Economic "Shock Therapy" needed!!!

[kopiuncle]

Veteran economist Lim Chong Yah has renewed his call for economic "shock therapy" to raise wages at the bottom and reduce income inequality.

At the Singapore Economic Policy Forum on Thursday, the former National Wages Council (NWC) chairman praised the council's recommendation this year to raise wages by at least $50 for those earning below $1,000 a month.

Prof Lim thought more could still be done.

He repeated his call, that made waves when he put it forward in April, for a three-year wage freeze for top earners.

 

[Bigfuck]

You need to fire more than half of LKY's minions on the management team. They are the course. I was laughing at a loser from the PAP who fell from grace and he applied for a real private sector job. Verdict was overpaid, underqualified, underworked and no potential of improving.

 

[erection2015]

bang ..i prefer economic shiok therapy but i'm no economic genius so i'll leave this topic to the experts.

 

[kopiuncle]

David Leonhardt tells readers today that income inequality is primarily due to technology and globalization. It is possible to tell the story of technology if you are prepared to jump over a few hoops. (The big problem is that economists confidently told us in the 90s that technology favored people with college degrees. In the last decade it seems to only favor people with advanced degrees. If that sounds like a "make it up as you go along" story, welcome to the state of modern economics.)

However, the globalization story requires even more hand-waving. The simple story is that we have hundreds of millions of people in developing countries who are prepared to work for a fraction of the wages of our manufacturing workers. This has caused us to lose millions of manufacturing jobs depressing the wages of both the remaining workers in the sector and the workers in other sectors who must compete with displaced manufacturing workers.

This is undoubtedly a true story. However the part of globalization that economists seem to have difficulty understanding is that there are also tens of millions of potentially highly educated workers in the developing world who are willing to work for much lower pay than their counterparts in the United States. For example, while the average doctor in the United States gets close to $250,000 a year, there would be no shortage of doctors in India, Mexico, China and elsewhere who would be happy to train to U.S. standards and work for half this wage.The same would be true of lawyers, dentists, economists and all the other highly paid professions.

The reason that huge numbers of foreign professionals have not come to the United States and depressed the wages of the highest earning workers in the United States is that we have a large number of professional and legal barriers that make it difficult for foreign professionals to work in the United States.

Can we narrow the inequality of our income in Singapore? Or has it gone beyond repair?

 

[kopiuncle]

bang ..i prefer economic shiok therapy but i'm no economic genius so i'll leave this topic to the experts.

bang, me no expert too. just follow and read from the more learned brothers here. i look around singapore now and i see the big disparity of income ...and even the lifte-style too.....yes, economic shiok therapy is most welcome...

 

[kopiuncle]

Bloomberg had a lengthy article warning of looming doctor shortages in the years ahead. Remarkably the piece never once mentioned the possibility of bringing more foreign doctors in the country.

Doctors in the United States get paid on average close to twice as much as their counterparts in Canada, Germany and other wealthy countries. The gap between the pay of doctors in the United States and in the developing world is considerably larger. As a result, if we eliminated the barriers that made it difficult for foreign doctors who train to our standards from practicing the United States, we could count on a large number of foreign physicians entering the country.(It would be a simple matter to have a modest tax on the earnings of foreign physicians in the United States that would be repatriated to their home countries. This could be used to educate more doctors, thereby ensuring that the home country benefited from this arrangement as well.)

We could also make it easier for people in the United States to get medical care elsewhere, for example by standardizing liability rules to ensure that patients will have recourse in the event of malpractice and also establishing governmental licensing agencies to ensure the quality of care in other countries. Also, Medicare could have enormous savings if it allowed beneficiaries to buy into the lower cost health care systems of other countries. Having more people getting medical care in other countries will reduce the demand for doctors in the United States.

Is this what is happening here in Singapore? I see many FT doctors here....

 

[failpsle]

Income disparity can eventually lead to social problems which can quickly cause the downfall of any country especially a small one like Singapore. I may have failed my PSLE but even i can see that. This is one of the solutions to the issues that this learned man has proposed.

 

[Leongsam]

Income disparity can eventually lead to social problems

Income disparity is a good thing as it enables the wealthy to employ the poor to serve them hand and foot.

If it were not for the wide income disparity between maids and their employers, many Singaporeans would end up having to do their own dirty work.

 

[streetsmart73]

bang ..i prefer economic shiok therapy but i'm no economic genius so i'll leave this topic to the experts.

hi there


1. bro, me too!
2. honest, who & how to believe such sheep leh.
3. bitting the hands that feed it hoh.
4. btw, do you know who its daughter is and married to?
5. such specimen is inner circle material hoh!

 

[Bigfuck]

You so damned right Sam. If LKY had to look at the eye and facial expression of everyone he hired, he would be dead by now. Being able to step on the heads of those who polish his shoes is only possible with high gini. Best if gini is at 0.99.

 

[failpsle]

Income disparity is a good thing as it enables the wealthy to employ the poor to serve them hand and foot.

If it were not for the wide income disparity between maids and their employers, many Singaporeans would end up having to do their own dirty work.

Very very bourgeois.

 

[kopiuncle]

By CHARLES WOLF JR. AND JOHN GODGES / Wolf holds the distinguished chair in international economics; Godges is editor-in-chief of RAND Review

The U.S. presidential campaigns have emphasized the magnitude of the changes in income inequality. Unfortunately, despite the rhetoric, the key questions continue to be ignored: Why does inequality occur? Which reasons contribute to economic growth and hence are good, and which are injurious and warrant countervailing action?

It is useful to consider the best single indicator of inequality: the Gini coefficient, named for the 20th-century Italian statistician Corrado Gini. The Gini coefficient represents the gap between a percentage of the population and its corresponding percentage of income.

At one extreme, if 1 percent of the population receives 1 percent of the total income and 5 percent of the population receives 5 percent, and all other population percentages receive their corresponding percentages of total income, then the Gini coefficient is 0, representing perfect equality of incomes. There is no gap between the population and income percentages.

At the other extreme, if a single recipient receives all income, then the Gini coefficient hits its peak of 1, representing maximum inequality.

In the real world, the country with the greatest income inequality is Namibia, where the bottom 70 percent of the population earns 7 percent of the income and the top 30 percent earns 93 percent of the income, resulting in a Gini coefficient of 0.71. Sweden has one of the lowest Gini coefficients, at 0.23.

According to the best U.S. government data estimating Gini coefficients around the world, the United States falls mid-range, between 0.45 and 0.49, having risen from a 45-year low of 0.386 in 1968 to a 45-year high of 0.477 in 2011. European countries show less inequality than the United States, as do Japan, South Korea, India, Turkey and Israel. Several rapidly growing economies, including Brazil, show greater inequality.

But whether any level or change in the Gini coefficient is "good" or "bad" cannot be inferred from the coefficient alone. The crucial question is what accounts for the inequality?

For those with more income, is it due to greater work effort, higher labor productivity, innovation, entrepreneurship, better technology, more efficient management; or, instead, to favoritism, nepotism, collusion, bribery, fraud, insider trading, special privilege, other forms of corruption, or unequal opportunity? If the explanation lies in higher productivity and better management, then the income inequality warrants encouragement. If, instead, the inequality is due to nepotism and corruption, it should be combated and reversed.

If the answer is a combination, which explanation predominates? And how can the positive factors be encouraged, while the latter are reduced?

The mixed picture of income inequality around the world reinforces the basic take-away point: It is more important to know the underlying explanations for inequality across countries and within them, rather than the amount of inequality or changes in it.

The inequality debate should focus more on the sources of and reasons for inequality, and less on how much inequality there is, or how much it has changed; more on explaining inequality, and less on deploring or defending it.

Wolf holds the distinguished chair in international economics and Godges is editor-in-chief of RAND Review at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation. This op-ed is adapted from an essay that first appeared in RAND Review.

 

[erection2015]

long live shiok therapy...available in sbf

hi there

1. bro, me too!
!

 

[kopiuncle]

I look at the salaries of our top leaders, the top doctors, the top lawyers....then the teachers, the clerks, the cleaners and the taxi-drivers....the graduates and the non-graduates....and i look at their work and productivity....it appears to me our income disparity is mind-boggling.

can we reduce the gap? i think it is not possible.....maybe a bit ( of no consequence )...definitely, very difficult.

 

[Leongsam]

Very very bourgeois.

...and that describes the majority of Singaporeans.

There are 202,500 maids in Singapore. Just about every Singaporean household either has a maid or wants one. All of them wish maids were cheaper. (ie that the income disparity was wider)

 

[Leongsam]

can we reduce the gap? i think it is not possible.....maybe a bit ( of no consequence )...definitely, very difficult.

The gap can easily be reduced if the losers of society get their act together instead of just lazing around crying over spilt milk.

 

[failpsle]

...and that describes the majority of Singaporeans.

There are 202,500 maids in Singapore. Just about every Singaporean household either has a maid or wants one. All of them wish maids were cheaper. (ie that the income disparity was wider)

So i would offer that income disparity is fertile ground for bourgeois ideology and practice, and this is not at all good for the spirit and soul of the country. The time is ripe to try to address this potentially grave issue.

 

[jw5]

The problem is income inequity, not income disparity.


Self or country, was a timely reminder
A loss of words, was all he could muster
A good thing for us he didn't speak long
To our horror, he might break into song
Sharp and articulate, that's just not him
An ideas man? Really? Mr Lim?
A soldier, a scholar, or did he get a first
How does that explain the word betterest?
I feel rich......, he's supposed to have said
With diction worse than that of a pinoy maid
For a guy who was given no portfolio
The next best thing was to dress like Zorro
Before Zorro embarks on his next boast
Do remind him of GE 2011 East Coast!

 

[Fook Seng]

The problem is income inequity, not income disparity.
...........
Sharp and articulate, that's just not him
An ideas man? Really? Mr Lim?
.........
Before Zorro embarks on his next boast
Do remind him of GE 2011 East Coast!

Your poem describes the wrong Mr Lim lah.