ValueBuddies.com : Value Investing Forum - Singapore, Hong Kong, U.S.

Dear Prime Minister,

I am one of your grassroots leader. I’ve voluntereed and served in one of
your constituency for the last 20 years. I’ve had these thoughts
percolating in my mind for many months. With what I observed in the last 2
weeks, starting with the Punggol BE then the White Paper, I decided to take
the risk and go ahead and send this letter to you. I hope you do not take
any of these the wrong way.

After the GE2011 elections, the PAP was dealt a big blow with the
unprecedented loss of a GRC. You did a post-mortem with us, and with your
MPs. One of the message we tried to send you then was : You (meaning the
PAP leadership) just didn’t listen to us. We told you there were many
problems on the ground, you did not listen. After the GE, you said PAP will
change.

The next challenge came in Hougang BE. You picked a great PAP candidate and
for a while, we thought he could pull off a win. But against the advice of
the candidate and the PAP grassroots, you deployed your big guns (KBW, TCH
etc) and hijacked the message on the ground. You did not listen.

The Punggol BE decisive loss was unexpected. The PAP grassroots told you to
send one of us, a grassroots type person, to the fight. You chose to
parachute in an unknown, someone who just joined the party weeks ago. He
commited gaffe after gaffe. You did not listen.

And right after the Punggol BE, you unveiled the White Paper.

I know that those close to you, including the mainstream media, are
praising you for daring to take on the problems of the future, of not
sweeping things aside. But let me tell you this : I think you, and your top
leadership, screwed up big time.

I am sorry I have to use this language. You see, I’m a business leader too.
I know what its like to be surrounded by people reporting to you, who are
naturally disposed to tell you what you want to hear. Or are all molded in
the same way. I am outside your – sorry to use this word, “bubble” – so
from the outside, sometimes, I can see things a bit more clearly.

Virtually all your PAP grassroots leaders and members were taken aback by
the White Paper. And it became obvious very quickly that so were all the
PAP MPs. Seah Kian Peng said he’s skeptical about the White Paper and
thought the targets should be scaled by to 80% (how's that different from
WP's 5.9 million?). Jessica said that she, and a few other MPs, would not
have been able to support the White Paper in its present form. Even Tin Pei
Ling said she supported the ammended proposition with a heavy heart.

Why didn’t you bother to run through the White Paper with your fellow MPs
before you publicly released it? They could have told you how toxic the
Paper came across and how to refine it. Why didn’t you do that?

In other words, once again, why didn’t you listen? Time and again, our team
scored our own goals because of the sheer arrogance of the top leadership.

And look at how your top leaders handled the White Paper since its
roll-out. Within days, KBW started back-tracking saying 6.9 million was
just a “worst case target, which we hope we never reach, that is for
planning purposes only”. And you quickly followed suit, saying you agree.
And the rest of the Ministers echoed the same language.

And then it was pointed out to you that in the past, PAP had also used the
words “worst case target” or “planning purposes only”, only to have those
numbers quickly exceeded.

And you actually got ESM Goh, Mah Bow Tan and Wong Kan Seng to speak in
defence of the Paper? With MBT saying “lets go for the maximum”? Are you
and your leadership team really that tone deaf? These are the very guys who
are most associated with Singapore’s “lost decade” – a decade where we
seemingly pursued GDP growth for its own sake, where the social fabric of
Singapore was put under tremendous (and some say, irreversible) stress,
where you yourself said to have “lacked 20/20 vision” in infrastructure
planning. And yet, you actually got these people to speak? Do you know what
message you are sending – you are essentially thumbing your nose at
Singaporeans and saying, “So?”.

I now know why MBT, WKS, VB, RL, etc did not show the slightest remorse
over their egrogrious mistakes during their tenure. It is because you, the
PM, set the tone at the top. You did not see these as any big deal, and
that tone filtered through your entire organisation. In other words, you
still do not listen.

On the very last day of the Parliament debate, you said that the population
numbers for the future is for future generation to decide. Huh ???? What
then have almost 60 MPs been debating these 5 days ? You put up a White
Paper, you start back-tracking and now you think that just because you've
muddied it up, its become palatable?

Why did you put the party through this? Did it have to be handled in such a
– pardon my language again – incompetent way? And how do you think we, your
faithful foot-soldiers, feel ? You put us in the difficult position of
having to defend something we did not agree with. How do we answer to our
family members and friends, who asked what are we fighting for, what's
wrong with today's PAP leaders?

Let me tell you something honestly. The reason I, and some of my friends,
volunteered was because we were grateful for what the Old PAP did for this
country. We believed in its policies and its leadership. But in recent
years, you and your team have gradually undermined this reservoir of
goodwill and support. You know, I heard that in the Punggol BE, some PAP
grassroot members actually told their family members to vote opposition,
while they put up the show of canvassing for KPK’s support. In my heart, I
also sometimes root for the other side, especially the WP. I know. I should
not feel this way. But you guys just don’t listen.

Let me tell you something else too – I personally like you. And I think
many Singaporeans do too. You gave a good speech in Parliament, just like
you did in the last day of Punggol BE rally.

But you know – after I actually got over the emotional high from your
speech, and think through about what you said, more doubts actually crept
in.

“Growth is not for its own sake. But growth is not unimportant. If you are
in the top 5, 10% of the population, you may say, well, I have enough, I
can manage .. (but) if you are in the bottom 10, 20% of the population, ..
it would be patronising for us to say growth is unimportant… Our experience
has shown that in fact when the economy is growing, the low income
Singaporeans get benefits, their incomes go up.”

Mr PM, do you know that in the last 10 years, the bottom 10% and 20% didn’t
see their real income rise at all? If the last 10 years of growth, with 1
million increase in population, didn’t increase their income or make their
lives better, how do you expect Singaporeans to believe you that the next
10 years of growth will be different? And Mr PM, did you realise that,
until Lim Chong Yah came up with his radical proposal, even the top Union
leader did not even realise that incomes of cleaners etc have not risen
over the years, and didn’t realise they (the Union) have done nothing about
it? In other words, they – the Union – was caught with their pants down
(sorry to use this analogy, I know, Palmer-gate still hurts).

“Singaporeans, "feel together" as when the nation grieved with Mr and Mrs
Francis Yap when their two sons, aged 13 and seven, were tragically killed
in a Tampines accident last week. And when Singaporeans triumph, as Mr
Nickson Fong, 43, did in winning an Oscar this year for a new animation
technique, the country celebrates with him, said Mr Lee. .”

PM, Singaporeans did not feel together when Ma Chi crashed his ferrari. It
became a symbol of how Singapore threw its door open in wanton abandonment
to the rich, and how they lived it up in Singapore. And Singaporeans feel
divided, not united, when the China-imported table tennis team won medals
in the London Olympics. It became a symbol of the "instant tree" mentality
of the Govt. And I guess you now no longer cite the example of Feng Tian
Wen as a unifying factor because she'd said bye-bye to Singapore and moved
back to Beijing.

You see, Mr. PM, you cannot just quote examples in isolation, take us to an
emotional high, and assume it assuage all of our raw wounds. Its almost
like you are burying your head in the sand, when it comes to examples that
do not fit with your idealised notion of how it should have been. We do not
exist in that alternate reality. When I think through these parts of your
speech, I actually wonder if you are disconnected from us.

“He concluded with the promise that the Government will "watch the numbers"
and make sure Singaporeans are clearly in the majority. It will always
treat citizens better than non-citizens, he said”

Mr PM, you may not realise this, but in our public spaces – like the MRT,
bus, Chinatown, Little India etc – we Singaporeans already no longer feel
we are in the majority. My children tell me of attending classes in
University, where Singaporeans are the minority and they feel they are in a
foreign country. Do you realise that in some offices, large cliques of
Filipinos or North Indians prevail, and they tend to hire their own? You
see, you work in the Civil Service –when you look out of your office,
everywhere you look, you see Singaporeans. It is not like that in many
other offices. How do you “watch the numbers” when you do not even have an
accurate sense of the current ground reality?

“For Singapore to thrive, we Singaporeans must always stay lean and
hungry," he said. "If we lose our drive, we will lose out."”

OK, I now get it. Its all about money isn’t it? You are afraid that
whatever counter-proposal anyone comes up with – whether it be reducing our
reliance on foreign labor, or improving SME productivity, or reducing
income inequality – you are afraid that it basically means touching the
reserves.

But isn’t your propoal to give additional grants for children also raiding
the reserves? And when KBW said that he (yes, not “we” but “he”) has
decoupled BTO flat prices from the resale market by essentially increasing
subsidies, isn’t he also – in the words of MBT – raiding the reserves?

“You said that 6.9 million is a worst case, and you see that the number for
2030 will be significantly below that. But that 6 million proposed by the
WP will be too low and it will be higher than that. And that after this,
you expect that the population will flatten out. The resident population is
going to stablise and the non-resident population will also eventually
level off”

Mr PM, do you know what you just did? You, and your team, have made the
argument streneously that there is simply no way to grow the economy
without population increase. And that as the population ages, we have to
supplement with foreign labor.

And yet you are saying that between 2020 and 2030, this need will magically
disappear. In other words, there is no intellectual coherence to your
argument.

And do you know what this sounds like? You sound like someone who’s hooked
on drugs or gambling. And he’s saying : just give me one last sniff, or
just lend me another $100, and after that, I promise, I will not need it
anymore.

And the worst part is this – nobody is going to believe you that 6.9
million is not real. Because come 2016, as long as the population increases
from today’s 5.3 million to 5.6 million, the WP can easily say : See, the
PAP is going along the trajectory in the White Paper. Ignore all their
talk. Its already happening. If you vote PAP, you will have 6.9 million
people.

In other words, you have fallen onto a trap that you dug yourself. How sad.

Let me end with the same words you used in your speech. You said you and
your colleagues got into politics to improve the lives of Singaporeans. I
do not doubt your sincerity. As I said at the very beginning, many
Singaporeans like you and want to see you succeed, even though they
disagree with your policies.

I am a grassroot leader. I’m spending time helping the PAP party because I
believed that this will help Singapore and Singaproeans. I’m not paid for
this. I’m doing it out of my own free will and with my sacrifice of time.

I’m rooting for you to pursue the right policies. I’m rooting for you to
succeed.

But just like in GE2011, or Punggol BE, or in the recent White Paper – you
do not listen.

At this rate, you will continue to erode the trust (yes, trust) and support
of the people. Including people from the older generation who remembered
and are eternally grateful to what LKY did for Singapore. In fact, the
White Paper had turned out to be a big wake up call to Singaporeans - they
better think twice about putting the PAP in such a dominant position in
Parliament, if they want to maintain the Singapore they know.

So what do I want from you, other than “listen to us”? A hallmark of a
successful, good leader is not his charisma, or his heart, or his
eloquence, or his intelligence. The starting point is always this – who is
he listening to? Whose inputs do he value, whose has he learnt to discount?
Some of the lousiest emperors in China surrounded themselves with eunuchs
who told the emperor what he wanted to hear. Some of the best, like Qian
Long, disguised himself as a commoner to understand the true situation on
the ground.

You do not have to listen to me. But find your own channels to listen to
the ground. Seriously think again about who constitutes your inner circle.

But, listen, you must.

Yours sincerely,
Mr. Tan Ah Kow

Folks... its a ponzi scheme... Interesting article. It looks like Singapore will be a great case study for our future econs class.

--------------------------------------------

Singapore’s Population Bubble

By William Pesek Feb 15, 2013 6:00 AM GMT+0800

Singaporeans are raring to do something extraordinary: protest.

That might not seem like a big deal with the Arab Spring uprisings; Chinese journalists taking to the streets; and thousands of typically docile Japanese rallying against government policies. But tropical Singapore is the land of quiet brooding, where mass street demonstrations are as common as snowstorms.

What has people so riled up? Well, people. The impetus for the Feb. 16 march is a report that the tiny island’s population may rise by as much as 30 percent to 6.9 million by 2030. This seems to be the government’s answer to the question of how to sustain prosperity in one of the most crowded and expensive cities in the world.

The signs of overcrowding and urban stress are palpable to any visitor. Prices are surging, public services in a nation famed for nanny-state tendencies are slipping and some of the finest infrastructure anywhere is bucking under the strain. Locals blame the influx of immigrants, which Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s ruling party touts as one key to Singapore’s success in the years to come.

The city-state, with about half the area of New York City, has 3.3 million citizens and 2 million foreign residents, many of whom have contributed greatly to Singapore’s growth in finance and construction. Yet complaints that overseas workers deprive locals of jobs and drive up housing prices fill the air. Singapore is the third-most-expensive Asian city and ranks as the sixth most costly in the world, according to an Economist Intelligence Unit ranking of 131 cities.

Case Study

Singapore may well serve as a case study for what happens when leaders try to offset slowing economic growth with immigration and increased birth rates. There are lessons that Japan or Italy would do well to study. All of it is turning into a political liability for Lee, the son of Lee Kuan Yew, who is regarded as the father of modern Singapore.

The erosion in his party’s popularity is accelerating after the release Jan. 29 of a white paper that contained the 6.9 million figure, which it calls a projection, not a goal. Lee Hsien Loong has since said the number of people will be “significantly” lower than the report suggests. Will Singaporeans buy that?

“The new population policy is anti-Singaporean and it threatens our existence and livelihoods,” says Gilbert Goh, 51, an advocate for unemployed citizens and an organizer of a protest planned for this week.

Sadly, some of the rants one reads in the media and online veer toward xenophobia. If Singaporeans are so livid, they should stop supporting Lee’s party. After all, isn’t the government, by seeking to import more human capital, telling its own people that they lack the skills to compete? Anyone who doubts Singapore is serious only has to look at accelerating efforts to reclaim land from the sea for development, giving the city the room for population growth.

The real question, as public angst rises, is whether the opposition is justified. Former United Nations demographer Joseph Chamie says it is. To Chamie, the view that it’s almost always better to have more and more people is the human equivalent of what Bernard Madoff did with money, something he calls “Ponzi demography.”

The human-pyramid scheme works like this: Population growth, either through births or immigration, boosts demand for goods and services, increases borrowing, boosts tax revenue and adds to corporate profits. Everything seems grand and leaders take a bow. It’s a bubble, though, and it eventually bursts when population growth stalls. Incomes top out, high debt crushes consumption and investment, the need for public assistance rises, environmental degradation increases and angry people take to the streets.

Public Pays

As households are left to pick up the tab once Ponzi demography runs its course, government leaders issue dire warnings about economic decline if the flow of fresh talent stops. This will sound familiar to Singaporeans as Lee’s People’s Action Party sketches out a dystopian future without adding wealthy bankers and low-income workers to the nation’s ranks.

Singapore needs to find another way. The era of easy growth is over. Just as economies such as Japan and South Korea are seeing the limits of their export-led models, Singapore’s formula has run its course. Raising the productivity of its current workforce would be more potent for a developed, open economy looking to compete in a region dominated by the cheap labor and manufacturing of China and India. Singapore should focus as much energy on incentives for its existing residents to innovate and start new businesses as on adding more bodies.

Not only is Singapore toying with liberalized immigration, it’s also revving up a campaign to persuade Singaporeans to wed younger and reproduce. It is an odd push for Lee. Four decades ago, concern about overpopulation prompted his father to urge a delay in nuptials and to have smaller families. Today, amid a birthrate of about 1.3 children per woman, efforts to encourage bigger families border on the offensive. Just check a new website, “Hey Baby.”

Singapore’s addiction to population growth sends a simple and disconcerting message: The country has run out of ideas to increase economic vitality, aside from encouraging people to procreate or immigrate. Ponzi demography, indeed.

(William Pesek is a Bloomberg View columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this article: William Pesek in Singapore at wpesek@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this article: James Greiff at jgreiff@bloomberg.net

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/blogs/singapore...34764.html

Weighing in on the population debate, the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) has proposed a scheme to tighten the screening of foreign
professionals and ensure that Singaporeans are first considered for hiring.

Among six recommendations it set forth in an alternative white paper presented Thursday night, SDP suggested a "TalentTrack" scheme that would take into account the age, number of dependents, qualifications, work experience and skill sets of potential foreigners to be employed in Singapore.

Party chief Chee Soon Juan said on Thursday that the SDP's paper titled "Building a People - Sound Polices for a Secure Future" is a comprehensive set of policy initiatives that takes into consideration not just the matter of lowering the population but also tightening immigration, lowering the costs of living and retaining Singaporean talent.

Before a foreigner can apply to work in Singapore under the TalentTrack scheme, a Singaporean employer must first demonstrate that they have made every effort to employ a Singaporean first but cannot find a local with the requisite skills.

The point system will reflect the prevailing needs of the various sectors and industries of the economy, SDP explained. To verify they possess the skills they claim to have, applicants will also be tested at centres to be created under a new statutory board called the Council for Skills Evaluation, the party proposed.

Those who pass will be granted an Employment Pass (EP) which will be tied to the firm that employs him. “As an alternative to the current foreign manpower policies, this proposal is a broad shift of the manpower policy to a focus on productivity and innovation,” said SDP in the paper.
The party also proposed to abolish foreign worker levies for professionals and replace it with an additional tax on their income at a rate of 13.8 per cent -- a rate that matches the current top rate of employer CPF contribution.

According to the party, the government’s population white paper endorsed by Parliament last week has failed to address problems such as overcrowding and will struggle to tackle Singapore’s demographic challenges because it has not departed from the policy fundamentals that have given rise to the present situation.

In the government white paper, Singapore’s total population is projected to hit 6 million by 2020 from the current 5.3 million and to rise to as much as 6.9 million by 2030. National Development Minister Khaw Boon Wan said the 6.9 million population is a “worst case scenario”.

“The PAP government announced its intention to increase the population to 6 million by 2020 by bringing in nearly 500,000 more foreign worker. This will put considerable strain on Singapore’s resources and infrastructure,” said the SDP.

Introduce new system to measure nation's progress

The SDP also proposed the use of a Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) as an another way to measure Singapore's progress. GPI incorporates GDP factors but also adds other components which can be effects related to economic activity such as commuting and lost leisure time. Increasingly used in other countries, GPI is a net measure of the impact of economic activity and provides citizens and policymakers with a more holistic view on progress. Noting that the GDP overlooks the standard of living in a community, SDP said the GPI can be used in tandem with Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to measure Singapore's progress.

A local version of the GPI can introduced with specific indicators that are not found in the standard GPI but are exclusive to Singapore such as water security.

In its alternative white paper released on Thursday evening, SDP made six main proposals, namely:

1) Enact a Singaporeans First policy,
2) Introduce policy reforms to retain Singaporean talent and raise the total fertility rate,
3) Formulate plans to advance towards a sustainable population profile,
4) Strengthen the Singaporean identity,
5) Go beyond the GDP for measuring national progress
6) Revamp the ministerial pay formula and KPIs for senior civil servants.

actually sounds quite interesting. am not a fan of CSJ at all but doesn't mean they can't come up with sensible ideas. anybody managed to download the white paper yet?

- edit. i managed to do a quick preview scan of the white paper and at first glance i agree with almost everything it says... the scheme could do with some fine-tuning as well as the measurement matrices but broadly the ideas are very good and i think speak for many singaporeans. not sure if it is CSJ led leh, it has a much more balanced tone to the paper that I don't associate with him.

Here it is...

http://yoursdp.ucoz.org/_ld/0/8_Building_a_Peop.pdf

Some of the paper contents complements the ruling party white paper very well. The ruling white paper mostly talks about ageing and effects on economy.

Having too many foreigners will result in diluting national core. Period.

For example, a team of workers or engineers may have 10 people. You can't have a Singaporean core if there is only 1-3 Singaporeans, and the rest are foreigners. The problem is even worse, if the team reports to a foreign manager. The foreign manager will likely find ways to pressure the Singaporeans to resign, and then replace them with his or her own countrymen.

As citizens, we should take care of each other. Some may call it relations, some call it patriotism, some fear an abuse of the system where even incompetent countrymen are recruited in while good workers are bypassed. Call it what you want, but if we don't take care of our own citizens, we are a divided country/people with no shred of loyalty.

War comes, people will not stay to fight because there is really nothing worth defending. Easier to pack up and run. Money can always be wired away. Only the physical property is lost. You can preach about your loyalty and meritocracy, but it is all empty talk if you are the only one left standing while no other fellow citizen is there to stand with you. At this point, ask your beloved foreign talents to stand with you lor. After all, you made the decision to hire the 'better' foreigner.

The only real solution is to improve birth rate. The only way to do so is have radical change of mindset, from bosses to workers. Be pro-family. Period.

The government should pay for delivery charges of Singaporean children. Non-citizen children, even if born of PR + Singaporean citizen are not entitled. Frankly, I am fed up with foreigners who hold Singapore passports and try to skip NS.

Workplace also needs to be pro-family. Stop cooking up lame excuses to fire pregnant women. Penalize workers who want to be hero and stay overtime. Bosses who cook up lame excuse to fire pregnant women should go to jail, and not be allowed to reap the financial benefits of firing pregnant staff in favour of single staff. Foreign bosses who favour their own kind should get their PRs revoked with immediate effect and thrown out. They have trouble selling their HDB flats, their own families lose the breadwinner, it's their own problem.

While we need more people to support all the new shopping malls and offices, we are more in need of more Singaporeans. And the only way is by increasing birth rate, and not accepting more new citizens and getting more foreigners.

Too many foreigners and new citizens are only here for the benefits. They have no intentions to stay long, nor do they have intentions to let their sons serve NS. They may hold the Singapore passport, but at heart, they still treat themselves as foreign citizens who managed to get Singapore citizenship.

I lost count of the number of sweeping statements in that last post. Which somewhat diluted the (few) good points contained therein.

(15-02-2013, 06:42 PM)godjira1 Wrote: [ -> ]I lost count of the number of sweeping statements in that last post. Which somewhat diluted the (few) good points contained therein.

My post was not long.

So your reply is an example of an exaggeration, or your math sucks. And you want to invest in the stock market ?!

我不跟你一般见识。lead a long and fruitful life and learn to lose the anger.

lolz! this is a forum! it's great share your views! agree to disagree! continue to talk! communication is good!