The Limits To Growth

Finance Minister Tharman in his recent budget speech spoke of the need for growing the economy in order to forge an inclusive society. By that he means that he hopes the economy can grow enough so that the government can collect enough through operational revenue (rather than dipping into our reserves) to fund expanded social spending. All well and good provided that growth comes from productivity with EXISTING indigenous manpower resources and not by importing more cheap foreign labour.

Economic growth that can be only be sustained by the increasing use of cheap foreign labour is the EQUIVALENT of living beyond our means by getting into debt, something which Mr Tharman himself had cautioned against when replying to Mr Low Thia Kiang with regards to spending on social needs using as an example the current debt situation some European countries find themselves in today.

Debt comes with interest costs. When you need to borrow more debt to pay your existing debt and interest you've gone into loan shark victim territory. Similarly, economic growth from cheap foreign labour comes with costs. If you need to import yet more cheap foreign labour in order to sustain economic 'growth', you've entered into the economic equivalent of loan shark victim territory.

To put it in simpler terms: It's like burning your furniture to keep warm. But by the time you need to burn down parts of your house to do so, it's game over. We are already burning the furniture in our current economic situation. Unfortunately for us, the government is standing in the corner sharpening an axe while furtively glancing at the roof.

DPM Teo Chee Hean will be in charge of a White paper study on 'sustainable' population. I would like to think that the study will be impartial, but I believe the conclusion to that paper has already been written. All that is left is to curve fit the data to support that conclusion. Why? Late last year, a Channel News Asia trailer text quoted him as saying: "Singaporeans can STILL enjoy a good quality of life DESPITE an increasing population" (my emphasis in caps). You can draw your own conclusions from that!

It is easy to see why the government wants a larger population. They need a larger working population to earn tax revenues to support an increasingly aged population. But what they fail to notice or choose to ignore is that this larger population base will in due time become old too. They in turn will need an even larger population base to support them in turn. This is obviously unsustainable. But by then, the current ministers will have retired and it won't be their problem. They will already have taken their millions and retired to someplace less crowded like Australia for example... Too bad for you and your children!

The Limits to Growth is a book first published in the 70's and contains research results on the sustainability of economic growth. In every scenario (except the most optimistic and unrealistic model), their results predicted economic collapse. It should be REQUIRED reading for every member of the cabinet. And given the way the world has acted in discussions on climate change and the need to control carbon emissions, we are all pretty much screwed.

Khawisms To Strive For

1. $8 for major medical procedure
Mr Khaw famously paid out of pocket the princely sum of $8 for his open heart bypass surgery. Mr Tharman in his recent budget speech said that health care costs will take up an increasing portion of our GDP. We would suggest Mr Khaw shares his secret to keeping health care costs down with Mr Tharman. We would all be ever so grateful.

2. Last year, Mr Khaw urged Singaporeans to save for a rainy day (http://sg.news.yahoo.com/blogs/singaporescene/save-rainy-day-advises-khaw-054211463.html). He apparently is not aware of the interest rate banks are paying for your deposits. We have no idea what his bank is paying him for his deposits but it cannot be the 0.1 percent we are getting. Come on Mr Khaw, do us (and your bank) all a favour and tell us where you are banking your money. We would all be ever so grateful again.

3. Buy a flat on $1000 monthly income
Mr Khaw supporting his cabinet colleague Mr Tharman that it is possible for a Singaporean earning just $1000 a month to buy a flat just from his CPF contributions alone. We wonder why he has chosen to keep this a
secret from us until now. The only thing left is to find out why eligible Singaporeans aren't taking advantage of it. Should be good for a blogtv@sg episode at least.

What amazing revealations can we next expect from Mr Khaw? That Singaporeans should switch to eating cake if they cannot afford bread? Hopefully (for Mr Khaw), he won't end up the same way as Marie Antoinette when he says that.

Where's the Kampong Spirit?

The more appropriate and correct question to ask is: Where is the kampong? The kampong spirit like the kampong chicken here has gone extinct due to habitat loss. A problem Mr Khaw's ministry under his predecessor has in no small part caused and whose policies in this area, he is continuing without change.

Community spirit can only exist through community interaction on a daily basis as a part of their daily routine. This interaction has to occur in communal spaces outside of the private space of homes. However, as a result of limited land resources (as we are continuously told), communal spaces have shrunk.

Urban planners (at the HDB/Ministry of National Development) are doubtless high-fiving and clapping each other on their backs, congratulating themselves on their 'genius' at packing more people into smaller spaces. In reality, they could not have done a better job at killing community spirit by stealth than if they had engaged Ms Temple Grandin to design it into their building plans.

Common corridors and lift/staircase landings are the ONLY places where incidental communal interaction can take place, have been shrinking and almost eliminated in some designs. Once someone steps across the threshold into their own units, they are in their private space and any potential communal interaction ends. Even staircases which used to allow at least two adults to walk side by side have now shrunk down to permit only one person at a time!

Apartment blocks are being built ever higher and ever closer together. Worse, transparent glass has increasingly replaced concrete and bricks. If the intention is to shove more people closer together and to let them see into each other's private spaces is an attempt to foster closer community spirit, it is not working. When your private and personal space is being intruded upon, you pull back (to protect what little privacy you have left) instead of opening up and interacting more.

The answer to this? Typical of government remedies: Holding a once or twice yearly get together event where the MP is the guest of honour. You expect this to bring together people who likely do not even recognise their next door neighbour? These get togethers (and any other planned activity for that matter) are not part of daily living and will be viewed as too much 'work', ignored by the majority and thus fail miserably.

Ideally, public housing should not be more than 4 stories high and well spaced out. Beyond that tipping point, there are just too many people for that sense of community to take effective hold. Community spirit is an emergent property of the living environment where less is indeed more. But with the government still bent on importing yet more people (despite repeatedly telling us we are running out of space), I don't think low density housing will happen anytime soon. Absent that, community disintegration: yet another unintended consequence of government policy.

You Say PoTAHto I Say PoTEHto

And how your lawyer forces me to say it, doesn't really make a difference. And that is the crux of the matter in the defamation saga involving the socio-political website TR Emeritus. The case hinges on interpretation or perception rather than facts and there is no basis to "prove" it one way or the other since there is nothing to prove.

Those who were disposed to interprete the appointment of Mdm Ho Ching as head of Temasek Holdings as alleged cronyism will continue to do so. Net net, the legal action would not have swung public perception of the matter one way or the other at all. Net negative, would be the further reinforcement of public perception on the ruling governments' heavy handed use of legal means for its own ends.

That Mdm Ho Ching was appointed "on merit and through proper process" is not sufficient evidence that alleged cronyism was not a factor. If it were so, then there would be no case of cronyism EVER anywhere because such a reason can always be used. In this particular case, we were not apprised of the selection criteria for the post, who were the other shortlisted candidates (if any) and why they did not make the cut. Mr Dhanabalan, sir?

Late last year, there were complaints that some foreign middle managers of a certain 'kind' have been adopting tactics to force out local Singaporeans from their jobs and replacing them with more of their own kind. I'm sure such foreign managers would be much heartened by the outcome of this case as the "on merit and proper process" reason would be an excellent cover for their actions and this case would serve as legal precedence for their defence.

More pertinently, the recent spate of legal actions on websites hosting allegedly defamatory postings beggars the question: Just how were these postings brought to the attention of the individuals who then decided to institute legal action? I would hate to think that our still very highly paid public servants are spending time on the taxpayers dollar, trawling through websites looking for postings that might besmirch their good standing.

Even with the help of a certain famous web search engine to filter out relevant postings, it will still take considerable time to go through each posting, and as we all know, search results can return thousands of hits. Are state resources being diverted to track such postings? I think Singaporeans are entitled to know this.

As PM Lee himself said, there are many (more important) issues on the national agenda. The government having dropped the ball on many issues would do well to keep their eye on the right ball. The spectators are already murmuring with discontent at the poor play. Let's hope they do not get riled enough to swarm the pitch. By then, it will be game over.

PM Pulls a Shanmugam Who Pulled a Durai

By calling out the lawyers on a website to remove an offending post on alleged cronyism in the appointment of his wife, Mdm Ho Ching as head of Temasek Holdings, is the PM signalling a shift in the government stance on greater openess in public discourse?

An earlier heavy handed approach towards a blogger's racist comments had the unintended consequence of heightening instead of lowering intolerance which came to a head when one of the ruling party's own was caught making an 'insensitive' posting on his Facebook account.

More to the point, does this latest legal action actually change any public perception on the matter? Surely, the PM was well aware of the optics on the issue of his wife's appointment given his initial reluctance to accede to it. That he finally agreed showed that he had weighed the options/consequences and decided that it was an acceptable risk. So why the apparent umbrage now especially since he himself had said that there are many other issues on the national agenda right now (when commenting on the by-election issue in Hougang)?

This is an old issue that the current legal action will only serve to re-awaken. Most Singaporeans likely didn't even know of the website in question until this action caused it to be splashed on the front page of the local newspapers. Leaving it alone and it would have quietly faded away as mere rantings of some rabid blogger with a bone to pick before moving on to the next topic du jour.

But now that it has been brought forward and center again, perhaps it would be best to settle it rationally once and for all. Perhaps Mr Dhanabalan could explain his decision to appoint Mdm Ho Ching. What was in her background (academic and work experience at that point in time) that made him feel that she was the best person for the post? Did she have an outstanding verifiable track record in the banking/investment industry? Would Goldman Sachs/Lehman Bros/Morgan Stanley etc... have headhunted her for a similar top level post in their company? Would Temasek consider hiring someone else with similar qualifications/experience she had at that time for the same post TODAY?

It is early days yet but I wonder what the unintended consequences for this action will be.

Shades of NKF Saga Deja Vu?

The temperature of local politics has ratcheted up by quite a few notches in the past few days. First we had news of Foreign Minister Shanmugam's lawyers sending a letter to local blogger Mr Alex Au to remove a comment on his blog about alleged improprieties in Mr Shanmugam's personal life. In the NKF saga of a few years ago, lawyers were similarly involved in squashing rumours of financial indiscretions. As it turned out, those rumours were not without basis in fact. In this case, Mr Alex Au may yet be similarly vindicated in future.

Until that report in the local papers, not many Singaporeans likely knew that Mr Shanmugam had divorced and then re-married again recently. Just yesterday, the opposition Worker's Party sacked Mr Yaw Shin Leong from the party and hence parliament for just such alleged improprieties. Given the recent events in Mr Shanmugam's marital status, I think it would not be unreasonable for the public to be given irrefutable evidence by Mr Shanmugam (or through his lawyers) on the timeline of events that led to his divorce and re-marriage to exclude the possibility that the alleged improprieties could have been the cause.

In todays highly interconnected world, flooded with camera phones, it is increasingly difficult to conduct affairs outside of public view. Sooner rather than later, some service staff be it a waiter or receptionist somewhere will catch on to it. Denial backed up by lawyers is good only if truly innocent. If not, it will merely expose oneself to greater potential for blackmail from the publicity. It would be an untenable situation for someone in public office to operate under the constant condition of potential exposure or blackmail. Affairs after all always have to involve some other party. If the alleged affairs were carried out overseas and hence potential blackmail originating from foreign sources, the implications are doubly dire.

In all this, the PM, with all the instruments of state available to him (CID, ISD, FSB etc...) must be aware of the true state of these allegations. If not he is not doing his job and those that are supposed to apprise him of such matters would CERTAINLY not be doing their jobs. Perhaps PM Lee could come out and make the definitive statement on the matter knowing full well that he is staking not only his reputation on the line, but also the potential survival of his government as well. The question is does he have enough confidence in his ministers (and his sources of information) to do it?

Conspiracy theorists might suggest that Mr Yaw might have been the victim of a possible sting operation like that carried out on Julian Assange of Wikileaks or Dominique Strauss Khan formerly of the IMF. If indeed it is a sting operation to 'fix' the opposition, the blowback from it could well be the mother of all unintended consequences. By the time this saga of Mr Yaw's sacking ends, it may well be necessary to hold more than one by-election. It would be the only reason I think, that would justify postponing it.

Hi Ho Silver! Channeling Dr Goh Keng Swee (again!)

Ex Mentor Minister Lee Kuan Yew asks for Singaporeans' understanding on the need to bring in more immigrants, to the tune of about 30K a year (this is apparently a more politically acceptable figure compared to the recommended 60K). He is likely mistaken in this.

Apparently, they are ALL meant to look after aged Singaporeans. At this rate, we should soon have one caregiver per elderly Singaporean. (Hopefully, the government will be footing the bill.) Unfortunately, this isn't the case. Most of them will be employed in other sectors of the economy. It is rather disingenuous of Mr Lee to use the issue of eldercare to justify bringing in yet more foreigners into an already crowded Singapore.

Yes, we will have an aging population problem. But what would Dr Goh Keng Swee have done? We need just look at how he solved the problem of Singapore's defence. Nearly one half of each cohort, the girls, at present gets off scot free doing nothing while the other half goes off to serve two years of military service. About the hardest thing these girls may have to do at present is deciding which body part to sextext to their friends. I think their time can be put to better use. Yes, it is time for our young women to step up to the plate and do their part for National Service.

If barely educated young women from our neighbouring countries can be recruited and given a few weeks training at most and then are expected to look after our elderly either as maids or helpers at nursing homes, then our much better educated young women can surely be expected to do the same or even more and do a better job of it.

Just as NS is supposed to be a rite of passage for our boys to (hopefully) mature into young men, a similar program to train the girls in eldercare as well as childcare would do likewise and transform them into responsible young women. Their families would also benefit to have someone trained in these areas when their parents grow old or when they have children of their own.

We do not depend on legions of foreign men to beef up our armed forces and I see no reason why we need legions of foreign women to look after our elderly or young children. We already have systems in place from NS that can be repurposed to manage such a system for the girls. If the core team of permanent staff (the equivalent of regulars in the SAF) is paid equally as well (as army regulars), I'm sure there are more than enough Singaporeans happy to fill that role.

Other than paying the girls allowances at least on par with that for the boys in NS, and maybe a little more for caregiver uniforms, there are very little other costs. There is for example, no need for the girls to be housed in army like barracks and there is no need to equip them with expensive items like weapons.

This is a very doable system just waiting to be implemented. Why the minister for health/manpower has not considered this is quite puzzling. If cost is an issue, I'm sure we can kibble a fair bit from the Defence budget. The SAF can do with fewer expensive toys to basically fend off for practical purposes, make believe enemies. The problem with an aging population on the other hand, is a real enemy almost at our gates. If we were to tally up the social and political costs as well from using the aging issue as an excuse to import yet more foreigners, I'm quite sure the balance would tilt in favour of this suggestion of NS for the girls.

So, if Dr Goh Keng Swee were still in cabinet, given the choice of importing foreign labour or NS for the girls, which do you think he would choose?