Building Singapore for who?

SINGAPORE — There are many new plans to build Singapore for the next generation, but the country first needs birth rates to rise so that the population can grow “a little bit”, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said on Thursday (Oct 10).

“We have so many plans for Singapore, in terms of new industries, new businesses, new schools, new opportunities, new towns to live in, new parks — a new society to be built for the next generation. And what we need are new people — our children,” Mr Lee told Nikkei Asian Review editor-at-large Takehiko Koyanagi at a dialogue held at the National University of Singapore.

Laying out the state of Singapore’s demographic challenge today, Mr Lee said that the
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Is the govt building Singapore for Singaporeans, for the children of Singaporeans? Just look at the composition of the population, 5.8m of which only 3.6m are Singaporeans and of the 3.6m, probably 1m are new citizens. What does this mean? If the original Singaporeans are now only 2.6m, then 3.2m foreigners are enjoying what we built in this island.

The basis of the govt's argument is that we need more and more people for economic growth. Is that the best solution? Bringing in more people for economic growth must lead to real economic growth, eg if we increase the population by 1% foreigners, there should be at least 3 or 4 additional percent of growth. Today and for many years, our economic growth is barely 2%. Did the increase in foreigners lead to more economic growth? What happened is that we brought in more foreigners to come here and eat and shit and we called it economic growth. Whatever little miserable growth was eaten by the foreigners themselves and shitted away and we end up drinking their shit water.

What is more important is the well being of our own people, not foreigners, not the children of foreigners, not the parents of foreigners. Our economic growth should be proportional to our population and any increases should be from higher productivity, innovation and technology, not to bring in more people to eat and to shit and to use up whatever little space we have in building more homes.

If our population is smaller, we don't have to build so many more homes and parks and destroy more and more of our land, fauna and flora. The indiscriminate and reckless input of people is destroying the island and contributing to climate change. We are in a mindless pursuit of self administered destruction ie SAD by forcing more and more people into the island. It is definitely not for the good of our children.

In the 60s, when population was smaller, the pressure on land and on everything was so much lesser. Anyone starting to work could afford to own a car and a home at really affordable prices. Today owning a car is beyond the rich of many young people except those whose parents are ministers or millionaires. Today, owning a small little cubicle called home would need to be paid with an arm or a leg. Today the cost of living is so high that many are living from pay check to pay check which the got is gloating about economic growth and more economic growth like 1 or 2%  which is actually no growth at all but a technical recession.

There is so much emphasis on economic growth when the truth is no economic growth except for the millionaires and the rich that got richer and the poor got poorer. The only superficial wealth of a Singaporean is his HDB flat. But up to a point, this becomes depreciating asset that will turn into a bumpkin after midnight, no value. At that point, all the superficial wealth and well being of a Singaporean will go up in smoke, becomes nothing.

More people means higher cost of living. Period. Not necessarily higher economic growth as the GDP  numbers have proven. Building Singapore for what and for who? In the name of building a better Singapore for our children, is the govt instead destroying Singapore for our children? SAD.