Can Singapore afford a 10m problem when 5m problem is threatening to tear it apart?

Yeoh Lam Keong Singapore’s preeminent economist was quoted in the Nikkei article explaining the PAP ideology as it applies to HDB pricing policy in the following terms:
“The roots of Singapore’s current problems, Yeoh believes, were planted in the 1990s, when its politics lurched rightward. In line with the prevailing neoliberal thinking, the government moved toward a more market-based approach to the pricing and ownership of HDB flats.”
What we have is a systemic failure and we need to recalibrate the balance between unbridled capitalism and the welfare state or socialism; between profits and people.
Our policy frameworks transfers control of economic factors from the private sector and individuals to the public sector creating the imbalance that need to be fixed.
The PAP Government is a prisoner of its own failed policies and unless we vote for a more compassionate Government in place instead of the PAP Government, things will get from bad to worse for the ordinary citizen.

Khush Chopra

The above is a quote from Khush Chopra's article in the TRE. I have highlighted a few points in bold for discussion here. There is a systemic failure and PAP govt is a prisoner of its own failed policies. The key factors in PAP's economic policy is growing the GDP at all cost so that more and more people can be paid in the millions with many doing sweet fuck all and do not deserve the millions being paid to them. It is not easy to justify paying someone in the private sector a million dollar, and it is very dangerous to use public money to pay millions to politicians and civil servants and people working in GLCs. What are the values and contributions of the recipients to make them deserving of a million dollar pay? There are several thousand people being paid a million or more in govt, ministries, stats boards and GLCs. This million dollar pay policy is a big burden on the tax payers, on the budget and finance of the country. The money must come from somewhere and the amount is ballooning annually with more and more million dollar recipients being created.

This leads to the dogged policy of growing the economy at all cost and when all things failed, just pump in more headcounts, more levies and taxes and consumption from foreigners. The 6.9m is only a red herring, 10m is also another red herring. The truth is that this growing the GDP at all cost means that the population must keep growing, keep blowing the balloon, it cannot be stopped or the whole economy and system of million dollar salary will collapse.

The Covid19 pandemic has exposed the vulnerability of Singapore in having a huge population. There is a big issue of food, water, the basic needs that must be provided to a huge population. We can see how treacherous things can be even with 5.6m population. If this Covid19 problem drags on for 6 months or more,  we could be facing serious difficulties to keep the people fed and without jobs, especially the foreigners. All would have to be asked to go home.

For the moment we can count ourselves lucky as the foreigners are not Singapore citizens and could be asked to leave, though the problem is not so simple if they refuse to do so. We would not have the luxury of asking them to leave if they are converted to citizens when we have 6.9m, 10m or more people here.

Can Singapore afford a 10m or 6.9m problem? In a major international crisis, we are not going to get the food we need, the water we need to feed so many mouths. Yes, this is a systemic failure, failed economic policy based on unrestrained growth. No growth means the bursting of the bubble. Continue to push for growth at all cost only kick the can down the road a little further but for how long before the inevitable big bang?

Would there be a rethink on this failed economic policy? Would the PAP govt be able to extricate itself from being the prisoner of this high growth, million dollar salary formula before it is too late?

Singapore needs to seriously relook at the premises and assumption for a sustainable population without risking a total collapse in the future. There will be many problems ahead that would be far more serious than what we are seeing today, a small piece of rock without natural resources and trying to live beyond its severe physical limitations. It is like a case of going for brokes.