth in resale flat price exceeded income growth only in recent years like 2004. If we were to set our base year to 1998 or 2000, just one year before and after your chosen base year of 1999 respectively, we find growth in resale flat price exceeded income growth as well. In fact, over the last decade, 1999 is the only base year whereby household income growth exceeded growth in resale flat price marginally. If the base year were to be any other year other than 1999 over the last decade, growth in resale flat price exceeded growth in household income. Even if we were to extend back to 1995, there were only three out of fourteen years where household income growth outstripped growth in resale flat price. So by and large, resale flat price has outgrown household income.

You said that what matters ultimately is that first time home buyers can afford a flat at all times. Referring to the table you have provided, the median household income of a 3-room flat applicant is $2,100 and his / her monthly mortgage payment is $528. Currently, the public assistance scheme pays a family of 2 adults and 2 children $1,210. Assuming $1,210 is the minimum sum that a family requires for basic subsistence, if we add to that a monthly mortgage of $528, the family will only be left with $362 for all other expenses including school fees, public transport, utilities as well as saving for two persons’ retirement, hardly what you would call ‘affordable’. Hence, even though the debt service ratio falls below the international benchmark of 30%, by Singaporeans’ standards, the flat is quite simply unaffordable.

You said that the flat is an investment and a significant store of value. But the investment also leads to massive indebtedness that will take a lifetime of toiling to discharge. You said the average Singaporean family has $100,000 in flat asset that can be monetised. If you have to sell your house to pay for your retirement, doesn’t it show that you have never earned enough to keep your house to begin with? Also, two old folks sharing $100,000 leaves each with $50,000 only. Again assuming a minimal subsistence of $360 per month or $4,320 per year per person, the sum of $50,000 will not even last 12 years without even considering inflation. Not a pretty picture at all. You said the government is subsidising 80% of the population. It is the other way round, 80% of the population is subsidising the government instead with their massive HDB monthly payments.

[BlueFlix]

Sell New HDB flats at cost instead of asking citizens to sell flats for retirement

http://singaporealternatives.blogspot.c ... ad-of.html

We refer to the interview of Minister Mah Bow Tan entitled “Mah Bow Tan on the frontline talking about HDB prices, COV and Elections” published in Lianhe Zaobao on 8th May 2010. On behalf of National Solidarity Party, I would like to make the following response:

We wish to remind Minister Mah Bow Tan that the success of HDB House Ownership scheme is built upon the sacrifices of our forefathers. Without the Land Acquisition Act which empowers and allows the ruling party to acquire almost 80% of land from our forefathers, Singapore would not be able to develop so rapidly and HDB would not be able to execute the House Ownership smoothly.

This is one of the most important land reforms since independence. We could only examine the role of HDB and the pricing mechanism for new HDB flats properly under this context. In its first 20 years, HDB has fulfilled its role under this land reform plan, i.e. utilize the acquired land to build HDB flats and sell them at cheap prices or even under cost to the people, in doing so, redistribute land to the people. This is the fundamental role of HDB. Most people who had their land forcefully acquired did not protest because they knew that they were making sacrifices for the people and the Nation. This is the social contract between the people and the ruling party. The HDB flats has only a 99-year lease and it provides stability to the whole system. It ensures future generations of Singaporeans will have a roof over their heads throughout their life span. This is the basic concept of land reform, distribution and public housing policy.

But now Minister Mah says, “The government cannot sell the new HDB flats at cost because this would mean that flat owners will not be able to sell it at market prices in future.” We do not understand on what basis does Minister Mah make such an assertion. Prior to 1990s, our father’s generation bought their HDB flats at cost or even under cost and now they can still sell their flats in the resale market at market prices. Isn’t this PAP’s policy? The government selling new HDB flats to Singaporeans at cost price has absolutely nothing to do with whether Singaporeans could sell off their flats in the open resale market or not.

Minister Mah also says, “The House Ownership Scheme is most beneficial to Singapore because it could ultimately allow house owners to sell their flats for a profit and use it for retirement. Selling flats at cost price would not achieve such aim.”

First of all, a HOME is not an “investment”. People only use properties as investment when they do not use it as a HOME. It is only when people have their second house then they could consider it as a “tool” for investment!

Secondly, if Singaporeans do not need to suffer from high HDB prices and use their CPF to pay for a 30-year mortgage, they will not need to “sell flats for retirement”! Minister Mah is simply putting the cart before the horse.

Thirdly, we can hardly imagine any first world country or world-class government asking their people to “sell house for retirement”!

Fourthly, can Minister Mah guarantee that each and every generation of Singaporeans can sell their flats at good prices when they retire? Can such scheme work in a rapidly aging society? From the economic perspective, it is totally unsound. In a rapidly aging society, there will be more elderly people than youngsters for the next 20 to 30 years, meaning more sellers of HDB flats than buyers! How can prices be good in such a market situation?

The root of the problem lies with the fact that prices of new HDB flats have outstripped income growth for the past 30 years. Our last generation paid only a 10 or 15-year mortgage for their HDB flats but now, our present and future generations will have to pay a 30-year mortgage for their new HDB flats! If they are married at 30 years old, they can only finish paying up their mortgage by 60 years old. By then, there will be little money left in their CPF. This is why they need to “sell flats for retirement”!

We call upon Minister Mah and PAP to take their responsibilities as embedded in the social contract of land reform seriously and fulfill them, instead of trying to shrug it off by using all sorts of flawed reasoning and excuses. We do not expect the ruling party to meddle with the resale market but we hope that HDB could resume its original role by publishing the cost of all new HDB flats and selling them at cost price to first time Singaporean buyers.

[BlueFlix]

The Long Shadow of Ideology — An Examination of the Political Thinking Behind Singapore’s CPF Scheme

http://searchingforenlightenment.blogsp ... on-of.html

What follows below is a reproduction of a term paper I wrote for my "Politics of Social Policy" module.

Last year, in 2009, two new schemes were introduced by the Singapore government. One was the Central Provident Fund Lifelong Income Scheme For The Elderly (CPF Life) while the other was the Lease Buyback Scheme.

Officially, the reason stated for why the first scheme was introduced was that, in light of the increasing life expectancy of Singaporeans, a new scheme, in addition to the existing CPF scheme which only provided maximum twenty years of payouts, was necessary to provide lifelong income for the elderly in Singapore following their retirement.[1] As for the second scheme, it was touted as an additional option “to help low-income elderly households in 3-room and smaller flats to unlock part of their housing equity while continue living in their homes, and receive a lifelong income stream to supplement their retirement income”.[2]

However, while not discounting the validity of the officially stated reasons, this paper will argue that there exist also other unstated factors which motivated the Singapore government’s decision to introduce these two schemes.


Specifically, this paper will argue that previous modifications made to the CPF scheme, combined with the political ideology of the Singapore state towards social or welfare policy, have rendered the CPF scheme inadequate in catering for the welfare of elderly retired Singaporeans. This thus resulted in the decision to introduce the CPF Life scheme and the Lease Buyback Scheme as a means to compensate for the inadequacy of the CPF scheme. This paper will further contend that these compensatory measures do not however mark a departure from the long-standing state ideology in Singapore towards social or welfare policy.

In doing so, this paper aims to highlight that while there may be exceptions to the case, a country’s social or welfare policies are rarely formulated in a vacuum or purely due to considerations about the citizenry’s welfare. Instead, these policies, perhaps similar to all other public policies, are often, if not always, formulated by policymakers who may be more inclined towards a particular ideological worldview and this will most likely shape, if not determine, the policy output. Indeed, in some cases, some viable policy options are prematurely excluded due to ideological biases amongst policymakers.

Hence, accordingly, in the first section of this paper, a brief overview of some of the main characteristics of the CPF scheme will be provided. Next, in the second section, there will be a discussion of what aspects the CPF scheme has arguably been successful in. As for the third section, attention shall be put on examining the deficiencies and inadequacies of the CPF scheme as a fund catering to the welfare of post-retirement elderly Singaporeans. And in the fourth section, this paper will posit a link between the Singapore state’s ideology towards social or welfare policy and the design of the CPF scheme. This will then be followed by a discussion of what measures the Singapore government has recently implemented, specifically the CPF Life scheme and the Lease Buyback scheme, to compensate for the inadequacies of the CPF scheme and how these measures remain grounded firmly in Singapore’s overall stance towards social or welfare policy.

Singapore’s CPF Scheme – a brief overview

Singapore’s CPF scheme started off originally in 1955 as a basic saving scheme for retirement purposes, “with 5 per cent of wages contributed by the employee with a matching 5 per cent by the employer, to be withdrawn at 55”, under the British colonial government situated in Singapore.[3]

However, after Singapore gained independence in 1965 under the political leadership of the People’s Action Party (PAP), the CPF scheme was expanded into a compulsory savings scheme that had, until the mid-1980s, steadily increasing contribution rates from both employees and employers (the reason as to why contribution rates stopped their steady increase in the mid-1980s will be discussed later); notably, before CPF contribution rates started to drop in the mid-1980s, they reached a high of 25% of an employee’s wages contributed by both employees and their employers.[4] Currently, CPF contribution rates varies mainly according to an individual’s age with, taking the example of a local private sector employee, the total contribution rates being 34.5% of one’s wages for those aged 35 and below and tapering off to 10% for those aged above 65.[5]

In addition, while the CPF scheme was originally designed to cater only for an individual’s post-retirement needs, modifications have, since 1968, been introduced over the years to expand the range of purposes for which an individual’s CPF funds may be used for. Specifically, an individual’s CPF funds, given that he or she has enough surplus funds in his or her CPF account on top of the mandated minimum set aside for post-retirement needs, may be used to finance the purchasing of public housing, education fees, healthcare and, for some, private investment.[6] This expansion in the range of purposes for which an individual’s CPF funds may be used for would, as shall be evident later in this essay, however undermine the CPF scheme’s utility as a retirement fund.

Furthermore, as shall be discussed in greater detail later on in this essay, the CPF scheme has also taken on the role of being a macroeconomic instrument in the hands of the Singapore government.

The Success of the CPF Scheme

One aspect which many observers most often cite as being a significant success of the CPF scheme would be that it was through this scheme that many Singaporeans were and are able to finance their purchasing of local public housing. The result of this is that, in contrast with other countries where homelessness or slums are perhaps prevalent, public housing in Singapore is “Home to more than 80% of Singaporeans, with 95% of them owning their HDB flat”.[7] This, as analysts have observed and which Singapore’s political leaders do not deny, has in turn contributed not only to the political legitimacy of the Singapore state but also towards maintaining social stability and spurring economic growth, not least because the scheme provides the state with significant amounts of funds which may be used for developmental purposes, in Singapore.[8]

Similarly, as was mentioned above, the CPF scheme has also arguably been a key component in the financing of Singaporeans’ payments for tertiary education tuition fees and healthcare bills through the complementary scheme of Medisave.[9]

In addition, in light of how the CPF scheme is based on a model of compulsory savings by employees through mandating that they set aside a portion of their monthly wages to be deposited into their individual CPF accounts, the Singaporean state has managed to avoid the need for large government expenditures to provide for its citizenry’s post-retirement welfare. Some have also touted this emphasis on self-reliance inherent within the CPF scheme as positively contributing towards the preserving of Singaporeans’ work ethic, through keeping “welfarism” at bay, and the reinforcement of “the Confucian tradition that a man is responsible for his family – his parents, wife and children”.[10]

Deficiencies of the CPF Scheme

However, while it is undeniable that the CPF scheme has its positive contributions, much criticism has nonetheless been made against its adequacy as a scheme catering for the post-retirement needs and welfare of Singaporeans.

One key criticism against the CPF scheme that has been made by analysts would be its incomplete coverage. Specifically, it may be noted that while it is mandatory for employees who are Singaporean citizens or Permanent Residents to have a CPF account and to make monthly contributions to it, the CPF scheme however notably does not provide coverage for foreign workers, the self-employed and those who are, for whatever reason, unemployed on a long-term basis.

Here, it is important to note that that as of the end of 2009, there were “1,053,500 foreigners forming 35.2% of total employment”[11] in Singapore; this will thus imply that at least 35.2% of Singapore’s employed workers are not covered by the CPF scheme. And although self-employed individuals may join the CPF scheme on a voluntary basis, few of them take up this option.[12] As for those who may be unemployed on a long-term basis, which may be due to a physical incapability to work or because they are women working at home as homemakers, they too are evidently not covered by the CPF scheme. Hence, “those who have no or low income during their working life will have nothing or little in their CPF account to draw upon when they retire”.[13] “In other words, the CPF does not cover the people in greatest need of social protection”.[14]

Responsibility for the post-retirement needs and welfare of the groups above thus falls primarily on the individuals in these groups to plan and provide for their post-retirement livelihood. While there are schemes and assistance plans catering to those desperately in need of help or were unable to work due to a physical incapability to do so, the amount of aid provided by these schemes and plans is however minimal and applicants for such aid have to meet a set of stringent conditions in order to qualify to receive it.[15]

More importantly, even for those who are covered by the CPF scheme, concerns have repeatedly been expressed about the adequacy of the funds in their CPF accounts to cater for their post-retirement needs and welfare, in light of the extensive pre-retirement withdrawals individuals can make. As was already mentioned above, individuals may draw upon the funds in their individual CPF accounts to finance the purchasing of public housing, further education, healthcare bills and even private investment. This thus, as some observers have pointed out, is most likely to result in the premature depletion of funds in individuals’ CPF accounts that may be used for post-retirement purposes.[16]

Particularly, as a recent study has arguably shown, while it is estimated that only 10% of Singaporeans’ CPF funds are set aside for post-retirement purposes, up to 68% of these funds however may be used to finance the purchasing of public housing.[17]

In response to concerns about Singaporeans depleting their retirement funds prematurely to finance their purchasing of public housing, the Singapore government has repeatedly assert that a public apartment unit is “an asset that appreciates over time in tandem with the growth of the country” and which “can be monetized to pay for expenses in old age”.[18] Two ways which have been suggested that this may be done would be for Singaporeans to either rent out their public apartment unit or to sell it and downsize to a smaller and, hopefully, cheaper unit. Thus, in the Singapore government’s point of view, the purchasing of a public apartment unit with one’s CPF funds “complements, rather than depletes, CPF savings in supporting retirement adequacy”.[19]

However, while the government’s response is not entirely unreasonable, it however is evidently based on the assumption that Singapore’s economy will continue to grow at a rate that will result in the continued appreciation in the value of housing assets; thus, if for whatever reason, Singapore’s economy falters, the value of housing assets will most likely depreciate and will no longer serve as a sufficient source of retirement income.

Also, the government’s response perhaps fails to take into account the fact that in Singapore, public housing is “constructed on land which is only leased from the state. Thus, the ownership rights are incomplete. As the expiry date of 99-year lease nears…, truncated property rights would make it difficult to obtain a reverse mortgage”.[20] Admittedly, the Singapore government has implemented a new scheme to resolve this dilemma but as will be shown later in this paper, this new scheme is arguably an imperfect one.

In addition, the government’s response arguably also does not take into account the difficulties and the personal or social cost of requiring elderly retirees to sell their houses, in which they may have lived for years, and uproot themselves to a smaller unit which may possibly be in an entirely different locality.

Furthermore, as the government itself acknowledges, individuals may run into financial difficulties that force them to sell their houses before their retirement to settle their debts. In such cases, the question of where individuals would then turn to for the financing of their post-retirement livelihood will be a critical question, especially in light of how most individuals most probably have used up the bulk of their CPF funds to purchase their houses.

Also, as was mentioned above, while the CPF scheme is designed to fulfil the function of a retirement fund, it has however also become a macroeconomic instrument in the hands of the Singapore government. Specifically, it can be noted that in the late 1980s when Singapore plunged into an economic recession, the government introduced cuts to the CPF contribution rates as means of reducing labour costs in Singapore.[21] Since then, there have been several occasions during which the Singapore government made changes to the CPF contribution rates in accordance with the changing economic situation of Singapore.

In essence, the fundamental problem of the CPF scheme is arguably that “that too many objectives… are sought to be achieved through a single CPF instrument. This is inconsistent with the theory of economic policy which suggests that a policy targeted at more than one objective will result in sub-optimal outcomes”.[22]

The Political Thinking Behind the CPF Scheme

Having discussed and examined the various deficiencies of the CPF scheme in the previous section, this paper would now turn its attention to examine Singapore’s stance towards social or welfare policy and how this is arguably reflected in the CPF scheme.

Essentially, it is this paper’s contention that when trying to understand why the CPF scheme, with all its strengths and deficiencies, is designed the way it is, it would be necessary to examine the stance adopted by the political leaders of Singapore with regards to social or welfare policy. This is important because the CPF scheme, as extensive as it may be, is nonetheless just one component of Singapore’s overall system with regards to providing a social safety net for its citizens. Hence, an examination of the Singapore government’s stance towards social or welfare policy in general would serve to provide crucial insight into the CPF scheme.

Thus, in light of the above, it may be noted that, generally speaking, Singapore’s stance towards social or welfare policy is one of “anti-welfarism” or anti-welfare dependency. Specifically, it is Singapore’s stance that in the “balance between unconditional welfare and self-reliance”, it will base its approach on the “time-tested values of hard work, self-reliance, family responsibility and community support for those in need”.[23] And was mentioned above in the second and third sections of this paper, Singapore is highly concerned that universal or unconditional welfare will lead to an erosion of Singaporeans’ strong work ethic and thus, in order to prevent this and to ensure that only the deserving receive social assistance, any aid or welfare provided is minimal and only those who are able to meet the different sets of stringent eligibility criteria will receive such aid.[24]

Thus, while the Singaporean approach towards social or welfare policy may not totally correspond to the productivist welfare regimes as described by Ian Gough, there is nonetheless arguably a high level of similarity between the Singaporean approach and the productivist welfare regime.[25]

Particularly, in Singapore, social policy is arguably “subordinated to the dominant economic policy of maintaining high rates of economic growth”, in light of how cuts were made to CPF contributions during the economic recession of the 1980s. It has also “largely been driven by the imperatives of nation-building and regime legitimation” when considering the original political motivations of Singapore’s political leaders in allowing CPF funds to be used to finance the purchasing of public housing.[26]

Hence, when placed in the context of Singapore’s overall stance towards social or welfare policy, it is clear that the CPF scheme is largely a reflection of the “anti-welfarism” stance adopted by Singapore.

CPF Life Scheme and Lease Buyback Scheme – Old Wine in New Skins?

Moving on, in an apparent acknowledgment of the CPF scheme’s inadequacy, especially with regards to inadequacy of retirement funds in individuals’ CPF accounts and the difficulties experienced by those who have used the bulk of their CPF funds to purchase public housing to convert this asset into a steady stream of retirement income, the Singapore government introduced in 2009 the two new schemes of the CPF Life Scheme and the Lease Buyback Scheme.

In brief, the CPF Life Scheme is essentially an annuity scheme which Singaporeans may enter into with funds from their CPF accounts. After entering into this scheme, Singaporeans will be provided with a monthly payout, depending on which of the four plans offered they chosen, starting from the Draw Down Age stipulated in the plan they chosen until their death.[27]

As for the Lease Buyback Scheme, it allows elderly Singaporeans to sell back the tail-end of the lease of their public apartment unit back to the Singapore state. Besides receiving an upfront lump sum payment for this, Singaporeans entering into this scheme will also receive monthly payouts for 30 years while they continue to live in their public apartment unit.[28]

On the surface, these two schemes will appear to be appropriate responses to the key inadequacies of the existing CPF scheme as was discussed above.

However, if one looks deeper into the details of these two schemes, it would be arguably clear that these schemes are nonetheless still grounded firmly in the Singapore state’s stance of “anti-welfarism” and do not constitute a comprehensive resolution of the CPF scheme’s deficiencies.

Firstly, both schemes are still schemes which emphasise self-reliance over welfare provision by the state. The CPF Life scheme, as was mentioned above, is still dependent on Singaporeans having adequate CPF funds to enter into the scheme. Likewise, a necessary condition to qualify for the Lease Buyback Scheme is that one must possess an eligible public apartment unit which one can sell back the tail-end of its lease. In neither of these schemes are there any direct welfare provisions by the state.

Also, these two schemes do not provide coverage for those who are currently not covered by existing CPF scheme. As was discussed above, this would include foreign employees, the self-employed and those who do not have long-term employment. Hence, the question of social protection for those who have little or no wage income during their working years remains unresolved.

In addition, it may be noted that for the Lease Buyback Scheme, a set of relatively stringent eligibility criteria still applies. Specifically, in order to be eligible for the scheme, individuals will need to be currently living in a three-room or smaller public apartment unit for at least five years, have a gross monthly household income not exceeding S$3000, “must not have enjoyed more than one housing subsidy in the past” and must not have previously owned a four-room or larger public apartment unit or private property unit.[29] Even with the recent waiving of the requirement that individuals should not have previously owned a four-room or larger public apartment unit, the eligibility criteria nonetheless still remain rather stringent.[30]

Conclusion

In conclusion, it may be seen that the design of Singapore’s CPF scheme, with all its strengths and deficiencies, was largely shaped, if not determined, by the Singapore state’s “anti-welfarism” stance and not by considerations on what would best serve the welfare and interests of the people. Admittedly, it may be argued that Singapore’s stance of “anti-welfarism” is a consequence of the particular circumstances Singapore finds itself in and would best serve the interests of the country and its people in the long term. However, despite the possible validity of the above argument, it remains a fact that such a stance has arguably contributed to significant deficiencies in Singapore’s social welfare system and that improvements would need to be implemented.

The improvements which have been implemented recently however, as was argued above in the previous section, remain firmly grounded in Singapore’s “anti-welfarism” stance and thus may be seen as largely cosmetic changes and not as fundamental changes which can resolve the elemental deficiencies within the system. Fundamental changes thus still remain to be found and implemented. The question of what these fundamental changes would be is however beyond the scope of this paper and is best left to better minds to answer.

[BlueFlix]

Mother-tongue policy undermines education and our future
by Jonno

http://www.yawningbread.org/guest_2010/guw-165.htm

Mother-tongue issues mask the real socio-political objective of divide-and-rule in Singapore. Despite the so-called racial harmony objectives, the adherence to mother-tongue policy is just an obstacle to the real issue of providing education! Proper education equates to higher economic performance. The higher institutions of learning are invariably located in developed countries with high GDP incomes. Singapore and Hong Kong are exceptions to the rule as their high GDP incomes are masked by high external investments as well as outputs from govt linked companies (as in Singapore’s case).

The real purpose of education is to provide the mechanisms for a thinking mind, broad communication and language skills and an expansive outlook (broadmindedness)! So far, education in Singapore is all about overcoming the hurdles in mother-tongue, primary streaming, PSLE, Independent or gifted, GCE ‘O’ & ‘N’ levels, HSC ‘A’ levels & so on. Only in Singapore, education is more about achieving objectives rather than learning. This is a worrying trend.

The Mother-tongue policy has. clouded the education process by appealing to the chauvinistic, the emotional and the discriminatory. Why? To the majority, what’s the purpose of learning Mandarin? The early majority are overseas Chinese migrants whose main language were diverse dialects ie. Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese, Hakka, Hainanese, etc. Mandarin or Chinese was not widely spoken then! Only those with chauvinistic ties to the motherland ie. China harped on learning Mandarin. The more pragmatic ones simply learned English and got better paid as a result during those times. During that era, English took centre stage over mother-tongue languages especially Chinese.

The shift towards a mother-tongue policy occurred as the English-speakers began to agitate for more democracy and reforms. How better to alienate them in one brush stroke than to make mother-tongue mandatory? In silent and inconsequential exile, assertive minorities like Eurasians, Anglicized Indians and Chinese began a slow migration out of Singapore. Of course, the majority stood with the govt on this issue as they had everything to gain, and it showered the ruling party with electoral favours with 60-70% of the votes in the heartlands.

To say that learning Chinese would help local businessman do well in business in China is bull-*mumble Mumble mumBle*! US & European businessmen have been doing business in China without any knowledge of Chinese and they are doing very well! Language skills are important but they should not be restricted to mother-tongue – it’s backward and restrictive! It also creates narrow-mindedness!

Having watched the mother-tongue policy for over 2 decades, I’m beginning to see worrying issues: Singlish as opposed to proper English; 'Us' versus 'Them’ attitude i.e. a clannish behaviour overseas; either an inability to express or a loud aggressive behaviour to perceived wrongs; timid and inward-looking, etc.

Singlish was the half-baked end result of the mother-tongue policy. Over the years, the standard of English in S’pore has been declining. TV Shows like Phua Chu Kang only parodies the underlying language problems in S’pore. For a S’porean who thinks he speaks good English, he would be barely understood in our neighbouring Australia. They’re in for a rude awakening!

Because they are unable to communicate in proper English overseas, most overseas S’porean students studying in US, UK, Canada, Australia and NZ tend to congregate together like same bird species. They find comfort in their own type as only they can understand one another. Because of this poor ability in communication skills, both orally and written – S’poreans tend to be ‘order-takers’ than ‘order-givers’ due to lack of confidence and inability to express oneself! Technically, S’poreans are very proficient due to their academic inclination but other than that, they are totally deficient!

The ugly S’porean persona results from this ‘lack’ of self-confidence. It manifest through rudeness and bad behaviour. Because of this inability to communicate well, the ugly S’porean lashes out whenever he or she perceives a lack of respect or some injustice done to them.

The lack of communication skills and English language proficiency were not so bad during the Manufacturing and Commerce era (circa 1980s – 2000s). They were masked by the technical proficiency of the S’porean workers who were diligent in upgrading their technical skills. However, as manufacturing and outsourcing migrated to PRC/India in 2000 onwards – there were mass structural unemployment. The avenues left the unemployed were security guards, taxi drivers, insurance agents, etc. The Internet era (2004 post-dot-com onwards) seemed to have bypass S’pore as the communication and language skills deemed paramount in this area were not evident in this region. It was no coincidence that PM Lee went gung-ho for the casino cum integrated resorts option – there were none left on the table!

Whatever they do, this mother-tongue policy should be replaced by a more pragmatic language policy. If not, it will be a slow death for S’pore and S’poreans alike.

[BlueFlix]

Goh leaves behind some unanswered questions
Insight Down South by SEAH CHIANG NEE

http://thestar.com.my/columnists/story. ... tdownsouth

He engineered Singapore’s industrialisation and overall economy, transforming the country from a squatter city into an affluent, modern city state. Ironically, few Singaporeans under 30 know much about him.

AS Singapore continues to search for potential leaders, it is bidding a fond farewell to a brilliant pioneer who helped to build its prosperity.

Former Deputy Prime Minister Dr Goh Keng Swee, who was born in Malacca, died at 91 last Friday after a long illness, marking the virtual end of an era.

In 1984, Dr Goh retired from politics, saying it was for personal reasons. By then, he had been in the Cabinet for 25 years, serving the last 11 as Deputy Prime Minister.

He later served as economic adviser to the Chinese government.

With his death, only two members of the core leaders are still alive – Minister Mentor Mr Lee Kuan Yew, 86, and former PAP chairman Dr Toh Chin Chye, who is in poor health. Stalwarts who had died were S. Rajaratnam, Lim Kim San, Hon Sui Sen, Devan Nair, E.W. Barkerr as well as Ong Eng Guan and Lim Chin Siong.

Ironically, despite Dr Goh’s enormous role in history, few Singaporeans who are under 30 know much about him.

He engineered Singapore’s industrialisation and overall economy, built its armed forces and infrastructure that transformed Singapore from a squatter city into an affluent, modern state.

“Without him and a few passionate others, Mr Lee could not have made it,” is a general opinion of old-timers who lived through that period. Today, some Singaporeans are still speculating why the economic icon had left.

One blogger asked: “He seemed to have disappeared completely from Singapore for a quarter of a century. Does anyone know why?”

His exit happened during the People’s Action Party rejuvenation exercise, in which Lee replaced many of his old comrades with younger people, one of them his son. They were asked to leave but not all of them complied happily. Lee himself has remained outside the self-renewal process.

Ironically, Dr Goh quit in 1984 ,which was the year that the current Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong was made a party candidate for elections that led to his political rise.

That many of today’s youths have not heard of Dr Goh (and other pioneers) is not surprising, given the scant coverage of him during the past 26 years.

A few older Singaporeans feel that he should have been standing next to Lee all these years, and shared his glory together with other prominent pioneers. They include the late Rajaratnam, who was loyal to Lee and remained in his “core team” together with Hon Sui Sen, Devan Nair (until his alleged trouble with alcohol) and Lim Kim San. These were the leaders who dominated Singapore’s political scene from 1959 to mid-1980s.

Yet today, few in the young generation have heard of Dr Goh.

A Singaporean in the 20s said when he heard of his death and the wide interest aroused, he went to the library to read up the archives about him.

“They do not know who Dr Goh is ... Everyone knows Lee Kuan Yew, but not Dr Goh, who is as important if not more important,” said one surfer.

Another said he asked his nephew who was in national service (one of Dr Goh’s creations) whether his commander had said anything about Dr Goh’s death. “He replied, ‘No’. I then asked if he knew who Dr Goh is, again he said ‘No’ before returning to his PlayStation.”

Another commented: “The brief history of our nation building seems to have been forgotten. New Citizens (immigrants) and our children know nothing about it. Sad!”

Alive, Dr Goh had kept a low profile, but in death he has re-ignited several issues.

First, would Singapore be a better country today if he had not left the government in 1984? Secondly, under his economic policies, could Singapore have avoided the widening of the gap between the rich and the poor? And thirdly, would he have allowed such a vast intake of foreigners? These questions will now probably never be answered.

Singaporeans who fondly remember Dr Goh have been making their way to Parliament House where his body lies to pay their respect.

“He was paid so little and done so much for the Nation,” said SMT.

“Not motivated by money or power but a calling to serve the country and people.”

Ten years after Dr Goh’s departure, Lee substantially raised cabinet salaries by pegging them to the top private sector here. These salaries skyrocketed further since 1994. Some observers believe that it was unlikely Dr Goh, with his reputation for thrift, would have gone along with such a scheme.

An old family friend recounted how, when using the tissue paper in the ward, Dr Goh (who came from a wealthy family) would tear each sheet in half, saving the other for future use. If his wife used an entire sheet, he would chide her saying, “Its taxpayers’ money.”

Above all, his demise has raised the debate on leadership quality in Singapore and how to produce selfless leaders like those in the first generation.

Some feel that the paying of super-high salaries to scholars with little passion of service has failed to throw up winners who can match leaders like Lee or Dr Goh or Rajaratnam.

A foreign online magazine, Asia Sentinel, said with the dominance of Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore politics had obscured the roles of other pioneers.

But as history is written by the victors, it added, “(It) can also be re-written. So expect some future revision of Singapore history to make more mention of (their) names.”

[makoshark]

Goh leaves behind some unanswered questions
Insight Down South by SEAH CHIANG NEE

Blueflix or admin,
Please remove this crap from the Malaysian.
How can a country with so much more natural resources and people and still be so far behind Singapore has the right to question what is happening in our country?
A VERY great person to Singapore has died and instead of showing any maturity and respect, write crap.
There have been MANY articles and reports on why he left the govt and "disappeared" from the public eyes.
And to not know why he did what he did is irresponsible reporting.
People who has no vested interest in our country should stay out of it.
Singaporeans have the right to criticse the govt, PAP and anything here as we have a vested interest in the country.
I don't always agree with all the things being done by the govt or PAP such as competition in public transport, interference in business, etc. As long as the people who criticise are Singaporeans and have the maturity to think of alternatives, they should all have the right to comment or even complain.
I hope the people here are matured enough to know that foreign press have ulterior motives in writing their crappy commentaries and not give them any support by regurgitating it here.
It is possible for them to have good points but it is highly unlikely they are all good points.
If you like their good points, summarise or re-write them as your own and post them after you ensure the facts are right.

It is a tragedy that in such a sad time with the passing of Dr Goh, we have idiots who write stupid things and have people post them here.

One more thing to note: The Malaysians are of course jealous of what we have achieved so will always have stupid things to say of us so why bother?

[kanglc]

BlueFlix,

Thanks for posting the article.

[BlueFlix]

The Next Time the PAP Asks for My Vote

http://mollymeek.wordpress.com/2010/06/ ... r-my-vote/

I have reason to believe that PAP politicians are given a handbook with a title like The PAPalian Hermeneutics of Criticism. This seems to me to be the only reason they quite consistently interpret what the public says in a style for which they should be awarded a patent. My guess would be that the book has a maxim: When people ask for an inch, it means that they are trying to extort a yard from you. This should not come across as too much of a surprise since the linguistic ineptitude of most citizens below the ruling class is appalling, most not having been even a mile near an Ivy League.

Following the maxim, when the public complains (like all the uncouth members of the lower classes do) that hikes in transport fares are unreasonable, it means that they are asking for free public transport. If those dirty beggars look at you pleadingly for what they euphemistically call financial aid or basic welfare, they must be demanding to live a life of luxury off government coffers. If they so cunningly appeal for so-called democracy, they are actually threatening to topple the best government to ever have existed in the history of civilization.

We therefore have to commend Kuan Yew’s son (the Prime Minister, that is) for flawlessly applying the teachings of the handbook. His mentor ought to be proud of him. On the floods that have taken place recently, he comments, “I don’t think it’s possible in Singapore to expect the place to be completely free of floods.” His intelligence is unrivalled. He has completely exposed deviousness of those who have hypocritically expressed concern about the freak floods. They are simply expecting a flood-free universe (because, I believe, they subscribe to a theory that each time a freak flood takes place, they age fifty years).

No one should blame Kuan Yew’s son for his subtle insinuations for public expectations have to be managed before they go out of hand. The way in which he interprets complex phenomena such as the noise made about floods is tried and tested and reliable. We know, for instance, that when PAP politicians ask for our votes, they are expecting an opposition-free parliament. Being the conscientious learner and dutiful minion-without-opinions that I am, I know how to respond the next time a PAP politician comes knocking on my door for votes.

And the reader must pardon me for my adulation of Kuan Yew’s son. There exists a group of people in Singapore (whom some jealously and so erroneously accuse of being The Elite) who are so privileged when it comes to wisdom that every little morsel of sagacity that they let loose would benefit us greatly—if we had the right degree of humility to learn from them. Take for example SMRT CEO Saw Phaik Hua who has gained overnight fame through just one sentence: “People can board the train – it’s a matter of whether they choose to.” Look at how ingeniously she, like Kuan Yew’s son, dissects the rhetoric of unreasonable critics.

Ms Saw uses statistics to persuade us and this is what we should do instead of maligning everyone just because we are dissatisfied with certain things in life. She tells us that even at its most crowded, an SMRT train carries only about 1400 people. On the other hand, she patiently explains, it is considered crush load only when the train carries more than 2000 people.

Yes, it is believed that at their most crowded, SMRT trains can fit about 600 more people before it is considered truly crowded. If it helps, allow me to emphasize that 600 people is quite a lot of people and therefore SMRT trains have never ever been crowded. Imagine a fully occupied upper deck of an SBS double-decker. 600 people is about 12 times that many people. Currently, even when it is experiencing the highest passenger volume, an SMRT train can actually fit in 12 more upper-decks of people. How could this possibly be considered crowded?

Despite the bravado I have shown above, I must confess that I have absolutely no idea how to fit these 12 upper-decks of hooligans into the most crowded SMRT train I have traveled in (not without making another joke about saws anyway), but that must be because I still have a lot to learn from those who earn more in one year than what I may take a dozen freak-flood years to earn. (One freak-flood year is 0.5 century, if you need me to jog your memory.) No doubt, out of sheer jealousy, I may retort that our transport companies can provide better service—it’s only whether they choose to. After all, I can easily assert this with much more certainty than claiming (for instance) that the government is capable of better leadership and it’s only whether it chooses to. But surely this would be to miss the point. If we have learnt our lessons well, we really should not expect transport companies to offer us free chauffeurs and limousines. Neither can we demand the government to bow down to the whims of badass citizens.

[BlueFlix]

MCYS' video on Filial Piety: A euphemism for soft authoritarianism and total subordination

http://thinkingbetterthinkingmeta.blogs ... emism.html

The Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports (MCYS) has been featuring a 3-minute film on Filial Piety, in cyberspace and on free-to-air television.

This has garnered responses from various Singaporeans, most of whom seem to be in favour of what the film, or “advertisement” for others, portrays.

The film presents a story of a man’s mother moving in with his family, comprising his wife and teenage son, following the loss of her husband. The elderly woman is portrayed as grumpy, bordering on belligerent, exemplified in one scene in which she criticises her daughter-in-law’s cooking.

Her antagonistic ways are being silently tolerated by her daughter-in-law, as her son tries to mediate and make her feel welcomed. The teenage grandson is just fed up with her behaviour.

When she falls very ill, the man takes care of her and his son asks him why he does so. The man explains that his mother once took care of him.

The teenage grandson on the other hand, represents the ageist chauvinism prevalent in most paternalistic societies: That the young generation is ungrateful, irresponsible, morally confused and knowledge-less, thus justifying more control.

This is a video to tug on heart strings and get Singaporeans to care for their elders/elderly parents. However, it is highly ironic that its themes seem to coincidentally align themselves with sociological observations and political narratives in Singapore.

The video encourages us to love and care for our elderly parents (unconditionally). There is nothing wrong with unconditional love. More pertinently, Singapore is facing an ageing population. There is a confluence of factors, other than the unconditional love for the elderly, that compels the integration of three generations under one working-to-middle class roof.

The cost of living is increasing in Singapore. At the same time, material expectations, the average marriage age, and life expectancy all increase too. What does this mean? We will have dual-income households comprising fathers and mothers of rather young children, also having to take care of their rather old parents/parents-in-law. Well, Singaporeans cannot marry early and have more children not solely because of growing materialism (informed by materialist virtues imparted onto us by goal-oriented educational policies) but also because of policies that compel sons and daughters to live with their parents because they do not have the financial means to live independently. Hiring help would be ideal but that comes at a cost. Households seek to maximise the utility of their homes by doing what SMRT and SBS Transit do to train commuters, optimise with a view to reduce operational costs.

In a society saturated with rhetoric of meritocracy, it is thus the family’s responsibility to make things work out. The problem with meritocracy is its disregard for context. As with the aforementioned social phenomena and economic climate, we need to consider the minimal role the government plays in this.

Any democratic government is chosen by the people to represent and take care of its people, but what how can you account for a government that privatises charities, imposes definitive markers and strict criteria for social welfare, and of course present its perceivably financially illiterate citizenry with convoluted CPF schemes and policies? Dusted beneath the thick carpet of moral and familial rhetoric are the real issues of that a democratic government has forgotten its primary duty.

Old people face a series of issues such as hormonal imbalances, physiological problems, mental health problems, loneliness, grief owing to death of elderly peers and loved ones, communication breakdown, being tasked to take care of grandchildren (they become parents all over again).

These problems have a social, economic and political dimension, and are caused and exacerbated by the very realities of socialisation, policy and money. Substandard, inefficient and expensive hospital elder-related health care may compel the elderly to lose faith in the system and not seek the health they probably need. The negative externalities spill into the domains of their families.

At the same time, it is more economically viable for dual-income families to exist, because they face almost a lifetime of debt oweing to living in what the government determines to be “affordable” public housing. The mindset that coerces the emergence of dual-income households is partly informed by the goal-oriented, paper-chasing, industrial-spirited ethos of our education system. Remember the values of “pragmatism”, “survivability”, “sustainability”? They are baa-aack AND THEY ARE COMIN’ TO GET ‘CHA!

There are social and political factors that make Singaporeans develop high expectations and material cravings, and some of these factors are influenced by governmental policy, yet the government rationalises it in a way that the problem is individualised, absolving the state and its policies of any responsibility. Of course, when it comes to the success and happy stories of peace and achievement in the community, the rationalisation process is reversed, externalised rather than individualised.

Textually, the MCYS video is strangely aligned with the political rhetoric and strategies of the PAP government. Like the old woman who once unconditionally cared for her son, loved him in a way a son’s love for his mother can never match a mother’s love for her son, the PAP government often invokes history to put its citizenry in its place.

Credit has to be given to the first generations of PAP leaders. They laid the foundations for what Singapore is today (good and bad). They have brought peace and economic progress/stability. But does this justify, 30 to 40 years down the road, the high-hand, I-know-better-than-you, me-is-holiest-of-all-including-thou paternalism today? According to the moral of the video, yes.

This is always one strategy employed by the elderly to render subordinate the young. They maximise the utility of “wisdom” to tell us stories of “if it weren’t of them…” and “without them…” to galvanise total obedience and subservience to them. This is one of the characteristics of soft authoritarianism, but leaders would prefer to call it “Asian democracy”, and since we are in the retitling mood, high-handed paternalism and interventionism would be renamed “Asian values”.

The man in the video is not portrayed to be standing up for his wife amidst the inconvenience caused by his mother. In the cosmos of “Asian democracy” and “Asian values”, the Oedipus complex is apparently quickly resolved because your mother is more important than your wife. Your teenage son can just know his role and shut his mouth. Everyone else can sing the campfire song of “Put up and shut up”, or “LPPL” is you are Hokkien.

Total obedience is not wholly justified by past actions and achievements. There are social and political ramifications presented by the ideological alignment of the video with the political discourse of the PAP government. There will be a stronger focus on history (as it is selectively invoked to make citizens feel grateful) and this will take attention away from the atrocities, injustices and oversights of the government and governance today. The political will (if it existed) and social consciousness (if it existed) of Singaporeans are shackled by political rhetoric that saturate the citizenry with distracting narratives of past achievements that we fear change and value continuity.

Moreover, with the ascension of monotheism in Singapore, nevermind its various financial scandals, all the more is this approach to governance justified and valued. Total submission to authority. Do this simple IQ logic test: Son is to mother; citizen is to state; devotee of monotheism is to single all-mighty diety of multiple portfolios and jurisdictions. What do these indicate for social control and choice?

This is why, apart from education (which it can actually influence), states rely on sanctioned religions and the “family” to reinforce its authority and ensure its political longevity. Filial piety will always belong to the private domain of the family and its unique set of values, but the government has appropriated it for its own political agenda. Metaphorically speaking, it is justified that citizens feel like that poor daughter-in-law in the scene when her mother-in-law criticises her. She puts up and shuts up and remains submissive. Her husband does the same too. This is love, but given its strange alignment with the political ideology and paternalism of an authoritarian state, it is repulsive and evil.

We have become sheep into believing all the adapted versions of political and moral rhetoric the government throws us. For example, “Asian values” was once invoked to account for the ascension of the East Asian economy and its brand of political and economic governance, different from the “West”. Yes, we are talking about the vagueness of these “Asian values” that justified state political paternalism, interventionism, and varying degrees of protectionism and socialism in the emerging era of Western free trade.

Along the way, with the rationalisation of religiosity in Singapore, which involves the confluence of English education, imposition of one Chinese (Mandarin) language, and the conversions to Christianity at the expense of Chinese religion, the term “Asian values” adopted a moral dimension reflective of the emerging middle-class ethnic Chinese Christians. They continue the ideological colonialism of themselves by spreading Judaeo-Christian values and represent them as Asian, while at the same time blame the West for its moral corruption. This is what happens when you do not read history, and I do not refer to the Lee Kuan Yew memoirs.

The MCYS video also came about as a reaction to Singaporean society. We cannot deal with subtlety, given our orientation towards goals, reward-and-punishment logic, material and pragmatism. They have to show it explicitly, and in the process, present 3 minutes of what they think is filial piety. As I have said, this coincides with state paternalism and soft authoritarianism.

I would like to point out, that while we have the sarky and snarky, anti-government, Lee regime haters on the internet, some to the extent of trolling and sedition, they do engage in a little sociological project to point out the relevance, connection and implications of policy and politics. Perhaps it could be a bit of paranoid over-reading, but they couch their observations in the social and reveal that things are not what they always seem to be. But given the ideological control we are under, most of us would dismiss these people as sore and “ungrateful”. Familiar?

Instead of MCYS, which also oversees social welfare, spending public money on the video and its marketing, I believe those few thousand dollars, tens of thousand dollars could actually help a few families who are faced with the financial and social problems that could or could not ever be reflected in a 3-minute video.

Perhaps we could have the following lines in the story, but they would probably not be aligned with the political discourse:
“Ma, my wife did her best cooking this meal already. You are embarrassing her. Maybe you can share with her some of your recipes and favourite dishes? Since we’re all living together, there is no need to make any one feel bad.”
“Son, don’t pull that long face. I know your grandma is being a prick, but she is adjusting to life here. Make her feel welcome and if you are uncomfortable, just let me know and I’ll do the talking.”

Of course, even if those lines, still rendered invisible are the larger social and political factors that shaped such a scenario. Perhaps, “filial piety” is our opium.

[BlueFlix]

Space in MRT trains

http://tankinlian.blogspot.com/2010/07/ ... rains.html

Hi Mr. Tan

Recently there is a debate going on whether the SMRT trains in Singapore are overly crowded or not. The SMRT doesn't think very much of it as evidenced in their CEO's untactful remarks, whilst practically everyone blogging on the internet curse and swear at how bad the situation had become.

Looking at the case again, I just discovered that everything hinges on a statistic which is provided by SMRT Quote:...This averages 3.8 passengers per sq m, lower than that of major cities like London..... Unquote.

So 3.8 passengere per sq m is the agreed benchmark. I have no problem with that. But look at the word AVERAGE. Therein lies the solution to the puzzle. It's not about the number 3.8 neither is it about the techie word crushload. It's about AVERAGE.

AVERAGE is a very dangerous concept if not properly managed. If the annual salary of the PM is $3 million and the annual salary of the rest of the 9 ordinary workers in the PMO (PrimeMinister's Office) is $50,000 then mathematically the average annual salary of the people in the PMO is $305,000 per person? In statistical theory there are median, and mode, standard deviation, etc to refine the imperfect concept of averaging. In the real world, we also need to know more about the model used for "averaging".

How does SMRT calculate its AVERAGE crush load? Is it over time average between peak period and non peak period per station basis? How many stations are selected? Which are the stations selected for the averaging? Are newer stations which have lower load factor bundled together for averaging?

Statistics is a powerful tool which can often lead to wrong conclusions. Sometimes it is so powerful that it can be used as a tool to make one feel complacent and look good. And those who ignore the possibly distorted conclusions might be told to make other choices because the sysem is just doing fine - on "average".

rex

[BlueFlix]

Importance of the Public Transport System

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

My dad owned a car until I was 10 years old then gave it up. From age 10 onwards, my primary form of transport has been the public transport system. I believe in that widespread use of the public transport system is very important. It helps to reduce pollution in the environment, save precious resources and prevent road congestion. Given global warming due to green house gases is one of the most serious problems in the world today, taking the public transport is one way to reduce CO2 emissions and help save the world. Many use public transport because it is cheaper and that is all they can afford.

In recent days many Singaporeans were incense by SMRT CEO Saw Phaik Hwa's remarks:

This is “not crush load”, where a train is carrying more passengers than the standing load it is designed to carry under normal circumstances.

Crush load happens when a train carries more than 2,000 passengers.

“People can board the train – it is whether they choose to,” she said.

I took the MRT when I started working and later switched to taking taxis to get to work for roughly 7 years. I switched back to the public sometime in 2006/2007 when there was a hefty increase of taxi fares that resulted in my taxi fare to work reaching nearly $30 (also no thanks to ERP). When I switched to bus+MRT, I was surprised by how crowded they had become. However, things got worse and the trains have become more and more packed since. I couldn't take it when the train became really stuffy and I actually got sick more often taking the MRT because people are so closely pack all it takes is for someone to cough to spread diseases around. You can try holding your breath but there is really no point because ventillation won't get the viruses and bacteria out of before you need to take your next breath. I gave up on the MRT and started taking long haul buses to work....only because there is a school near where I live and students who pack the bus get down to create some space for other passengers. Switching to buses means that I take 30-45 minutes longer to get to work.

What struck me in CEO Saw's remark is not part where she said the trains have not reached "crushed load" as if it is okay for people to be packed like sardines so long as they are not "crushed". The part that struck me is when she said people can choose whether to take the train. That word "choose" triggered many other thoughts. Unlike people of other countries, most Singaporeans don't have a choice whether to use the transport system or not because the PAP govt implemented a quota system for cars (COE) which simply means the majority of Singaporeans have to use the public transport....and most of the time it is bus +MRT not taxis because of the high taxi fares and limited numbers. I've explain in another posting why no other city or govt needed to implement the COE system which is unique to Singapore. Not having quotas for means that other govts have to make the public transport comfortable enough to reduce the demand for cars and keep congestion down. Here, the COE forces people to take the public transport regardless of the quality of service.

After the unhappiness from Singaporeans about her remarks, CEO Saw came out to say this:

"I am very aware it's crowded. I take the trains all the time. I take the effort to go all the way to the northern towns to see how crowded it is during the morning peaks and I take the train with the people.

"It is crowded, but I push my way in. It is crowded, but when they are already running at 2-3 minutes (intervals), it's the most that I can do. I cannot go faster than that without compromising safety and reliability." [Link]

I'm glad there is finally admission that the trains are crowded. I hope the denial has finally ended. ...this should put an end to all the rubbish about train capacity being sufficient and so on that we have to endure listening to when those taking the train know how crowded it is. Many of you blame CEO Saw and she has become a symbol of frustration and anger among Singaporeans. CEO Saw is the highest paid CEO of SMRT[Link: Highest Paid SMRT CEO] - her pay is $1.67M. Remuneration for the company's top five executives, excluding Ms Saw's, totalled $3.2 million - 17.2 per cent higher than the previous year's. They are paid higher and higher as Singaporeans are packed tighter and tighter in our trains. You may think at this point I share your anger and frustration with CEO Saw. But I don't. Since the SMRT was privatised and became a listed company, the CEO of SMRT primary job is to generate as much profits for the SMRT so that good annual dividends can be paid to shareholders. CEO Saw is answerable to shareholders if the profits decline....her job is to make money for the SMRT and she does her job well. For SMRT passengers, all she has to do is stay above the minimum standards set out by transport authorities for quality of service and that is sufficient. It does not make sense for her to spend the profits to get higher quality of service since the SMRT is a monopoly or part of a monopoly and the customers have no other choice....no thanks to the high cost of all other transport alternatives. The privatisation of the MRT and bus system has relegated the comfort of passengers to a set of minimum standards set out by the transport authorities - you will not get anything more than that because there is no incentive to provide more than the minimum. If you look at all this you will see immediate resemblance to another group of people who are paid the highest salaries in the world for the job they do. They are supposed to take care of the citizens of the country but that single goal is overtaken by other interests and diluted by links of a govt to a complex network of business interests that provides high paying jobs and opportunities to small number of elites in a developed country with highest income inequality - a system they want perpetuate and preserve for their own interests against the interest of ordinary citizens.

The public transport system is important in Singapore because it can help to narrow the wide social divide. A good public transport that provide a high quality of service for everyone at a fare that even the office cleaner can afford can deliver widespread improvement in quality of life. Packing people in a train carriage like cattle because they are too poor to drive in a country where cars are the most expensive in the world simply worsens the inequality we already have in our society. When they invested and lost billions in Shin Corp, Citibank, Merill Lynch, ABC Learning etc we were told that it is part of the risk ...these are honest mistakes and so on. Investing in public transport carries no risk because the gains in terms of elevated living standards for Singaporeans are guaranteed....even if there are operating losses (due to subsidies for students, handicap, and the poor etc), ordinary Singaporeans are the ones who gain from it. Where did our losses in Shin Corp , Merrill Lynch and ABC Learning go?....The pockets of people like Thaksin, John Thain and other posterboys of greed and dishonesty...but it is really too much to expect the PAP govt to do something major for Singaporeans in the area of public transport.

[BlueFlix]

Liquidated - Parallels between Wall Street and the Singapore Civil Service

http://flaneurose.blogspot.com/2010/07/ ... -wall.html

I recently finished reading Liquidated by Karen Ho. It wasn't an easy read; in fact I skimmed through large chunks of it. Satyajit Das was right in saying that it reads like a doctoral dissertation.

Still, what struck me were some of the similarities between Wall Street investment bankers and how the Singapore civil service governs the country. Perhaps because I had been reading Constructing Singapore concurrently that the similarities popped right out. The parallels may or may not be spurious though; I'll leave that up to the readers of this post to decide for themselves.

First: Wall Street investment banks like to hire the best students from the best universities. Harvard and Princeton are the main hiring grounds, and potential hires are feted and treated like rock stars. Although I attended a relatively second tier institution in the United States during my time in university, even I felt the lure of the investment banks. All week during career week, students came walking out of the Glass Pavilion (an exhibition space in my school) carrying coveted swag from the banks.

Ho in her book postulates that the reason why Wall Street banks focus their hiring almost exclusively on the top universities is because they in effect leverage on the stellar reputation of top-tier universities to give themselves the sheen of prestige and extraordinary capability. That in turn helps to capture business. e.g. Goldman Sachs hires only the best students from Harvard. If you hire Goldman to represent your corporation, you've got the smartest guys in the room playing on your team.

It's not important that the people the investment banks hire really are individuals of the highest calibre. What's really the most important thing is that the perception that Wall Street investment banks hire only the best legitimizes why they can charge the astronomical fees they charge and how they can get away with the financial equivalent of murder when things fall apart. After all, if the smartest guys couldn't have saved the day, whocouldhaveknown???

In my mind, this doesn't seem so different from how the Singapore government insists on academic excellence in its highly credentialed acolytes, and has metrics like the infamous Current Estimated Potential. It's part of the reason why the government can make the boldfaced claim that we have to pay the highest ministerial salaries in the world to keep the good people we have in government, even if the actual performance of our ministers seems to be mediocre unremarkable.

Second: In her book, Ho talks about the myth of "increasing shareholder value". It's like a religion to investment banker types. Everyone in investment banking drinks the Kool-aid and uses the shareholder value argument to justify all kinds of business actions, such as mergers and acquisitions, even though years of academic research have shown that M&As typically destroy more value than they create. But investment bankers can't just sit on their asses doing nuffin'. Got to git them fees rollin' in.

The irony of course, is that the more bankers talk about creating or increasing shareholder value, the less they actually improve it. The opposite is truer more often than not.

Within the Singapore context, the concept of shareholder value is obviously irrelevant. Instead, here, GDP growth is the overriding concern. And every civil servant in Singapore is subject to what I call the tyranny of KPIs.

With regard to GDP growth, the problem is not growth per se, but the quality and sustainability of that growth. What use is growth if it is goosed by massively unsustainable immigration policies, finanical repression (think forced savings, high residential property prices, and low interest rates paid on depositors' funds) and suppressed wages? Worse, the positive aspects of growth are not spread evenly but accrue to those at the top of the income ladder. Yet we reward our highest civil servants and elected officeholders chiefly on the basis of this number. Is it any wonder that we have achieved spectacular GDP growth, but that the fruit of this Pyrrhic victory is bitter indeed?

As for KPIs, the concept is not unsound in theory, but excessive adherence to KPIs blinds the user to other, less tangible measures of performance. If something cannot or will not be measured, then it can't be important, can it? One is reminded of that story of the man searching for his lost keys beneath the streetlamp on a darkened street.

Like the red herring of shareholder value that bankers put forth, we have ministers and CEOs and other high priests telling us that such and such KPIs have been met or even surpassed. That everything is going according to plan. Yet that fails to assuage the disquietude in so many of us, that there are things happening here which are viscerally wrong. Like income inequality. Housing (un)affordability. Rising costs and the fast fading possibility of a comfortable retirement. Or any retirement for that matter. Of how this Singapore ... this place, just doesn't feel like home anymore.

Third: The investment banking industry has notoriously low job security. Job turnover is tremendous. You would think that investment bankers, hired and fired so easily, would have some empathy for the massive numbers of layoffs they're directly responsible for when they advise their client companies to layoff and outsource operations to cheaper countries. Turns out to be the opposite, according to Ho's research. Apparently, it is precisely because bankers have to hustle all the time in their highly volatile industry that they have precious little sympathy for others who can't do the same. Not being able to scramble when the times call for it is considered by bankers to be a personal failing rather than an unfortunate consequence of circumstances.

The highest levels of government in Singapore operate the same way. It's dog-eat-dog within the Admin Service, as is well known, and everyone there aspires to be the top dog. As a purported meritocracy, it was designed that way. A fall from grace from that height would be ... crushing. As a corollary, our senior commanders in the SAF devote great amounts of energy feathering their own nests and constantly keep half an eye on that coveted ministerial, GLC or statboard position for post retirement.

In such a situation, the problems that ordinary people face become mere abstractions, to be described in clinical terms like "structural unemployment". The same sentiment underlies brazen, clueless and flippant exhortations of workers to work "cheaper, better, faster".

That the highest levels of our government are paid handsomely for their work could in fact, be part of the problem, and it's not just me saying this. Research from Harvard indicates that "The More Leaders Make, the Meaner They Get."

[BlueFlix]

Mah Bow Tan is Either Disingenuous, or Stupid (Maybe Both)

http://utwt.blogspot.com/2010/07/mah-bo ... us-or.html

I simply do not understand how Mr Mah can make some of the statements he made that have been reported in the press today.

Dufus Statement No. 1:

"If you're a first-time buyer, there's more than enough flats for you."


Mr Mah claims that HDB is rolling out thousands of BTO flats this year. But how on earth can there be 'more than enough flats' when the flats are only going to be built in 3-4 years? A couple that is going to be married within the next 12 months needs the flats NOW, not in 3-4 years!

This is precisely what is happening to my sister-in-law. She is getting married early next year. But her BTO flat will only be completed around 2014/2015. In the mean time, she and her husband have to share a room with her relatives.

This is a ridiculous state of affairs and it is fundamentally disingenuous for Mah to state that there is adequate housing, when it is precisely the case that there IS NOT ENOUGH HOUSING to meet demand NOW, when it is needed the most. Mr Mah Bow Tan's statement is both insensitive and insulting to the many young Singaporeans trying to start a family in Singapore.


Dufus Statement No 2:

Demand is also hard to predict. Mr Mah said the indication is that there will be "some slowdown" in the economy later this year.


Seriously, WTF!?!? Demand is hard to predict???? How on earth can it be that hard to predict when the Singapore Government is in control of immigration, and when immigration is the primary fuel driving the rise in housing prices? Lee Hsien Loong just annouced there will be 100,000 more foreigners to Singapore. Isn't it common sense that we will need housing space for 100,000 new people??? Isn't it common sense that if you don't build new housing infrastructure, that they are going to compete for the existing housing and push prices up???

Dufus Statement No 3:

'I hope that with HDB pushing out a record number of flats this year, this imbalance will be redressed over the medium-term... I would expect in another year or so we should be able to stabilise everything,'

Do you really expect the problem to be solved in 1 year? Or are you really saying that because you know that we have an election coming and you want to fool Singaporeans into thinking that this is not an election issue because it will go away soon??

Mr Mah Bow Tan, mark my word. You say 1 year, I say that resale housing prices will continue to rise consistently for at least the next 2-3 years. The so-called 'new housing' that you are starting to build now, will only come onto the market in 3-4 years time. That new housing supply will NOT offset the demand for resale flats over the short to mid term, because the resale flat prices are driven by 1. downgraders, 2. foreigners, and 3. rich first-timers. - all of whom are not affected by your new-build BTO scheme.

On top of that, your PAP government is addicted to foreign labour and foreign capital to fuel your GDP growth. Your addiction will mean that there will be more foreigners coming to Singapore in the short to medium term, since you do not have the political will to turn off the foreigner tap. This will further add to the demand shocks i previously talked about here, that will force further housing price inflation.

------------

I seriously cannot believe that Mah has been reported making some of the statements he has made. Either he knows what is going on but is being disingeuous with his words, or he must be simply plain stupid. But if he is stupid then why on earth have we been paying him $millions in salary for the last few years!?!?

Singaporeans, something needs to change!!!

[BlueFlix]

Sorry seems to be the hardest word

http://siewkumhong.blogspot.com/2010/07 ... -word.html

So Elton John once sang. I don't know if our ministers are his fans, but they certainly seem to have taken that to heart as a motto.

The latest to bear that out is Dr Yaacob Ibrahim, Minister for the Environment and Water Resources. Frankly, that has always seemed to be a bit of an unexciting, boring post -- but boy has he been in the hot seat over the past two months.

It's all thanks to the heavy rain that has variously been ascribed to us being a tropical country (duh), La Nina (which should not be a surprise since it is a cyclical phenomenon), and even Typhoon Conson (despite it being over 2000km away). It even got so that another minister asked PUB, the key agency under Dr Yaacob's charge, to explain the flooding.

And despite a whole barrage of questions in Parliament yesterday (resulting in front page covers, headline news and multiple-page coverage in the Straits Times and other papers), nary a single "sorry". No apology, no admission of error or fault, nada.

Nevermind that the original reason given by Dr Yaacob for the first Orchard flood was that the Stamford Canal was blocked, but otherwise it was adequate -- but now actually it was not adequate and could not drain quickly enough (front page news today). Nevermind that it took three, yes three, floods in two months before our million-dollar salarymen could figure out that it might be a good idea to issue public warnings about potential flooding (and even now that's still not been decided).

Nevermind that his comment that the first flood was a "once in 50 years" event in terms of intensity has now come home to roost, given that the second flood was just as heavy and the third flood even more so. Nevermind that we also had a flood in November 2009, that Dr Yaacob also described as "once in 50 years".

Are we then in the year 2210, since presumably we've had 4 once-in-50-years events?

Today's Straits Times covered the Q&A in Parliament yesterday. The first question was from Ms Lee Bee Wah, referring to "three floods" in one month and without any reference to Orchard Road. Dr Yaacob's opening statement was:

"In the last one month, we have seen three intense storms. Only two caused flooding in Orchard Road, not all three. The June 25 flood did not cause any flooding. No, Orchard Road was not flooded. We have to be precise."



I am a lawyer. Precision is one of my catchwords. But this was not precision. Quite the reverse, this was obfuscating the question. Ms Lee did not refer to Orchard Road. Ms Lee did not mention the flooding of Orchard Road. Ms Lee did not talk about how shops in Liat Towers have given up on re-opening until the flood risk has been addressed. The reply was quite telling and revealing of where Dr Yaacob's head was at.

Perhaps the apparent obsession with Orchard Road was due to the bad press Singapore has received thanks to the floods, for example in Australia. This must all have been a slap in the face for a government so obsessed about foreign rankings and benchmarking against other countries.

I was in Bali when the first flood struck, but it was big news there. A friend was in Lombok then, and he said the locals were laughing at Singapore, asking how could this happen.

How could this happen, indeed. I am normally reluctant to reactively blast the government for mistakes and errors. This is the real world, things go wrong and people make mistakes. On most things (obvious exceptions are national security etc), it is OK for people to make a mistake once -- that is a learning opportunity.

But I have zero to low tolerance for a repeated mistake. Making the same mistake again only suggests that nothing has been learnt from the first mistake, and that is unforgivable. Not confronting the truth squarely and admitting errors simply means that the problem has not been openly acknowledged and so will not be fixed.

Insisting that the system is fine and the problem arose only because of an external circumstance beyond anyone's control (e.g. blocked grating at the Stamford Canal causing the first flood), without properly investigating the reasons why, smacks of groupthink, with the group convincing itself that the system works and the problem must be something else. Telling us that we will never be flood-proof and so we should simply suck it up, smacks of evasion of responsibility. Reversing the position on the cause without admitting an error and apologising, simply smacks of hubris and arrogance.

I contrast this with the apology by DBS CEO Piyush Gupta, when IBM apparently caused the failure of DBS's systems. (I still don't understand how multiple layers of redundancy could be trashed by one single error -- isn't that the whole point of multiple layers of redundancy?) He came out, owned the problem, publicly and openly explained the reasons without taichi-ing, and apologised. Thrice.

Mr Gupta received kudos for that response. This is not some petty demand for an apology to make myself feel better, or some sort of bloodlust for heads to roll. This is about knowing that the people responsible know that they are responsible, which is the first step towards fixing the problem. Because it's not just about widening or deepening the Stamford Canal, this is about re-evaluating how MEWR and PUB do things and designs the flood system and figuring out how to avoid more repetitions.

This is about feeling that our ministers truly and sincerely understand the pain they've caused, and by that I mean pain to all Singaporeans, if only because of the sheer embarrassment around the world. This is about setting an example for all Singaporeans, to say that everyone is accountable, and that leaders are the most accountable.

Very simply, this is about Doing The Right Thing.

There were a couple of debates in Parliament when Mas Selamat escaped. I spoke at one of them, asking for the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Home Affairs Mr Wong Kan Seng to apologise to Singaporeans for a whole chain of errors in domestic security (Mas Selamat, letting people through airport security with the wrong passport, etc). The Second Minister for Home Affairs Mr K. Shanmugam replied on his behalf, and neither offered an apology nor touched on it.

This is a flaw that seems to afflict so many, if not most, of our political leaders. It reinforces the disaffection that Catherine Lim first wrote about almost 20 years ago. It suggests an arrogance in those who are supposed to serve the people. It puts into question whether the government feels accountable or responsible to the people.

All we want, is to hear someone responsible say sorry. And yet it seems so hard.

[BlueFlix]

More on 50-year floods

http://siewkumhong.blogspot.com/2010/07 ... loods.html

A reader recently pointed out that a "50-year flood" is not literally a once-in-50-years flood. Quite educational for me, actually.

So that made for a really good segue to a full-page article on page A8 of today's ST (July 22, 2010), headlined "100mm: Expect floods if this much rain falls in an hour". Here are my key takeaways from the piece:

* Flooding can be expected when more than 100mm of rain falls in an hour.
* Out of those 10 occasions, 8 resulted in floods.
* Out of those 10 occasions, 2 were in 2009, 3 in 2008, 2 in 2007 and 3 in 2006. In other words, we've been getting the so-called 50-year flood two or three times a year. If that is the case, then based on the USGS explanation of a 50-year flood, we probably need to re-define what a 50-year flood means in our context.
* The highest one-hour rainfall ever recorded was 148mm in November 1995.
* The last 10 such occasions highlighted in the article (which seemed to exclude the recent floods) ranged from 101mm to 137mm.
* By comparison, the 16 June storm that flooded Orchard Road saw 101.6mm in 2 hours. Averaged over 2 hours, that was about half the rainfall of the top 10 recorded rainfalls from 2006 to 2009.
* On the other hand, the more recent storm on 17 July brought down 114mm at Lower Pierce Reservoir, but 194mm at Poole Road in Tanjong Katong.
* PUB lists 52 low-lying, flood-prone zones. Presumably, these make up the 66 hectares of flood-prone areas today (yes yes, down from 3,178 hectares in the 1970s, as PUB, Dr Yaacob and others have reminded us). And yet, the recent areas flooded, such as Orchard Road, Opera Estate and Jalan Boon Lay, are not on that list.



Having read the articles, some questions came to mind.

Did Dr Yaacob have the statistics at hand, when he described the first, 16 June storm as being "once in 50 years", when the statistics clearly show that it wouldn't even have made the top 10 over the past 5 years?

What has changed, for Orchard Road to suddenly become a flood-prone zone now? The (new) official line is that Stamford Canal could not handle the amount of rain coming down. But the statistics show that in absolute terms, the amount of rainfall coming down on 16 June was not truly an outlier. So could it have, as some have speculated, been due to all the construction and development work, that has changed the run-off patterns such that a lot more water went into the Stamford Canal than previously? Or some other reason? Instead of saying that the Stamford Canal could not drain the amount of water going into it and then thinking solely on widening the canal, why are we not asking why the amount of water going into the canal was so much more compared to before?

Does the "66-ha of flood-prone areas" statistic still hold true today? What is PUB's methodology in identifying these areas, and updating this list?

Did the National Climate Change Committee even look at flooding as a possible result of climate change? Because looking at its website, that did not seem to be a focus area at all. So much for scenario planning.

It's of course true that Singapore cannot be completely flood-proof. But I don't think anyone is really asking for that. Talking about half of Singapore becoming canals is a straw man argument that ignores the real point.

I think what has shocked and upset people, are the scope and location of the floods that have been occurring, and the Government's cavalier response so far. Frankly, if the flooding had been limited to the recognised flood-prone areas (i.e. those on PUB's list), I'm pretty sure there would not have been the amount of backlash that has arisen.

But they are not, they are in new areas, including very highly visible Orchard Road, and the Government did not know what was going on and seemed more interested in maintaining its not-to-be-blamed Teflon coating than in digging in and figuring out what really happened -- the first step to finding a solution. That was what was most disappointing.

Finally, I just wanted to say kudos to Victoria Vaughan, the ST journalist who wrote the story in today's ST. I suspect she knew exactly what she was doing, laying out all the facts for discerning readers to figure out what the real questions are. If only she could (or had the editorial leeway to) ask those questions in the article itself.

[BlueFlix]

The "market" as deus ex machina (or, The Scapegoat For Rising Housing Prices and Other Inconvenient Realities)

http://siewkumhong.blogspot.com/2010/04 ... egoat.html

Today’s newspapers (both TODAY and The Straits Times) featured comments by National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan about rising prices in the public housing market.

"It's in the interest of buyers to have low COVs, but it's in the interest of sellers who own the flats to have high COVs. So, between these two groups, we must let them fight it out. The Government is not able to settle or fix COVs to say that it should be this or this figure. The Government prefers not to interfere. But we can interfere in the supply. This is something we can control.”


In short, the Government will not set or fix prices directly -- but it will indirectly influence prices by manipulating the factors that affect prices. In particular, the Government will influence supply, and then leave it to the magic of “the market” to set prices. These latest statements are consistent with what Mr Mah told Parliament back in April, that the Government intended to leave the purchase of resale flats by first-time flat buyers "to the market".

"Leave it to the market" is a rationale that is often trotted out, to justify why the Government should not intervene in something or other, be it rising housing prices or rising COE prices. But government policy can have a huge impact on prices (and sentiment, which can drive prices in markets like property), as implicitly acknowledged by Mr Mah when he talked about ramping up supply as a way to moderate price increases.

In this case, what’s ironic is that the Government is now scrambling to fix a problem that is largely of its own creation. Why are housing prices rising so quickly? Here are some likely reasons, all linked to Government policy from the last few years:

* Recent HDB changes making it easier for HDB owners to rent out the entire flats. After living in the HDB flat for a few years (I think 5 years in most cases), HDB owners can now rent out their entire flats even after upgrading to private property. Previously, they would have had to sell their HDB flats if they want to move into private property. Well, not any more. This has been portrayed as a liberalization, and hence presumably A Good Thing. But the reality is that it keeps potential supply off the resale market -- I suspect that many HDB-owners who upgrade to private property actually keep their HDB flats as an investment property to rent out. In fact, HDB flats strongly outperform private apartments in terms of rental yield.


* The influx of foreigners. I work with a lot of foreigners, and I think in many cases they do bring net benefits to Singapore. In light of our immigrant roots and as a matter of necessity, I do think we have to be open to foreigners. But I also believe that we are close to the creaking limits of our country’s present infrastructure; that the rate of increase in recent years has been too fast; and that this influx has limited the opportunities available to locals. In other words, the Government did not think through the costs of such a rapid increase in the foreign population in Singapore (costs which are of course not captured in the GDP figure), and continues to disregard these costs. The Government’s approach of “sharpening the differences” between citizens and foreigners misses the point, because it focuses on increasing prices for foreigners, which only makes life harder for them without making life better for citizens.


* The ease with which foreigners could become permanent residents (PR), thereby qualifying to purchase HDB flats. I know of at least one foreigner whose PR application was approved in 3 weeks or so. This has massively increased demand for public housing, hence driving up prices. The absolute number of PRs purchasing HDB flats may constitute a fraction of the overall HDB-purchasing population, but you actually only need a small number of purchasers bidding up prices at the margins, for overall property prices to increase.


* The rise of en-bloc sales over the past decade. I’m told that a popular retirement strategy for older folks who cashed out from en-bloc sales, is to buy a HDB flat in cash and then live off the massive cash balance left over for the rest of their retirement. The lax rules for en-bloc sales therefore channels cash-flush buyers into the HDB resale market, hence the advent of near-million-dollar HDB flats.


* HDB’s dogmatic adherence to its Build-To-Order (BTO) model. Burnt from the huge supply overhang of public flats when it massively over-built in the face of the HDB bull market that ended in 1996, HDB now only builds flats when it is confident of selling most of the flats built. This means that HDB will launch a project (i.e. start taking orders from interested buyers), but only start construction when most of the flats (I think at least 70%) have been booked. This avoids a supply overhang, which means that the cost of public funds being tied up in unsold public housing (which is saved by the Government) is transferred to citizens, who end up bearing the cost of a longer waiting period for new flats. In addition, the delay in getting a flat drives potential buyers to the resale market. This in turn pushes up resale prices, which actually then increases BTO prices down the road since BTO flats are priced at a discount to the then-prevailing market price. So this policy is a vicious cycle that delivers a double whammy (if not more) to prospective buyers.


But most fundamentally, increasing HDB prices marks the coming to roost of the Government’s deliberate (and much ballyhooed) policy of making one’s flat a financial asset for retirement purposes. This works only if flat prices increase over time – otherwise, they would make really bad investments that are unsuitable for retirement. By mixing up the public policy goals of providing affordable accommodation and helping citizens plan for their retirement, the Government has ended up achieving neither, with public housing becoming increasing unaffordable and many retirees being asset-rich and cash-poor.

The point that I ultimately want to make, is that the “leave it to the market” message is deceptive when the bearer of the message is able to manipulate the market. Markets do not exist in vacuums, but are instead influenced by government regulations and policies. So when the Government declines to intervene or to change the underlying rules, it is really a conscious political decision to maintain the status quo.

In such cases, the “market” becomes a convenient scapegoat for a mess that’s really of one’s own creation. A deus ex machine, if you will, that conveniently resolves an inconvenient political truth.

So the next time a government official or politician talks about “leaving it to the market”, or blames the market for something or other, be a little bit more questioning. Drill deeper and find out if that person is really helpless to influence the market. I would bet that’s not the case in most cases.

[BlueFlix]

HDB Unaffordability Exposes Economic Policy Failures - Housing Bubble to Grow and Pop

http://utwt.blogspot.com/2010/07/hdb-un ... nomic.html

HDB officially released its 2010 Q2 housing price statistics. Key highlights from the latest housing statistics are as follows:

HDB’s Resale Price Index (RPI) rose by 4.1% in 2nd Quarter 2010 over the previous quarter, as compared to the increase of 2.8% in 1st Quarter 2010 and 3.9% in 4th Quarter 2009.

The median Cash-Over-Valuation (COV) amount amongst all resale transactions increased to $30,000 in 2nd Quarter 2010 (see Annex D (PDF 37KB)). The proportion of resale cases transacting above valuation also increased to 96%.


Singapore's HDB resale market is now out of reach of average Singaporeans. The median COV of $30,000 is now more than the annual take-home salary of an average Singaporean. Assuming that a person earning $3150 a month (gross) takes home $2500 a month (after CPF), this person would take 6 years to save up the median COV if he saved 20% of his income every month.

This means young, newly-wed Singaporeans who have been working for less than 5 years, and who are looking for housing when they are married, are effectively priced out of the resale market. The only way they would be able to afford the housing is if they were to borrow money from their parents to afford the COV to buy a resale flat.


For those who are unable to tap into Father-Mother Banking Corporation (FMBC), The only option available to them is to get BTO flats. However, these BTO flats take 3-4 years to build after application. Assuming the man proposes to the girl, and the wedding takes place 1 year after the marriage proposal, this leaves at least 2-3 years after the wedding before a married couple can get hold of a flat.

The unaffordability of housing will further exacerbate Singapores population and other economic problems. The reason is simple - if you can't afford a roof over your head, you can't possibly provide for a family.

Causes of the Imbalance

There are several reasons why the Singapore housing market has seen its prices rise uncontrollably out of the reach of average Singaporeans. These are divided broadly in to demand-side shocks and supply-side rigidity

1. Demand-Side Shocks to the Housing Market

Singapore's addiction to foreign labour to grow its GDP has resulted in an open door policy to foreign immigrationover the last several years, which has caused its foreign population to skyrocket. Most recently, PM Lee Hsien Loong announced that there would be 100,000 more foreigners coming to work into the country. Foreigners who want to come to Singapore necessarily have to find a place to live. This has resulted in a massive demand-side shock to the housing system.

* Demand Shock in the HDB rental market - For the lower-income workers, they will end up renting a room in HDB flats. This happens all the time, and it is not uncommon to hear about how 4-room HDB flats have been rented out to 8-10 philipinos or vietnamese at a time. The crowding out of the rental market means that residential housing which was ordinarily built for owners to stay in, now turns into commercial real estate to be leased out to occupants. The most notorious example of this must be Sinha Shekhar, the immigrant Indian who is renting out his HDB resale flat, while staying in a Condo. This rental market would not be anywhere the size it currently is, without the unmediated influx of foreign labourers into Singapore.

* Demand Shock in the HDB resale market - Not only are foreigners renting HDB resale flats, they are also now buying them. Foreigners with more money can apply for a PR and then can proceed to buy HDB resale flats. The record prices for HDB resale transactions all over Singapore have been created almost unilaterally by PRs who are willing to play crazy inflated prices for the flats.

* Crowding out of Singaporeans in the private property market - With a major expansion of the private banking business and the casinos, Singapore is now trying to woo the ultra-rich to park their wealth in Singapore. Not only do their millions go into the financial markets and the IRs, they also land up in the private property market. The inflow of foreign capital into the private housing market is now causing a crowding out of Singaporeans from the same. An inflation of the prices of landed properties and condos, have resulted in an overflow of capital into the HDB resale market, since Singaporeans who are no longer able to afford private property, can only afford HDB resale flats.


2. Supply-Side Rigidity in the Housing Market

Mah Bow Tan's shift from an anticipate-and-build policy to a build-to-order (BTO) policy has resulted in a massive supply-side rigidity in the housing market. Instead of rolling out housing infrastructure to prepare for the skyrocketing of the foreign population, supply of HDB infrastructure only follows the demand of first-time applicants. Furthermore, such housing takes 3-4 years to roll out.

This means that housing supply necessarily trails demand. There is no way that the future new build housing infrastructure is able to match the demand shock occurring now in the housing market. there is a huge time lag between the massive, rapid shift in the demand curve for housing and the slow, gradual shift in supply of housing to match demand. Economics 101 will tell you that a rapid demand curve shift to the right without a corresponding supply side shift will result in price rises in the commodity in question - and the uncontrolled housing price inflation that we are seeing now is evidence of that.


The Failures of Economic Policy

The following government policies have led directly to the above demand shocks and supply side rigidity

1. An addiction to foreign labour and foreign capital in order to artificially inflate GDP numbers
2. Lack of focus on quality-of-life & standard-of-living economic measures and a failure to grow labour productivity (and incomes).
3. Liberalisation of the HDB resale market to allow foreign capital inflows to inflate housing prices
4. Failure to plan for adequate housing infrastructure to accommodate the population and immigration expansion.
5. General failure to accommodate or plan for the externalities of the open-door immigration policy


In attempting to "solve" some of Singapore's "problems" (slow GDP growth is not a problem if the standard-of-living is improving and productivity is growing), the government has ended up creating several much other problems (decline in living standards), and has even exacerbated the population problem by making the cost of bringing up a family higher.

The Bubble will Grow, and Then It Will Pop

Institutional inertia, an elitist superior-than-thou mentality, and a lack of opposition means that the problem-creating economic policies of the government will continue to persist for at least the short and medium term. Singaporeans should brace themselves for a period of continued housing inflation, more foreign immigration, and the continuing supply-side rigidity to the HDB market. This means that we are entering (or have already entered) a multi-faceted housing bubble (HDB & private) that will continue until the pressure cooker bursts somewhere. Only then will policy failure be recognised and things change.

A bursting of the bubble could occur in a couple of ways - most likely a sudden external economic shock that causes foreign capital inflows into the Singapore housing market to dry up. The liberalisation of the HDB resale market to foreigners, and the fundamental restructuring of the Singapore economy to depend on foreign capital inflows to sustain growth, means that the Singapore economy is increasingly exposed to external economic shock. An unexpected slowdown in the Chinese or Southeast Asian economies would have a massively deflating impact not just on the housing market, but on the Singapore economy as a whole.

An alternative way for the bubble to pop, is if there were a major political restructuring in Singapore parliament and if the pro foreigner policies were suddenly over turned. This is a much less likely scenario, given the general political apathy of the Singaporean population and an overwhelming dominance of the ruling party. Such an event would be a Black Swan - low probability but high impact. Nevertheless we cannot rule out this scenario from happening.

Singapore's economic system is growing increasingly fragile, and I recommend you brace yourself for continued bubble expansion, and protect yourself against a bursting of the bubble. Those who do not protect themselves financially will be gravely hurt if and when the bubble bursts, and I hope you are not one of them.

[BlueFlix]

Caught in a Bad Romance: The day Lee Kuan Yew gutted me

http://thinkingbetterthinkingmeta.blogs ... n-yew.html

This has got me really heated (or hot, rather) under the collar.

Former Prime Minister and celebrated founding father of modern Singapore and author of modern Singapore's history Lee Kuan Yew, who also happens to be our current Prime Minister's father, recently expressed his views that we should not have a retirement age and that working would benefit the elderly.

From the economic perspective, this is relevant and helpful. Senior Singaporeans can remain active and also earn a little to supplement their lifestyle and/or (semi)retirement. And to wear your 3D Lee Kuan Yew glasses, you will understand that he is referring to the educated elderly who can actually continue to contribute to the portion of the economy that matters. And what matters is purely a bunch of facts and figures and statistics that will reflect better on our nation.

But this is where my respect for Lee Kuan Yew ends. People who know me know I admire and respect this demigod for doing what he did. No, not detaining without trial his alleged enemies and people who he deem might undermine his authority or the legitimacy of the ruling party he co-founded. I refer to the nation-building contributions he (and his team) put in, you know, the ones that have been enshrined in every textbook in the nation.

While I agree to an extent, the idea of "active seniors", I believe it should be a concept strictly voluntary. There are many "active seniors" in our nation that are compelled to be "active". They do menial work and the kind of jobs that place extra demands on their already brittle aged bodies.

I have the privilege of the National University of Singapore's alleged "world-class education", and one Chinese colleague related to me how he and some of our Filipino graduate colleagues feel uncomfortable at the idea of many old folks working as cleaners in cafeterias and hawker centres. This is obviously a phenomenon they are not used to and some of them are appalled by it. I too feel the same way too.

Yes, active seniors who use their brain power - I'm all for it. But not for menial work. Lee Kuan Yew's views do not help the born-working-class-die-working-class Singaporeans.

His views totally undermines the objective of our government to create a Singapore where Singaporeans can "live, work and play" (although it might have been stolen from the slogans of some private development, but then again, what's new?). Play does not extend to children or adults whom the government assume have a work-life balance. Play is also for seniors.

His views on setting no retirement age for seniors and that seniors should be more productive are appalling. They may be required for the larger economic imperative, but these obscure a few of the many issues that plague Singapore, such as poorer government support for retirees (CPF, annuities), and the phased out pension scheme.

As it is, there exist enough Singaporean households that are barely meeting housing loan payments. How are they able to save for retirement? That is where CPF comes in, but with their low income, along with CPF's inflation-incompatible cost-of-living-unreflective interest rates, they won't have enough to survive when they're retired.

The solution would be a lifetime of wage work. What kind of message are you sending? If this is so, what is the point of bringing Singaporean lives into this world (i.e. making Singaporean babies) so they face a lifetime of wage work?

This is wrong on so many levels and I can't make up my angry mind as to which point is worth picking and mentioning.

If all Singaporean seniors had the kind of health care and support Lee Kuan Yew has, I am all for it. But in reality, they don't.

Unlike Lee Kuan Yew, a man of tremendous ability and drive, there are seniors who are not as sharp or educated as him, who may not be as healthy as him, who do not have the many Ministries and Statutory Boards scrambling to water down or live up to his views. Hey, let's throw in some "Asian" metaphors, since he's a champion of most things "Asian". There are many seniors who do not enjoy the face-giving Lee Kuan Yew gets; people don't normally give ordinary old folks face, you see.

While public health care is subsidised in Singapore, thanks to the socialist brushstrokes on our "Asian" democracy canvass (the West call it authoritarian regime, by the way), seniors wait a relatively long time to receive treatment for age-related health issues. Moreover, they cannot use their hard earned money, which is locked in their CPF accounts, to pay for most of their treatments, mostly outpatient. Seniors still have to dig into their own pockets to pay for their bills.

Even though a minimum sum for annuities is set, I doubt this will be enough for retirees. For the middle-class retirees, they will have private savings on top of these pay-outs, or rather, "return"-outs since the money belong to them. For the working class, will they have enough in the future?

I hate the PAP government's view on meritocracy. They are also talking about working hard and being rewarded for your hard work. This view obscures the reality of poverty cycles. We have not reached that kind of beggars/homeless-aplenty-on-the-streets poor yet, because NParks and other authorities have been doing their SPCA duties and taking the animals (they're treated like animals any way) off the public radar.

It creates (has created) a mentality in Singapore where we believe that poor people are poor because they didn't work hard enough. And a fair number of middle-to-upper class folks believe that rubbish. You don't need to have a sociological imagination to know this. You just need to have freaking eyes.

There are Singaporeans who earn insufficient wages and barely paying their bills. They are the ones being exploited when the government gives them pay-outs in the form of GST credits and progress packages, so their votes can be bought.

Not many Singaporeans are in the position to save. It is not that they do not want to or have disciplinary issues that prevent them from doing so. There are real problems and impediments they have to confront that cause them to be in a financially tight position.

I believe that seniors deserve to retire whenever they want and enjoy the fruits of their labour (sounds very Christian, I know). They should not be compelled to continue working.

At the same time, the government should be looking reflexively at its policies and how these policies have affected society, creating environments and conditions that force seniors to work into their very very old ages.

You think standing for hours and cleaning after people is fun?
You think sitting in the taxi and driving for 6-9 hours on average a day is fun?

Reflexive. HAH! That's one word lacking in our government's vocabulary. Sure, it is reflexive at times when it needs to bend down and fellate itself and claim credit for all things good, but it sure lacks the reflexivity to see the soullessness it has created in our Singaporean populous.

I hate to see the greys and the lines in the faces of our seniors. I have aunties and uncles, and I have my mum and my dad. I want to see smiles to accompany the greys and the lines. Genuine smiles, not smiles that mask the cruel fate social policy and soulless economic leadership has dealt them.

Let me express my right to freedom of expression and make a fair comment. I think you are a cruel soulless son of a bitch.

I respected you so much, but in the midst of trying to find ways to keep Singapore alive and self-sustaining (see? I'm even regurgitating your god damn 1970s-80s industrial rhetoric), we cannot do things to make our seniors (especially the less socio-economically privileged) feel like *mumble Mumble mumBle*.

You should be using the privileges you have to help those who don't, not put them down. The media worships the ground on which you walk, or probably risk the devastating lawsuits. Then again, your reputation, defended by the many lawsuits, is built on the blood, sweat and tears shed by those who today are greying.

We don't need a welfare government, but we need one that genuinely cares and listens to its people, rich or poor, educated or uneducated, privileged or not. You can't have 100% of your political legitimacy be buttressed by your economic leadership, because that's not what compassionate governments do.

You use your privileges to help set up the very systems that, for instance, put in place the foundations of my social awareness, for which I am grateful. In turn, I am telling you that on the back of all these, I totally disagree with your insensitive and despicable comments, and am gutted by them. I have lost all my respect for you. I hope you live a long long life to see the problems you cause, but then again, there are social problems that have already arisen because of previous policies. Perhaps, I wish you a long life and a growing sense of humility. If you claim you are "still learning", I recommend being humble.

I may not have the abilities or the privileges you possess, but at least I know I possess one quality, that judging from your comments, you are deficient in - I care.

[BlueFlix]

Lee Kuan Yew's "Intellectual Class" will Run Singapore Into the Ground

http://utwt.blogspot.com/2010/07/lee-ku ... -will.html

“We are going to have an intellectual class, about maybe three times as big as what you have now and that will give us the dynamism, the powerful engine to carry us forward faster.”

- Lee Kuan Yew, 28th July, 2010

Just take a look at Singapore's recent history to see what Lee Kuan Yew's "Intellectual Class" has delivered. Led by none other than his own son, PM Lee Hsien Loong, Singapore's "elite intellectuals" have bandied about policies which are slowly eating away at Singapore's social fabric and which are systematically undoing years of hard work and the foundation upon which this country has arisen.

A senseless growth-at-all-costs mentality and narrow minded focus on GDP growth has led to an open-door immigration policy which is testing the limits of this country. Due to the sudden population shock to the system, transportation infrastructure is bursting at the seams. Trains are overcrowded and overpacked, and the roads are chock full of cars. Our healthcare infrastructure is showing capacity strains, with waiting times for hospital beds raising to all time highs. Housing price inflation in Singapore is shooting through the roof due to a lack of common sense on the part of of the Government to provide and plan for adequate housing infrastructure to accommodate the influx of foreign migrants. And while the cost of living continues to soar, incomes for most of Singapore society have either stagnated or fallen. Ostensibly, Singaporeans can now never ever retire.

Crime, prostitution, gambling addiction, human trafficking, ethnic enclaves, and other social problems associated with the importation of 'foreign talent' and a luring of the regional uber rich to the country, are steadily on the rise. The restructuring of Singapore's economy to depend on foreign monetary inflows, particularly through the inordinate promotion of integrated resorts and the private banking sectors, has meant that Singapore's economy will be more highly exposed to the booms and busts of external sector.

Meanwhile, Government failure seems to recur without reprieve. The escape of Mas Selamat and the undetected trespassing into the MRT depots have revealed systemic failures in Singapore's national security. The multiple recurrence of "50-year floods", absurdly labeled as "freak events" by the minister responsible, has put to shame the "forecasting" ability of the old man and his "intellectuals".

And what must surely look ridiculous must be the unjustified expenditure of almost $400m of taxpayers' money to organise a little known sporting event which hardly anybody in the country cares about and which is mostly an inconvenience to the daily lives of ordinary Singaporeans.

No - Singapore's intellectual class is neither vibrant nor 'dynamic'. Singapore's "intellectual class" is really a bunch of book-smart goons hiding behind the screens of Lee Kuan Yew's personal approval, who have not been through the fire necessary to prove their legitimacy to leadership of the nation. Singapore's 'intellectual class' really has no genuine concern for the prosperity and well being of the country and its citizens, but instead is a group of self-interested individuals bent only on padding their pockets with astronomically large paychecks for as long as they can, while riding on the coat-tails of an authoritarian megalomaniac.

The old man has seriously overstayed his welcome. His misguided ideology is bringing the country down the wrong path. Without the stalwarts of years past (Goh Keng Swee, etc.), there is no wisdom to counteract his madness.

Lee Kuan Yew's "intellectual class" is not only a bad idea for the country - it will run Singapore into the ground.

[BlueFlix]

The Singapore Gripe?

http://lostinsingapore.com/2010/08/the-singapore-gripe/

While it was understandable that some Singaporeans griped about current concerns like floods, high home prices, crowded trains and distance-based bus fares, he said people ’should not lose sight of the many more things which are going well for Singapore’.

‘For instance, we have rebounded with a vengeance from last year’s recession. Take a walk along Marina Bay and soak in the beauty and vibrancy. –SM Goh recasts the 5Cs

I don’t need the government to understand and patronise me, I need them to do something instead of coming out with half-baked excuses for your party’s failures. At the same time, let’s add crowded roads, 100% increase in night parking charges, YOG being $284 million over budget, job security, Medisave, CPF and others to the mix.

If you are trying to tell us to shut up and get on with life by visiting Marina Bay, here’s what I have to say to you.

Some of us are trying to pay for our mortgage on our over inflated HDB pigeon holes and when rain water gets into our precious cars—we are not going to wait for 4 trains to pass before we hitch a ride on your world class transport to Marina Bay… No Sir, don’t challenge me go further, to dream larger.

You should be telling your colleagues that.

[BlueFlix]

Why Do We Care About Mr Ng's PRC Workers when Our Elderly Struggle to Survive?

http://utwt.blogspot.com/2010/08/why-do ... rkers.html

TOC has recently run a piece on Aug 5 on Singapore's foreign worker policy "MOM policy change creating problems for employers". In the piece, TOC features an interview of a business owner, Mr Ng, who describes how he is facing problems renewing the work permits for 2 of his PRC workers. The MOM recently shifted its policy stance to tighten its foreign worker quota.

“With the pick-up [in the economy], unless they quickly revise this policy, a lot of employers will face the same problem that I’m facing now,” he said. Indeed, several other employers and business owners have told TOC they too face the same problems.

Here are a few important points from the interview of Mr Ng

* Mr Ng has 29 total staff, of which 2 of them who are PRCs face non-renewal of work permit
* Mr Ng claims that if MOM does not renew the PRC workers' permits he will have "a lot of problems recruiting locals ... to fill their gap", and says that that no Singaporeans want to work in a restaurant
* Mr Ng pays the PRC workers around $800-$1000 a month

On March 29, TOC also published a piece by Gilbert Goh, titled "Employers still discriminating against older workers". Mr Goh pointed out the following:

"A weekend visit to Han’s restaurant at Harbourfront shocked me as the four staff working there were all Filipinos. From the person that took my order to the cashier and chefs, they were all foreigners happily going about their jobs. The only thing that stood them out from the former Han’s staff that I had seen previously, was the age difference. All of them appeared to be in their twenties. I found myself paying for my order grudgingly.

Are mature Singaporeans not able to fill such positions even if they were much older and were a little slower? Must employers continue to fill in service positions with foreigners while claiming that locals refuse to work longer hours for miserable pay? Are all the employers’ complaints valid? I am sure that for every Singaporean’s refusal to work at such service jobs, there should be another who do not mind such work. This is especially so in this time of economic downturn. Let us not generalise and condemn the working attitude of Singaporeans just because of a few black sheep."


Unfortunately for Mr Ng (and Andrew Loh and Leong Sze Hian), I am afraid that I have to side with Gilbert Goh on this issue. Let's put Mr Ng's problems in perspective.

1. Mr Ng has a workforce of 29 people. Only 2 out of these 29 people are going to face permit renewal problems. Is Mr Ng claiming that his restaurant will have to shut down with 27 workers, or 93% of his original workforce? If the loss of 2 workers out of the 29, of which he is only paying $800-1000 each, is going to have such a massive impact on his business, then I seriously think Mr Ng is a lousy business manager and has some bucking up to do.
2. Mr Ng claims that no Singaporeans want to work in a restaurant. Is this really the truth? Already we have elderly in Singapore who have to scrap together a living by collecting cardboard boxes & empty drink cans from the streets. Or they are earning a measly $600 a month as cleaners at the hawker centres. I am sure these workers would eagerly jump at a chance to earn $800-$1000 a month at Mr Ng's air-conditioned Chinese restaurant, which has much better working conditions than a job that involves picking up cardboard boxes!!
3. Let's consider the problems created by the foreign worker PRCs.
* they depress wages for Singaporeans who work in the similar industries
* they take up living space in already crowded Singapore, contributing to property price inflation that is making housing unaffordable for Singaporeans
* they contribute to the discrimination of the elderly in Singapore, who now have to work to their dying day

If I might dare say, Mr Ng is really complaining about his loss of his PRC workers because they are young, cheap, and keep his business costs down. Mr Ng wants workers who will be well behaved, who are easily replaceable (by other PRCs), and who are not old. Mr Ng's mentality is precisely the kind that leads to the discrimination of elderly workers in Singapore, and that results in the gross imbalance in the share of GDP going to workers. If Mr Ng wants to find replacements for his PRCs, then I suggest he go and talk to Mr Gilbert Goh, who I am sure can easily find replacement Singaporean workers for him!!! Indeed, I am quite surprised Mr Andrew Loh didn't mention Gilbert's contact to Mr Ng.

Which one do we want, Singaporeans? Do we want to allow Mr Ng to be able to squeeze out profits from his business by using cheap PRC workers, or do we want improve the livelihoods and dignity of our elderly Singaporeans, who were the backbone of our economic progress, and who are struggling to survive despite having made so many sacrifices for Singapore!!??

At the end of the day, the problems of the PRC workers belong to the Government of China. The problems of the filipino workers belong to the Government of Philippines. The Singapore Government must take care first and foremost of the people of Singapore.

That is why I feel that the recalibration of foreign worker quota system is a step in the right direction for this country, and that Mr Ng should deal with his hiring problems like a man, rather than whining about what is clearly a pro-Singaporean government policy.