Yet again, despite the against-the-popular-thing-to-do-here tone, Sam does drive a few pointers home:
1. ok you all reject the Paper. Do you deny the fact that we are facing a economy melt-down in 20-years' time due to the low fertility rate? WHAT are your counter proposal besides writting these placards?
2. Do we need to go all out to thrash this Paper? WP is not supportive but admits that immigrant policy is still the way to go, who is going to lead the third option? How?
3. There are simply too many well-to-do locals to start any real protest, let alone a march to Istana. This is a party and a kaopeh session, where is the message or demand for the government (I was there)?
Prove me wrong again please.
You think nobody had given suggestions or pointed out specific areas of deficiency?
So many have pointed out bad govt policies that contribute to the material burden of having babies e.g. maid levy, education system that calls for lots of tuition for kids, no child delivery medical benefits, limited uni placements especially medicine, high cost of living brought on by escalating housing, transport and healthcare costs etc, etc.
Others have noted psychological and social environmental factors that contribute to stress, a key ingredient for a low TFR e.g. congestion in our public transport system and the environment in general, worries and constant chasing of deadlines at work, intensified competition (we can argue about international competition but domestic competition have also intensified), overtime work and general burnout combined with a slow growing income and fast growing living costs.
I would be very surprised that the government is not aware of all these. But is it listening? The problem is our policy makers are all derived from the same mold, given to group think. You can spot it straightaway once anyone of them opens his gap. It is extremely difficult to break out of the box that they have built around themselves.
It is not easy for them to see their own mistakes even when pointed out by others let alone realise these on their own. Your own interpretation of the crowd at HLP showed that you are essentially cut from the same cloth. I can understand that but it will be at a very, very late stage that you realise the reality of the situation.
My thread on "White Paper - Exposing the Flaws of Policy Making" is just one take on this by a blogger.
My own thinking is that the Govt is facing a big cash flow problem (I am not calling this a financial issue, just a cash flow issue) caused partly by losses during the sub-prime crisis and an oversight of not planning for the huge withdrawal of CPF funds from the baby boomers (maybe there was no oversight but the sub-prime losses must have compounded the problem of the baby boomers).
Based on past PAP's performance, it is unlikely that the infrastructure development can be so out of sync with the population growth caused by foreign influx which is completely within the Govt's control. The population growth was caused to happen so fast, in desperation it seemed, that the infrastructure development had no time to react.
As Lucky Tan correctly pointed out, the need for population replacement was made 25 years ahead of requirement. Instead of replacing the shortfall in babies with babies, we replaced that with adults and not only that, we caused a large population increase of 1.2 million over 10 years.
What other reason can we bring to the debate other than that we need the extra tax revenue to pay for something? During the Nathan's presidency, the reserves were touched, if I remember correctly, at least 12 times and most of us were none the wiser.
So the whole White Paper on population is not to plan for the future but to solve a past problem of mismanagement. The government was under duress to act in this particular way. I think top honchos in WP understand this. That is why they are not pressing them too hard so long as the main directions are adhered to.