A different perspective to population growth

We need population growth to generate economic growth to enjoy a better quality of life. This is the biggest bullshit to come out from any sensible person. Population growth is not the only factor that leads to growth and a better quality of life. The sure things about population growth are inflation, congestion, higher demand for goods and services and many undesirable social and economic consequences that cannot justify the little benefits of growth.

Take a continent like Australia as an example. If with 50m, they can enjoy the whole continent, be productive enough to grow all the food and wine to make merry, why do they need to rush the population to 100m? If without population growth, maintaining at 50m for perpetuity, and they can produce a bit more for each person to better their life, what is the point of producing 100 times more to feed 100m people but did not live better except for a few super rich?

Coming back to home, if with 2m people, the people can have all the space to live in bigger properties, and own cars with more roads to drive around, and they could produce more goods and services to raise the quality of life, why do they want to push the population to 5m or 10m to have lesser space to live, cannot own cars but only to work ever harder to feed a population of 5m or 10m? 

What for? Because the economists say there is no growth? If the population can be maintained at 2m, and everyone has a bigger property and two cars to go with, no traffic jams, and higher skills of people, goods and services produced are getting better with higher productivity, who the shit needs another 3m or 5m people to take away all the land and roads and landed everyone in shoebox flats and car ownership becomes limited only to a few? 

I think the thinking is too simplified. What kind of growth, what kind of progress, what kind of quality of life? If every leader in the world subscribe to the population growth formula for a better life, the whole will be destroy at double quick time. Nature has ensured that population is controlled and not allowed to growth indiscriminately by throwing in many measures to keep it that way. If a better quality of life is simply to have more people, there is no need to have super talents or smart people to run govts.

The situation in Europe is slight different. They could continue to have a good life by being creative, innovative, improving knowledge skill and productivity with a smaller but able population. But they conned themselves into allowing less productive immigrants to fill the ranks and bloated the population base.  They have reached a turning point where the Caucasian or Aryan stocks are being depleted by lesser stocks. This will bring about their demise as a self inflicted cancer. Japan will shrink its population but will continue to enjoy a better quality of life without being adulterated with lesser productive stocks to bloat its population. A smaller and leaner population is good for them.

 If we are not careful, we could end up in the same way as Europe. Irresponsible and mindless increase of population is like drug consumption.

JP Morgan Chase is the best

Obama has about US$1m deposit in JP Morgan Chase. And he is so confident of the bank to praise it as one of the best managed bank in the US. If JP Morgan Chase is one of the best and losing US$2b due to a flawed risk management formula that they have relied on, how many lesser well managed American banks are waiting to implode? Or is this a case of American is best, even when they can fouled up to such an extent?

How many high net worth private investors are licking their wounds for their blind faith in American financial wizardry? How many Sinkies are still staunch believers while privately cursing at the money they have lost from listening to American bank advisers?

Come to think of it, like Obama said, what is US$2b? There are many very well run funds losing tens of billions or hundreds of billions and still crowing how well their funds are being managed. Losing US$2b is chicken feat, a great achievement really, seriously, honestly. Just don’t check my books. The American banking and financial system is the best. They have exported this great formula of success to the world. The last port of call is China, before curtain’s up.

Blessed are the believers.

Hougang - A very strange feeling

I got this gut feeling but not sure if everyone feels the same. There is Desmond Choo out there in the trenches at the front line fighting. And he is telling his superiors to leave him alone, to let him fight his own battle. Is he really that confident that he could win this fight without the big guns? Or is he worried that the big guns will do him more harm than good, like killed by friendly fire? In football parlance it is called scoring own goals.

Could the big guns instead of hitting the enemies, landed on their own troops. The first minister that spoke in the by election is Boon Wan. And he is drawing more fire from the critics. Who is next to speak and to draw more fire to himself and Desmond Choo?

This is the gut feel that is bothering me. Ministers used to lend their weight to a candidate to make the fight easier. What if the minister himself is unworthy or not seen as credible and anything he said could only make things worst? Can this be the case in Hougang? Is there any minister that could speak out and win more grounds for Desmond Choo instead of doing him in?

The whole ball game has changed. How could Desmond Choo depend on the big guns when the big guns are a suspect and could be better off to stay away from him?

Coming to terms of being a loser

This FT smashed his $1.5m limited edition Ferrari to prove how good he was in road racing, so it was reported. Though he killed three innocent people in the process, he hit the newsstand as a young and handsome, successful and rich foreign talent. And they even ogled at the wealth he left behind, a luxury BMW, multi million dollar condos. Who cares where the money comes from? It was reported that he was a very clever investor and made his own fortune. Though there were suggestions of mafia links and money laundering, these were not important in a city state that worshipped success in terms of money in the bank account. More of such successful talents would be welcomed to shore up the property prices and the COEs.

At the other end of the spectrum, there was this retiree lamenting and complaining about a hefty $83 bill he was served with at the Alexandra Hospital’s A&E department. He was also unhappy that the parking fee came to a whopping $6. How could the hospital charge $6 for parking.

The widening gap of the rich and famous living it up and the losers trying to make every dollar counts, no longer making cents count as cents were practically worthless, is raising its ugly head. Throw a few coins on the road no one will bother to pick them up. Throw it into a beggar’s hat and he would frown.

For the loser retirees, they have yet to come to terms with living in a first world city state among the rich and famous when a tip to a doorman could be $50 and to a nice waitress could be more than enough to pay for the hefty hospital bill with plenty of change left. If the retirees are living on their pensions, sorry lah, unless the pension is millions of dollars which some privileged yodas are getting.

A $100k COE is simply peanuts. A few million bucks for a private property is small change. Where did the money come from? The money seems to be floating everywhere, as abundant as hell money. The moral of the story, as told by the elite, live within your means and stop kpkb.

Wealth creator versus wealth manager

Ngiam Tong Dow has spoken of the need to have more wealth creators instead of wealth managers. One is creating wealth and the other is just managing the wealth. He made a false assumption that wealth managers are there to manage the wealth, ie to ensure that the wealth will be there or at least not depreciating. This assumption has proven to be drastically and painfully wrong if we look at the bigger picture especially those coming out from the US.

Many wealth managers are basically gamblers. They are just placing chips everywhere and hoping that there will be more winners than losers. If only their books were to be opened, many owners do not know the truth until the hole is too big to fill.

In reality, many wealth managers are actually wealth destroyers. Yes wealth destroyers. The first thing they do is to demand to be paid a ransom. And whether they deliver or not is not guaranteed. Most will try their best to do a good job. And when the chips are down, when the losses piled up, they take bigger bets and bigger bets, hoping that lady luck will smile on them for once. If not, just too bad. It is other people’s money on the table. They do not guarantee any winnings. The only thing that is guaranteed is the ransom that they will be paid.

Wealth creators, wealth managers and…wealth destroyers. The first is real. The latter two are interchangeable.