I was in Johore over the weekend, meandering through small little towns with big detached houses and sprawling gardens. The Malaysians are growing, developing, quietly and at its own pace, with a lot of space for living, and with a cost of living that is not running away. One does not need $3m or $5m dollar salary to live well. This is the quality of life that we cannot afford any more. And one can drive the car anywhere and park freely, anywhere, without having to pay a bomb. There is growth, but no frantic cries of being too slow.
Today the ST is screaming that we need more spaces for public parks. They are now so popular that they are no longer tranquil getaways from the hustle and bustle of a city. The parks are now amusement parks in a way. Families with children are everywhere having a picnic. The noises are as loud as a fish market. Even in far off Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserves, the birds and the monitor lizards were not spare from the noise of human chatters.
We need more land for parks, for sanity. We have road congestion, hospital squeeze and squeezes of all kinds. The squeeze is heading into the parks.
But no worry. We will need another 900,000 people to fill the roads and the parks. We need them for economic growth. Our TFR is falling and we need to keep the rate up. We need to fill up the parks as well to see growth. We need to find an equilibrium in the TFR and the size of our population.
I think we did quite well when we were 1.5m, when we were 2m. Now we are 3.7m and another 1.5m foreigners, and we are saying not enough. We need to grow and we need more people.
There are only two such insane countries in the world that are pushing for population increase. India wants to be the world’s most populous country, more than the 1.3m Chinese. That is a superpower ambition. What are we chasing, the world’s most densely populated piece of rock?
The 2.1% TFR is like LSD. We will need it at 5m, we will need it at 10m, we will also need it when we are 20m. No free parking for cars, no free entrance to public parks. There may be kiosks dispensing fresh air like canned drinks at $10 a can. ERP may be set up for pedestrians with a fee to pay on busy walkways. Is that the progress we are striving for?
By then Singapore will be owned and populated by new citizens. Is that what we want? Is that progress?
PS. The German and Jap politicians were not paid the out of this world salary. And they could maintain their quality of life, with economic growth despite having near zero population growth. Our supertalents can only see growth by growing the population. Without population growth, there will be no growth.
Chins's population is more than 1.3B not 1.3m :)
ReplyDeleteShould be China, not Chins.
ReplyDeleteSee, I too make mistakes :(
Yep, even with a 1% growth it is adding 13m a year. Every 10 years they will add another 200m to their pop. Should be about 1.5b by now.
ReplyDeleteWe need to catch up and import more. Both China and India can afford to send us more of their talents.
With the sickos bent on bringing in more foreigners, there is a need for more sicko rules to control the foreigners and new citizens.
ReplyDeleteOne rule I can think of is immediate deportation if they are involved in criminal activities or caught beating up daft Singaporeans.
The solution is so simple.
ReplyDeleteStop supporting people who create these problems in the first place.
Otherwise, they just don't get it.
The logic being, if I am wrong, why do 60% of people still vote for me?
In every thing, there are 2 sides of the coins, its pros and cons.
ReplyDeleteAccording to what i heard from the radio, gahment treats people like digit, can not be helped, else you pay a price, economy will be bad, etc...
But i rather the gahment treats people like human, or else you pay the price too, a soulless nation with struggling local and very happy foreigners.
To me, that is a tragedy.
I think, those who are paid millions should be expected to optimize the situaion, anything lesser, they should be sacked !
hh.
I hope Gerard Ee does not come out with a formula that still equates to more growth means more bonuses for the PAP ministers.
ReplyDeleteThen, I think the salary review is going to be an exercise in futility.
Hi hh, welcome to the blog.
ReplyDeleteThe most ridiculous thing is that people earning several millions challenging people not paid a single cent for solutions. And they thought that was a good way to put down criticism. Dickheads.
I see acres and acres of newly built terrace houses, all unoccupied, passing through Pekan Nanas recently.
ReplyDeleteMalaysians are really a fortunate lot.
For the same equivalent income, are they richer or we richer? Their one ringgit can buy more things in Malaysia than our $1.
ReplyDeleteTheir public housing are landed and sold around $100k ringgits if I am not mistaken. Even 200k ringgits, much better value than out $300k 3m or 4rm flats. No need to pay parking too.