I quit Singapore and I am now living in Indochina.

Everything in Singapore reminds of my unhappy past and during this recession time there are too many sad faces in Sing to brighten my life.

Though 69 years old I plant sugar cane and sell them at the local prices and hope to own an ethanol factory to turn out green energy.

Ravi, come and see my farm. I will give you VIP treatment.

We need to examine all possibilities to get ourselves out of this hole we have dug ourselves into.

Whats wrong with Elites joining the Opposition as commented.? Its getting better informed. This is a media revolution.

Lets hope KAJ have some Prayers for Prosperity.

At lot of what you have presented in your essay is not new. Many commentators ranging from the well-known economists (Paul Krugman, Alywin Young and Linda Lim) to non-professional, blogger types have already said essentially the same thing. The question is why has such views not sunk in?

I don’t have an aswer but as far as I can tell, it seemed that much of the Economics debate about Singapore seemed to revolved around a set of self-fulfilling prophecies that seemed to have grip (local professional economist) and the electorate in the main.

(a) Singapore is too small — this is often used as a convenient counter argument to shut any rationale alternative. For example, when the spector of increasing “consumption” is mooted, you will see the classic counter argument “economy is too small”. Somehow the notion of economic sustainability is often left out.

(b) High tech == good (success), low tech == bad (backward) — the high tech-ness of Singapore is often presented as proof of success of the economy or as some kind of means to the nation’s survival. So low tech activities are often overlook as “growth” potential. For example, BioTech at one time was seen as the growth engine and low tech like Shipbuilding sunset. Yet during the BioTech investment boom largely by the government, Shipbuilding was booming driven by demand rather than investment but seen as low tech left to wilther.

(c) Welfare bad. Another one of the classic counter argument used to put down alternative economic policy. In any rationale debate, all policy instruments including those that seemed to be “Welfare” in nature should be judge on cost-effectiveness basis. But in Singapore it seemed that anything smack of welfarism or is labelled so by old man LKY and his PAP stooge becomes a taboo.

(d) Saving is good, spending is bad. I supposed this attitude towards economic policy seemed to flow from the view that managing a household account is the same as managing a national account. Yet, in economics term, money is worthless when one talk about a national economy unless money is recycle for a purpose. Saving and debt are basically two side of the same coin. Neither is good or bad. Yet, the magic counter argument often deployed by people with wants to demolish alternative policy is the “so-you-want-to-deplete-the-reserve”!

(e) Economics is only for the people with economics degree. This is often the case when someone come up with alternative policy the first thing to attack is whether the originator of the policy has an economics degree or not, rather than whether the policy itself has merit or not. A useful insight about whether having a economics degree is helpful in understanding the economics is Alan Greenspan himself a train economics and a PhD holder admitted to not knowing what CDO was about. And non-economics or even university trained financial traders were able to understand CDO and implications for the economy. But I guess in Singapore, paper qualification is more important and the message itself.

If my gut feeling about these self fulfilling prophecies are indeed true, the really the key questions raised by you is how do we get the message of an alternative model to the people especially the powers-that-be and the electorate (those that can vote)?

Answers anyone?

It’s time Singaporean wake up their own ideas. After all Singapore is known as city of possibilities, what cannot be possible ? Try first and then criticize, don’t criticize and whine even before trying especially it is for benefit of employees.

Apparently the government isn’t doing enough to promote entrepreneurship… is not true. Creative and Osim thrived w/o gahmen’s help and wilted when they came in. there is plenty of money. The problem is that the funds are controlled by … inexperienced folks who know nuts about business. so the easy way to make money is to …

Anyway, Singaporeans not willing to take up menial jobs is … bullshit. The problem is the pay is too low and not viable. And by employing cheap foreign workers, the employers simply pass the hidden social costs to the average Singaporean. so a min wage would indeed help… by creating decent paying jobs for SINGAPOREANS.

Finally, if we want low lying fruits, we can start off with NS. Lets face it. Recruits, Reservists are useless in a battle. And wages are a small component of the cost. Peanuts. think iceberg. Soldiers need to be feed, housed, equipped, trained, etc. Real money. We can have a equally effective professional army with 1/3 the numbers at probably half the cost. 20k real jobs that can feed a family.

Yeah, cos the rest come from ERP, alcohol tax, cigarette tax, road tax, petrol tax, COE etc

The truth is, that it is a myth that countries with small population cannot rely on its private consumption like bigger nations and have to overly depend on exports.

however, statistics isn’t the way to go in every situation. rules and procedures gain from statistical situation can usually only be use in recurring situation. however when it is an unexpected situation, creativity and judgment is needed. past statistics won’t be effective in solving this crisis as it is the past that leads to the present, and if depend on the past again that lead us to success and the current scenario, it will be going through a death spiral aka trap of success and this type of events will still hit us hard.

it is said in the death spiral, one of my fav, that period of success leads to the success syndrome, which consist of arrogance, complacency, inward focus, codification, conservatism, greater complexity and because of that, an “organization” becomes learning disabled and lost touch with the external environment. then when performance decline due to environment disturbances, the “organization” goes into denial and will try to do the same to achieve back the past result. and the spiral will go on and forth.

so in the end, what i am trying to say is that statistics won’t get you out of every scenario

By the way, personal income tax and GST in total contribute less than 20% of the govt revenue last year (refer to revenue statistics from MOF website).