Four Fallacies about the Singapore Welfare State

[Confuseous]

If ever one needed proof that habits of thought are hard to break, we need only look at the way social welfare is treated in Singapore. There is probably no other policy domain which impacts on our lives more directly and yet is less contested.

1. “Singapore is not a welfare state.”

2. “The Western welfare model is bound to fail.”

3. “Social welfare is un-Asian.”

4. “In spite of what critics might say, our social welfare system has worked.”

Peter Townsend, a renowned British professor of social policy who sadly died in 2009, once remarked that “It may be worth reflecting, if indeed a little sadly, that possibly the ultimate test of the quality of a free, democratic and prosperous society is to be found in the standards of freedom, democracy and prosperity enjoyed by its weakest members.” He might have been talking about us.

- http://www.social-dimension.com/2011/09/four-fallacies-about-the-singapore-welfare-state.html

Mr Ng Kok Hoe is a doctoral candidate in the social policy programme at the London School of Economics and Political Science and holds a MSc in Public Policy and Administration (LSE) and a B.Soc.Sci in Social Work, National University of Singapore. He has worked at the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports (MCYS) in policy and service planning positions related to juvenile rehabilitation and problem gambling. He also has direct practice experience with juvenile probationers and as a counsellor. He has taught social policy and social work research courses in the Monash university - Social Service Training Institute Bachelor of Social Work programme, and was involved in the development of accreditation for social workers as a previous Chair of Membership in the Singapore Association of Social Workers.

 

[Char_Azn]

Very 1 sided article. It only looks at the good of welfare but totally ignores it's problems. The first point should be good enough indication. It points to how well the nordic nations are doing but totally ignore the abuses that exist in just about every other countries including the Nordic countries. Here's an example

But it warned that such scenes were being repeated in courts in every city and that abuse of the welfare system was rife.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1363162/Benefit-cheat-UK-How-just-day-court-saw-staggering-23-cases-welfare-fraud.html

Also even when ignoring the current crisis, economist in Europe is asking for a revamp of the welfare system coz it is failing due to the simple fact that Retirees are slowly overtaking Working population and it becomes an even higher burden for those working to support the current system which in itself is already paying >50% tax and in Nordic nations as high as 60% tax

 

[GOD IS MY DOG]

s'pore got welfare meh ?

all the money makan by PAP topdogs.........where got money for welfare

 

[Char_Azn]

Here is another news to the author of that article

The helpful side of demographic change

Nov 9th 2010, 16:31 by Bagehot

YOUR reporter is just back from a weekend spent talking about politics and economics in the company of various British and Spanish government and business types. As often at such gatherings, there was a session devoted to western Europe's generous social welfare systems, and whether they would prove affordable in coming years. As usual, the conclusion was no: the social welfare spending of today would soon be rendered unsustainable by two big forces: namely, demographic changes and globalisation.

The arguments are familiar. Lengthening life expectancy and slumping fertility rates are leaving a shrinking pool of workers to pay the costs of pensions and healthcare for rapidly greying populations. And competition from low-cost countries is proving fatal to European industries that previously offered a raft of generous social protections.

Listening to fellow delegates discussing all this, a slightly heretical thought struck me. This was: given that we have no choice but to reform and trim back the generous post-war settlements once common in the west, thank goodness one cause is demographic change.

By which I mean, if globalisation was the only threat to the old European social model, then I am not sure politicians would be able to resist public pressure to erect protectionist barriers, with all the damaging consequences that would then follow. Though this newspaper and this reporter are thoroughly convinced that globalisation is both inevitable and also, on balance, a very good thing, it can be a hard cause to defend to those who have lost jobs as a direct result of it. The benefits of global free trade are diffuse (cheaper and better goods, available to all) while the losses provoked by globalisation are rather concentrated (just visit a factory town whose plants have moved to China). The winners and losers from globalisation also have a habit of being different people: a 54 year old factory worker who just lost his full-time unionised job in a rustbelt town is unlikely to find a better one.

But the facts of demographic change in much of Europe are so stark as to silence further argument. Even in France, which has just seen protests at government plans to extend the retirement age by a couple of years, opinion polls show that voters understand that the state pension system is broken: they just disagree on how to fix it. In all sorts of countries, from Britain to Germany and the Netherlands, the retirement age has been moved to 67 without enormous fuss. (In the Netherlands, there are really interesting debates about whether the state should move from a fixed age of retirement to a fixed period of paid retirement, so that the retirement age would be index-linked to average life expectancy). And not only are the facts of demographic change unanswerable, they are also fundamentally quite cheerful: people are living longer and healthier lives.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/bagehot/2010/11/sustainable_welfare_systems