2/16/2013

The White Paper jigsaw puzzle





So many things have been said about this White Paper and so many pieces of thoughts or rubbish have been uttered to justify its relevance and execution. Let me just highlight the loose pieces here and try to piece them together to see if they make any sense and what is the complete picture. Life time crisis, worst case scenario, a planning paper, political suicide, TFR, senior citizen dependency, GDP growth, good quality living, more foreigners, Singaporean core, and 6.9 population target just for fun.

Let me deal with the most important statement of the White Paper, it is a life time crisis that we are facing. Is this crying wolf or for real? The crisis mentioned so far is about a fast ageing population and a low fertility rate. So our population will shrink. Is that a crisis or a life time crisis? Many matured economies are facing the same problem. Are they facing a life time crisis? There is an international call to reduce or at least stop the world population from growing. The human race is consuming too much of the limited resources in the world and over consuming to the risk of destroying Mother Earth. A slowing down or dwindling population is not a crisis and not a crisis of a life time. The solution is how to cope with slower growth without lowering the quality of life. The perverse solution of pumping more heads to sustain growth is pure nuts. It is like having a higher dosage of drugs to keep the high.

The population decline is over a period of decades, a slow ageing process and there is time to consider all the options and solutions to manage this process without rushing into an equally difficult position that will get the country and people into an even more in extractable situation in the future. Is there a need to force the country into taking a path that amounts to political suicide? Is the ageing problem that mounting and there is no better way out except to increase the population by bringing in more foreigners? Is this the best the Govt can think of?

And it was also said that this was just a projection by the planners to plan ahead. And the 6.9m is only a worst case scenario. They want to plan ahead, build ahead and provide for the future. What happens to the life time crisis? Is there a crisis or just a planning crisis? Why are the politicians so jittery about this proposal like it is a do or die solution?

Or is it about GDP growth and in order to have growth, it would need to increase the population. No population growth, no economic growth. So must increase the population by another 1.6 million. And because of the increase, more housing needs to be built, more land reclamation, and more economic activities and more growth?  Now, which comes first, 1.7m people or economic growth or more housing and land reclamation? If there is no need for 1.7m more people, all the infrastructure for them need not be built and no need to incur the cost, monetary and environment and social and also political. Can economic growth be achieved through other means? Is economic growth and numbers the reason for all the cravings and desire for more people?

Or is the White Paper about better quality living and not about any life time crisis? The future towns will be better, more well designed with greeneries everywhere. It will be just like Sentosa and the Avatar Garden, very green and very costly, all man made, to replace the natural greeneries that were nature’s gift for free.

Or is the White Paper about strengthening the Singaporean core? There is a compelling reason to bring in more foreigners in order to strengthen the Singaporean core, in quality and not in quantity. I don’t buy that. Do you? For if such a logic is true and taken to its final conclusion, the lesser the number of true blue Singaporeans is left, the stronger will be the Singaporean core, and finally we will be left with the strongest of the strongest Sinkie core of 77 or 80 Sinkies.

The senior citizen composition in the population is a natural and transient problem and will go to pass. And the problem is not as big as it is blown up to be. The baby boomers, many are very well off, if not, they will have their CPF savings or a HDB flat to live through their last days with enough to eat. One caveat, if they are not robbed off of every savings by the hospitals and the medical professionals in their dying days. And many are working, through the years, 65, 70 and more. Many have families to take care of them. The dependency ratio is outdated in our context when personal and national savings are one of the highest in the world, and many are asset rich and can be traded off for retirement.

Where is the problem, where is the life time crisis? What is it that is real in the White Paper? Why the urgency and political suicide to pass through a paper in such a rush? A major crisis will need more time and serious considerations to ponder over what is best to be done. Looks like this crisis can wait for no time. It must be done immediately, saved by this White Paper and nothing else will work.

I have tried to put the puzzle pieces together, but they don’t seem to fit and many gaps are still waiting to be filled. How transparent is this White Paper and what is the real crisis proportion problem that the people are led to believe? Anyone any wiser?

22 comments:

  1. Dear redbean
    I admire you for even trying to make sense of the nonsense.

    If it looks like shit;
    Smells like shit;
    Feels like shit;
    Tastes like shit;

    It's probably another piece of policy shit from the PAPigs.
    Just like "GST is to help the poor"

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  2. If only the Prime Minister and or his Father Lee Kuan Yew, understand how flimsy the White Paper for 6.9 million population like You.

    But then, the PM might have let his Deputies and the Lee Kuan Yew School Of Policy Studies to come up with ideas.
    He was probably too busy fighting the Hougang and Punggol East By-elections.
    With Aljunied GRC lost in the GE and failing to wrest Hougang SMC twice from Workers Party, he is probably plotting how to teach the Voters at Workers Party Wards some lessons.

    Well, something so very good comes out from the White Paper; at least Singaporeans get to see the Rulers much more clearly and now understand their calibres and characters.

    Ironically, bad and poor performance can produce positive result, at least the People get to know more about their Rulers.

    patriot

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  3. redbean:

    It's a piece of literature from the government lah. Therefore already the radar should be warning you that it is probably:

    1. Based on myth
    2. Posits fictional scenarios
    3. Draws the most negative conclusions
    4. Uses the negative conclusions to frighten people
    5. Then introduces "radical" solutions in Hobson's choice manner i.e.: "Do it our way or else disaster"

    ... but OTOH, there could be some truths in the paper.

    Who knows? The point is NO ONE KNOWS. No one can tell you how the future of a cuntree will be -- they can GUESS, but accurate predictions based on "facts" (which are always changing): no fucking way.

    So the situation; one side: 6.9 mil absolutely can, the other side: 6.9 mil absolutely cannot. ("Absolutely". One of the most dangerous words in the lexicon)

    Who is right, and who is wrong?

    The most intellectually honest answer I can come up with is: No one knows

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  4. I wonder did anyone check what are the actual amount of amount of cash remitted out of Singapore annually.

    What about the additional imports needed to support the new influx of over a million foreigners, PR, or new citizens.

    We have yet to even mention the existing annual amount of cash remitted out of the country. Who are the one actually gaining?

    I dont think it is truly Singaporean that will benefit from all these kind of population growth.

    If we want foreigners, we want to be sure they pass on their skill and knowledge to our local too and that we will gain not just the know how but understanding and absorb the entire process and experience too.

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  5. Hi Roger New, welcome to the blog. You are right that foreigners working here and remitting money back is a loss to the country's exchange, it is like exporting our money. The Philippines earn a lot of its income from remittance by Pinoys working overseas.

    Yes it is a drain on our national revenue. And not many are here to impart knowledge. They are here to learn from us.

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  6. /// If only the Prime Minister and or his Father Lee Kuan Yew, understand how flimsy the White Paper for 6.9 million population like You. ///

    Stop making excuses for PM Lee and LKY.
    You think anybody can suka suka write a White Paper without their support?

    Both PM Lee and LKY supported this White Paper with their eyes wide opened.

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  7. Oops! My bad.

    Should have known that the Father and Son are calling the shots.

    The Underlings only take orders

    My apology.

    patriot

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  8. Of course there is a crisis, a life threatening crisis for the big businesses that run and control sinkieland through their proxy political party PAP.The big business saw the writings on the wall through the lens of last GE, PE and the two BEs. They could see the dying throes of the incumbent political party and just want to put in a door stopper to ensure their survival with enough cheap foreign workers for the next 20 or so years.

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  9. It is a hastily patched up peiece of paper trying to salvage the damaged ego aftering losing the PE BE. As one of the famous leader said - "ÿou throw a stone at me and I will crush you with a rock.

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  10. Having lived through Kuan Yew's Spore, his insistence on greenery, on some space for people, on Not going the cheap labour route, I find it Highly Unlikely he would endorse the White Paper.

    It makes nonsense of everything he and his team advocated. He must be really sick not to have already risen from his grave in protest.

    He refused the cheap labour route at a time when it was really a ''crisis of a lifetime'', rather than this bloated mama drama now.

    However, this White Paper is unfortunately a result of Kuan Yew's discouragement of people speaking up, and his encouragement of not asking questions and thinking too much. We are stuck with a bunch of people in govt who cant think and have little courage to try new things. Who put money first rather than people and common sense.

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  11. A Death in Singapore

    http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/afbddb44-7640-11e2-8eb6-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2L1d8SJkV

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  12. /// Who put money first rather than people and common sense. ///

    Exactly the point.
    We want Singaporeans to do well, so Singapore can do well.
    This is people first.

    But our PAPigs and PM Lee reads the roadmap upside down.
    They say:
    "We want Singapore to do well, so Singaporeans can do well."

    So what is Singapore to a PAPig?
    Singapore is a GDP machine.
    And Singaporeans are the digits.
    As far as the PIGS are concerned, the Singaporeans in Singapore is an afterthought.

    http://sg.news.yahoo.com/pm-lee-makes-passionate-appeal-for-population-white-paper-in-parliament-082910512.html

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  13. Can Singaporeans survive without PAP?

    Yes we can!
    GE 2016.
    Vote for change that we can believe in .

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  14. Dear Redbean, thank you for this article. This white paper will go down in history as the mother of all nonsense white paper.

    Minister Vivian Balakrishnan wrote on his Facebook, “We are facing the crisis of our lifetime. Our citizen population will halve every two generations.”

    “The real emergency is not babies, but ageing… By 2030, the number of senior citizens older than 65 years will triple to 900,000. Who will look after us? Today, we have almost six working-age citizens for every senior. In 2030, we will only have two.”

    He's talking rubbish, of course. From 2013 to 2030 is 17 years, let’s look backwards to 17 years ago. 17 years ago in 1996, the retirement age was 55. PAP likes to do linear projections, so we’ll copy their style and do a linear projection – in 2030 therefore, we can expect the retirement age to be 75! That looks very drastic, but you can choose whatever other figure you like. The main conclusion I’ll like you to make is that Minister Balakrishnan’s figures are wrong, definitely wrong. He uses the same figure of 65 in 2030, that is like somebody in 1996 using the figure of 55 in their projections, when our retirement age is now 65. This flaw does not take 20/20 vision to spot. You have to wonder if he did that on purpose and intended to cheat us?

    Robert

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  15. Haha

    If Patriot is saying that PM is probably plotting how to teach the voters of Workers Party Wards some lessions by introducing the Wipe Paper, it is another big mistake by the PAP.

    First of all, the three opposition wards have about 200,000 voters in all, with about 80,000 PAP voters. This is as much teaching the PAP voters how NOT to vote for the PAP in 2016.

    In the contect of the whole island, teaching (or screwing) the voters of the oppostion wards is tantamount to also screwing its own supporters. How dumb can they be? Perhaps they are still thinking that the support base is still very strong and some collateral damage is unavoidable. They could not be more wrong and they are relying on the wrong feedback from their Community Clubs and grassroots once again.



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  16. RB, I done my part as committed and there were about 5000 to support

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  17. Yes, I agree. Not only they do not have 20/20 foresight, they are very short-sighted. Anything that went wrong, they will always ( without fail) blame the people. Better vote for wayang party than propaganda party.

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  18. In 2030, China will be the super country and we will be building all this up for the PRC chinese to enjoy. I agree we need slower growth so no need all these excess housing, infrastructure, schools, hospitals for the 'worst' scenario.

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  19. Yes, it was a great success. I am pleasantly surprise by the huge turn out despite the rain. I will be posting some pictures of the event that tells everything.

    Good show Singaporeans.

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  20. A slowing down or dwindling population is not a crisis and not a crisis of a life time. The solution is how to cope with slower growth without lowering the quality of life. The perverse solution of pumping more heads to sustain growth is pure nuts. It is like having a higher dosage of drugs to keep the high.

    Exactly right Redbean. The PAP is addicted to growth through slavery, like the slave owners in 19th century America. Like addicts, they need a bigger and bigger hit of foreign bodies to get the same GDP high.

    No way are they going to propose a solution like the US golden age after World War 2, where the middle class shared most of the gains in national wealth. It's now the neo-fascist model of sucking the value-added out of the middle class and flowing it up to the super elite, with the connivance of corporations (many of the biggest being literally owned by the government).

    Well, if not US 1950 then how about Luxembourg 2000 as one of the speakers said yesterday at the press conference? 480,000 population, $140,000 GDP per capita. I bet they don't mass import foreign cleaners and waiters and "engineers" to make those numbers up.

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  21. Why can't we have zero population growth and zero economic growth? That means this year is same as last year, whats so bad about it? And even when we have so called growth, how many do really see an improvement in their lives after accounting for inflation?

    The true problem lies in debt and the interest rate system. The economy needs growth to pay back the interests on all existing debts/loans. Without growth,more money being borrowed each year, the whole system implodes. And since we based our finance on a ponzi-like system, our economy have to follow the same trajectory. Singapore chose the easy way out of getting economic growth, by getting more people on board. But this is not substainable, one day, everything will come crashing down, as in all ponzi schemes.

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  22. Singapore is addicted to cheap labor and many do not realise, cheap labor doesn't results increased profits for business and lower costs for consumers. The main benificiaries are Banks, Developers, property owners and government.

    Business exists to make money and few businesses exist to serve the people. Business don't say I'll just make 10% out of conscience. It's all about profit maximization.

    To keep things simple, lets use a hawker as an example. Why doesn't the hawker sell his chicken rice for 20 dollars. Oh he would love to but he knows that if he does so, he would sell fewer plates and make less than if he were to sell at $3 a plate.

    So, now this hawker employs 2 assistants that costs 1000 dollars a month and pays 8000 dollars a month for rental. What happens if, for example, a minimum wage of 2000is imposed on all hawker assistants? What will he do?

    1)The hawker might try the easy way out by incresing prices but it doesn't mean the market will definitely accept it. He might end up making less money then if he were not to increase his prices. So it is not necessarily true that consumers will have to pay higher prices.
    2)Will he decide to streamline his process and get by with 1 worker instead? Increase efficiency and productivity.
    3)Or will he decide that he can't afford 8000 a month rental and offer a lower rental amount for his next lease? Probably a combination of 3.

    Conclusion:
    Cheap labour might or might not result in cheaper products for consumers but it definitely encourages low productivity and ridiculous rentals which is exactly what we are seeing in Singapore right now.

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