Professor Lim Chong Yah: Singapore’s income gap approaching dangerous levels

[eatshitndie]

...........

1) What would you use?
2) How would you obtain the data to implement the metric?

the cia has been wrong on so many occasions with benchmarking a country's political stability to economic conditions based on these mumbo jumbo coefficients that they conveniently throw out there. these so called academic indicators don't apply to all countries, and there's no one size that fits all. tired cliches but true. there are various other factors that converge to produce any outcome, and many of them are unpredictable no matter how they put a seemingly pseudo scientific spin on it. no one at langley predicted or even imagined arab spring would turn out the way it did, and they were dumbfounded. the catalyst wasn't any gini, but the genie that was let loose and whipped out of control by viral messaging of self immolation to many, thanks to technology. for the arab male, getting slapped by a woman can cause a billion testosterones to erupt.

there's a cultural angle to uncontrollable mass anger and disruptive actions. shit can happen in the u.s. if an unarmed young black guy gets gunned down by a white vigilante. in fact, constant media coverage and viral messaging and blogging of such an event are causing both sides to get armed for a race war. sinkies, no matter what the gini coefficient is, don't have the intestinal determination to risk their lives and topple the regime by force. it will only happen when sinkies wake up one morning and find all kopitiams, fast food joints and food courts empty of food for a week.

 

[Zombie]

overpaid and underperforming .... that actually causes inflation.

I think you are the first to vividly point out

wage vs productivity ---> affect inflationary pressure

I think you are right...

 

[aurvandil]

the cia has been wrong on so many occasions with benchmarking a country's political stability to economic conditions based on these mumbo jumbo coefficients that they conveniently throw out there. these so called academic indicators don't apply to all countries, and there's no one size that fits all. tired cliches but true. there are various other factors that converge to produce any outcome, and many of them are unpredictable no matter how they put a seemingly pseudo scientific spin on it. no one at langley predicted or even imagined arab spring would turn out the way it did, and they were dumbfounded. the catalyst wasn't any gini, but the genie that was let loose and whipped out of control by viral messaging of self immolation to many, thanks to technology. for the arab male, getting slapped by a woman can cause a billion testosterones to erupt.

As I mentioned at the start of the thread, the general consensus is that a Gini over 0.5 is a necessary though not sufficent condition for massive social change. It is the same way how eating fatty foods regularly is a necesary though not sufficent condition for a heart attack.

 

[Fook Seng]

Read public responses to LCY recommendation. It seems economists and experts all disagreed with him and said its impractical and the reason is very simple. It is really ridiculous. You mean you can't see it?

In Singapore nobody wants change, experts or not. Just look at elections.

 

[zhihau]

In Singapore nobody wants change, experts or not. Just look at elections.

not true bro, folks in Aljunied GRC did. if not all, me did :p:p:p

 

[Bigfuck]

Read public responses to LCY recommendation. It seems economists and experts all disagreed with him and said its impractical and the reason is very simple. It is really ridiculous. You mean you can't see it?

Show me all. TJS agreed on his rationale. He is qualified to be an expert. Unless you want to tell me PAP and the government selects crap into its machinery.
You can't argue and reason. Don't get involved.

 

[eatshitndie]

As I mentioned at the start of the thread, the general consensus is that a Gini over 0.5 is a necessary though not sufficent condition for massive social change. It is the same way how eating fatty foods regularly is a necesary though not sufficent condition for a heart attack.

if the cia is good, we don't need the nsa. even with the nsa, all their analysis and million man hours of churning out indices and coefficients for the sake of national security couldn't foresee the greatest housing bust in u.s. history under their very watchful eyes several years into their formation. please, relying on u.s. gov guidance or anything connected to uncle sam is a laughable joke today.

 

[Kinana]

Show me all. TJS agreed on his rationale. He is qualified to be an expert. Unless you want to tell me PAP and the government selects crap into its machinery.
You can't argue and reason. Don't get involved.

It doesn't stand up to logic. Many economists and experts in the market have spoken out about it.
If TS is so good, how come he doesn't even know the constitutional role of the president?

 

[Bigfuck]

It doesn't stand up to logic. Many economists and experts in the market have spoken out about it.
If TS is so good, how come he doesn't even know the constitutional role of the president?

Why does it not stand up to logic? Who are your economists and experts? Are they directly involved in the planning of Singapore? If LCY's argument cannot stand up to logic, he is flawed. So PAP uses flawed people. Is it not dangerous? So how can PAP be good? Are you saying TSJ is stupid? Are you saying cambridge and the Singapore government is blind? So how many more flawed people are there in PAP and the government?
You can't argue and reason. Don't get involved.

 

[Kinana]

Why does it not stand up to logic? Who are your economists and experts? Are they directly involved in the planning of Singapore? If LCY's argument cannot stand up to logic, he is flawed. So PAP uses flawed people. Is it not dangerous? So how can PAP be good? Are you saying TSJ is stupid? Are you saying cambridge and the Singapore government is blind? So how many more flawed people are there in PAP and the government?
You can't argue and reason. Don't get involved.

PAP stopped using LCY a long time ago. Thats why LCY is frustrated and came out with wild ideas.

 

[Bigfuck]

PAP stopped using LCY a long time ago. Thats why LCY is frustrated and came out with wild ideas.

Who told you PAP stopped using LCY long ago? Did PAP tell you? We know people stopped using you long ago, especially when your madness worsened.
How do you know LCY is frustrated? He tell you? Why is LCY having wild ideas? Are you saying that NTU is keeping a cuckoo bananas person as Albert Winsemius Chair Professor of Economics in NTU, now? Are you calling NTU and PAP stupid now, too?
You can't argue and reason. Don't get involved.

 

[Kinana]

LCY stopped being an advisor to the govt more than 10 years ago bro.
If he's not frust like you, how can he behave so weird like you and came up with such crazy ideas?

 

[Fook Seng]

LCY stopped being an advisor to the govt more than 10 years ago bro.
If he's not frust like you, how can he behave so weird like you and came up with such crazy ideas?

Come to think about it, that was also about the time when everything seemed to go haywire with the rich getting much richer and the poor, poorer, HDB stopped meeting demand for flats, a lot of public services going privatised and eventually listed with profit making as its key objective.

 

[Bigfuck]

LCY stopped being an advisor to the govt more than 10 years ago bro.
If he's not frust like you, how can he behave so weird like you and came up with such crazy ideas?

Are u sure? How do you know he is frustrated and frustrated like me? Can you read minds? If you can, why are you not the PM? Are u saying that NTU hired a weird man so are you also saying NTU is weird? Are you Singaporean? Are you crazy? Oh, we all have the answer to that. Wow, someone accusing LCY as being crazy. So does this mean that all the LCY did to date was crazy and so is Singapore not built based on crazy foundations. So why does the crazy Kinana claim that Singapore is well run unless he is crazy?

 

[Fook Seng]

not true bro, folks in Aljunied GRC did. if not all, me did :p:p:p

Don't you know you are a special breed?

 

[Papsmearer]

When the picture above surfaced, everyone focused Kee Chui Chan.
Less well known is Lee Hsien Yang and how he was standing at his mom's funeral by himself.

Why do you think that was so?

I don't think that Hsien Yang is divorced. That is a big taboo to Old Goat. Yes, he has a mistress in Australia, so what? Old Goat had a mistress in ROC for years too. Old Goat's rule is if you want to play long term i.e. mistress, u must play outside, so the public annot find out and spoil PAP lilywhite image. If you want to call hookers, one night stand, short term stuff, u can play in Singapore but quietly. This is what Gay Loong did with his first wife.

Hsien Yang and the wife probably live separately, but who can blame him? She is a spoilt fucked up bitch. LCY is a bad parent, that is all I can say. By the way, I think their eldest son must be around 27 years old now. Wonder what he is doing. That one is another Patrick Tan case.

 

[freedalas]

Read public responses to LCY recommendation. It seems economists and experts all disagreed with him and said its impractical and the reason is very simple. It is really ridiculous. You mean you can't see it?

The reason why economists and experts disagreed with LCY is a very simple one. They all are in the more than $15k income bracket that LCY is targeting to freeze increments. Of course they wouldn't want to do themselves in.

History has demonstrated that all great solutions started off as something crazy or deemed as impractical ideas, be it in science, economics or public policies. For such ideas to take seed, it would be necessarily take alot of overcoming of obstacles, prejudices and face-saving to bear fruit. It's the same for this idea by LCY. It's not impractical as the economists etc claim. All that is needed is for the govt to steel itself with lots of political will and hard bargaining to achieve. And of course it would involve some modifications of LCY's original idea. For a solution to address such an important policital and economic issue, of course it's going to be difficult, I'm sure LCY never claimed it's easy. But it's not impossible and so is worth considering. The final solution if the PAP is willing to carry this out but not be in the exact form LCY proposed. But at least it's starting point. Else nothing will ever be done to achiever a smaller Gini co-efficient, simply because the experts claimed it can't be done. Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell were all told by the experts (then) that their ideas for electricity and telephone would never work too.

 

[freedalas]

PAP stopped using LCY a long time ago. Thats why LCY is frustrated and came out with wild ideas.

The reason why PAP, or more accurately, LKY is not because LCY can no longer contribute ideas or strategies of value. LCY is still a very well regarded economist not just locally but of international standing as well. LKY stopped using LCY because the two fell out over the marital problems between LHY and LSF. LHY just could not take it anymore from LSF who is well known in the legal circle as a super-bitch, and as any man would do, looked for comfort somewhere else. This of course caused deep resentment between the Lee and Lim families, and under those circumstances, it's a natural consequence that LKY no longer use LCY as an economic or national wage adviser.

It's therefore wrong of you to discredit LCY as a has-been economist simply because LKY "sacked" him so to speak. LCY is still very much looked upon not just in NTU but in the global arena. For someone of this stature, his ideas cannot just be dismissed like that.

 

[Varuna]

For someone of this stature, his ideas cannot just be dismissed like that.

This guy wrote an impressive record of more than 160 academic publications. I remember when I took economics subject in school, we used one of his his books as text book. There should be quite a number of local economists today at one point or the other benefited from his academic publications, and not surprised still, amongst them could be some today who were fast to shoot down his idea straight.

 

[Bigfuck]

This guy wrote an impressive record of more than 160 academic publications. I remember when I took economics subject in school, we used one of his his books as text book. There should be quite a number of local economists today at one point or the other benefited from his academic publications, and not surprised still, amongst them could be some today who were fast to shoot down his idea straight.

Someone became mad reading his textbook and came to this forum cursing WP and LCY at the same time