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There was a time the PAP govt felt that the small island we were in was too crowded with 1.6M people. So they went on to tell the people that the living standards will fall due to overcrowding and higher living density, their path to happiness and healthy family was to keep the population small by having fewer babies. The PAP minister at that time cite problems of strains in housing, hospitals, transport and the inability to create jobs for the people.
Of course what turned out in the subsequent decades proved this piece of social engineering misguided. The Singapore economy boomed and rose as one of the Asian Tigers chalking up breath-taking double digit growth year after year. Not only did Singapore acquire the resources to accommodate a larger population, it ended up facing a labor force bottle neck due to its population control policy and ended up importing foreigners primarily from Malaysia to fill the gap.
How and why did this mistake occur? The PAP based its population plan on what happened it the past with the economy. Despite selling us the notion that they were men with foresight, great planning and helicopter views that steered the Singapore economy from the 3rd world to the 1st in one generation, they were riding on a wave they themselves did not foresee and based their population planning on the anemic economic performance of the past.
Today they tell that there are blue skies ahead, the global demand will keep rising and Singapore economy can keep expanding to fill the demand. So they propose an extreme population growth policy based primarily on importing foreigners and converting some of them to citizens and PRs. The rate at which they choose to grow the population is much faster than the replacement rate - by a factor of 5. They want to convert many to PRs and citizens. Now they believe there will always be enough jobs, there will be enough infrastructure expansion to accommodate the people, inflation which is high now will not get worse. But what they are doing is putting a lot of risk on Singaporeans with this plan. With the financial crisis just behind us, we see inherent weakness in the big economies - Europe is indebted and aging, US is heavily indebted and must cut spending, China facing a mountain of restructuring in the coming years. If global aggregate demand falls, we will suddenly see our artificially enlarged population competing harder for fewer jobs as the ability of our economy to support this enlarge population falls.
Singaporeans already see the clear and present danger of such a policy in the past decade. It has caused a sharp rise in our cost of living, it caused our income gap to balloon as the foreign influx caused a wealth transfer from the employed to businesses that used them, we are also familiar with the effects of overcrowding in public spaces and public transport. Few Singaporeans believe that continuing a high foreign influx will improve their lives but the govt is driven by other interests other than that of ordinary Singaporeans. It has a power structure constructed to benefit those who form part of the elites and a network of GLCs, many of which are monopolies, that will benefit greatly from a larger population. Singaporeans cannot afford not be awake at this late hour and allow the PAP govt to execute what is proposed in the white paper.
- http://singaporemind.blogspot.sg/2013/01/population-white-papertwisting-logic-to.html
Of course what turned out in the subsequent decades proved this piece of social engineering misguided. The Singapore economy boomed and rose as one of the Asian Tigers chalking up breath-taking double digit growth year after year. Not only did Singapore acquire the resources to accommodate a larger population, it ended up facing a labor force bottle neck due to its population control policy and ended up importing foreigners primarily from Malaysia to fill the gap.
How and why did this mistake occur? The PAP based its population plan on what happened it the past with the economy. Despite selling us the notion that they were men with foresight, great planning and helicopter views that steered the Singapore economy from the 3rd world to the 1st in one generation, they were riding on a wave they themselves did not foresee and based their population planning on the anemic economic performance of the past.
Today they tell that there are blue skies ahead, the global demand will keep rising and Singapore economy can keep expanding to fill the demand. So they propose an extreme population growth policy based primarily on importing foreigners and converting some of them to citizens and PRs. The rate at which they choose to grow the population is much faster than the replacement rate - by a factor of 5. They want to convert many to PRs and citizens. Now they believe there will always be enough jobs, there will be enough infrastructure expansion to accommodate the people, inflation which is high now will not get worse. But what they are doing is putting a lot of risk on Singaporeans with this plan. With the financial crisis just behind us, we see inherent weakness in the big economies - Europe is indebted and aging, US is heavily indebted and must cut spending, China facing a mountain of restructuring in the coming years. If global aggregate demand falls, we will suddenly see our artificially enlarged population competing harder for fewer jobs as the ability of our economy to support this enlarge population falls.
Singaporeans already see the clear and present danger of such a policy in the past decade. It has caused a sharp rise in our cost of living, it caused our income gap to balloon as the foreign influx caused a wealth transfer from the employed to businesses that used them, we are also familiar with the effects of overcrowding in public spaces and public transport. Few Singaporeans believe that continuing a high foreign influx will improve their lives but the govt is driven by other interests other than that of ordinary Singaporeans. It has a power structure constructed to benefit those who form part of the elites and a network of GLCs, many of which are monopolies, that will benefit greatly from a larger population. Singaporeans cannot afford not be awake at this late hour and allow the PAP govt to execute what is proposed in the white paper.
- http://singaporemind.blogspot.sg/2013/01/population-white-papertwisting-logic-to.html
