what is working in a world class country in S’pore like? slogging away almost round the clock like a slave for paltry pay? what is work/life balance? an aspiration that 1 can only dream of? what use is “growth” in GDP good for?

eh, let’s take an alternative perspective. why are employers always looking for the cheapest staff to fatten the bottomline? is there no other way or are they always taking the easiest route (hence, no culture of innovate). bringing down wages is no longer yielding its desired results, to continue down this path will doom the companies that fail to look for alternative solutions.

companies can always compare cheaper & “hungrier” foreign workers to locals, if companies do not 1 2 do business here, they can leave. local staff need (not want) a decent wage to reflect accurately the cost of living here. if all employers hire staff based on the lowest wage, sooner or later their businesses may well go bust, because domestic comsumption cannot sustain them.

when that happens, maybe govt should let businesses fail because their business model is fundamentally flawed?

as in the case of germany, if your exports are of high value u don’t have to work like hell, n u will have high productivity per hour worked.
Philippe Dufour is an old man, doesn’t work like mad n is more productive per hour than most singaporeans.
as in the case of USA, if u manage to engineer yourself into the position where u r able to hold the world ransom, if u can export debt, it does not matter if u export lots of worthless stuff or low value stuff like potato chips.
singapore cant do either.
so,
what does singapore export?

But why Swiss can pay the germans so much higher salaries than sg?

What i know is top class foreign talents are usually paid very highly.

This must be the Finance Mininster million dollar joke…. that SPRING is capable of grooming young business talents? don’t joke, they have the worst kind of leaders in there, and what have they nutured to date? and as usual, they have a BG, reps from stat borads like  NTUC, JTC, plenty of PAP supporters like Zaqy, academics.  

Only 7 biz related people are on the BOD of 18 where majority of the 7 is not even internationally exposed or considered successful. And we are spending more money n SPRING’s initiatives? more money down the drain presumably

Are Singaporean really that lazy ?

Didn’t GCT visited France recently ? How can he explain both France and UK  have  the same productivity level but France did it with a 35 hour workweek,  60% salary tax, 10% unemployment and countless street riots and strikes ?

Do GCT know which country have more foreign workers ? France or UK ? What about Germany, do German companies always cry for foreign workers similar Singapore companies ?

Didn’t LKY visited UK NHS several years back ? Are they more productive than Singapore or France ?

I rest my case.

tell us, how much is total loss?
why productivity now the focus with so many foreigner workers?
do you know the pricing components of HDB?
how do you know what you dun know ? (a general question)
enlighten us. if not, humor us.

lim – let me add “graduate mother scheme”, “education streaming”, “Chip Goodyear”, “Foreign talent”, etc to the list of failed policies  made by government

After reading your posting, I can’t decide whether to puke or laugh, thin I will puke first, then laugh..

2 is enough failed policy, please explain where is the foresight? how come we need to import foreigners to make up for the short fall in population now?

TH/GIC loses, so with the high brain power, why they are losing $ instead of making a killing in this financial turmoil..

Swiss standard of living, world cup 2010, please tell me what happens?

mee siam mai hum, please tell me which stall is selling mee siam with hum?

“….our Ministers are hardworking true Singaporeans unlike most of us here…”
Zzzz…No wonder they say SIZE matters.
Some use their short little organ to bootlick till it shines. But world-class retards wrap their 12 inch tongue around the boots to keep it in business. :)

With the astronomical rental revenue and also profit tax, the Govt should then give out more benefits to the people to compensate for the low wage or unemployed.  Problem is this is not happening.  The cycle is broken somewhere.  The Govt should either regulate wage (min pay) or distribute the revenue collected, they cannot don’t regulate wage and don’t give out revenue from businesses.  They are not doing either of these, I suspect thats why they can afford to reward themselves astronomically, and thats why the people of Spore are suffering in a so called super rich country.

dunno what is the Objective of that logic — that singaporeans dun wanna be construction worker, etc. There is an article in the ST today bya visiting prof. economist — even he says that one of the traps of low cost foreign workers is that they hold down the wages for locals. This has been debated extensively in TOC & other blogs previously, and only morons will still believe (or want to believe, or want others to believe) that S’poreans only want high pay in cushy jobs. Maybe you are thinking of our ministers, and concludes that ordinary S’poreans also aspire for obscene pay while doing some wayang now & then.

@Whoosh Extraordinaire , Feb 24, 2010 10:44

Had siblings and friends studied in Canada, and they worked as fruit pickers during term breaks. Forgot what was the min wage per week then, but everyone was like …. whaa, rich man! They had rent to pay, uni fees to pay, food to buy, winter clothing(!) to buy, etc…. and that national min wage standard was found to be ”quite comfortable”. So agreed, instead of bashing S’poreans to death, mainstream proponents should show they know the full picture — bring in also standard of living, cost of living, decent wage levels for “dirty” jobs, job designing, etc… when commenting.

But alas, all we hear is that LEVY thingy in the budget. How does that help the average S’pore hold a job or pay the bills?

Morons, I say…. 

Gan, LSS,  you wan to exprain or not?