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[TD="class: msgtxt"]A thought provoking article from http://www.todayonline.com/voices/unanswered-questions-population-debate
Unanswered questions in population debate
The National Development Minister said that if the foreign worker population is frozen, he will be unable to deliver flats to 200,000 families (“S’pore ‘will not be concrete jungle’”; Feb 7).
He also said in Parliament that our ageing population would not have enough healthcare workers to care for the old. To avoid the current mismatch in infrastructure, he said, we have to plan infrastructure based on the stretched scenario of 6.9 million people.
So, plans have already been made to increase the number of foreign workers in the construction sector and in health care. And due to the inability of current infrastructure to support our population size, we must import more workers.
But when we import more workers, we must build more infrastructure. There is a circularity here, and there are two questions, out of many, that have not been answered so far.
First, how many Singaporeans require housing, and how many are speculating on property? High housing prices may not necessarily be due to a lack of housing.
Second, what percentage of new housing is going towards foreigners? And where will we house all the foreign workers here? Current housing arrangements for some lower-skilled workers are already, in some cases, deplorable. Many more may slip through the net.
It has been suggested that the economy cannot grow without bringing in foreign labour. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is a measure of a country’s economic activity, and construction would raise our GDP. But what then when the construction work is complete?
Ultimately, if real wages do not go up because of inflation, real wealth would not be created for the population.
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[TD="class: wintiny, align: right"]70398.1 [/TD]
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[TD="class: msgtxt"]A thought provoking article from http://www.todayonline.com/voices/unanswered-questions-population-debate
Unanswered questions in population debate
The National Development Minister said that if the foreign worker population is frozen, he will be unable to deliver flats to 200,000 families (“S’pore ‘will not be concrete jungle’”; Feb 7).
He also said in Parliament that our ageing population would not have enough healthcare workers to care for the old. To avoid the current mismatch in infrastructure, he said, we have to plan infrastructure based on the stretched scenario of 6.9 million people.
So, plans have already been made to increase the number of foreign workers in the construction sector and in health care. And due to the inability of current infrastructure to support our population size, we must import more workers.
But when we import more workers, we must build more infrastructure. There is a circularity here, and there are two questions, out of many, that have not been answered so far.
First, how many Singaporeans require housing, and how many are speculating on property? High housing prices may not necessarily be due to a lack of housing.
Second, what percentage of new housing is going towards foreigners? And where will we house all the foreign workers here? Current housing arrangements for some lower-skilled workers are already, in some cases, deplorable. Many more may slip through the net.
It has been suggested that the economy cannot grow without bringing in foreign labour. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is a measure of a country’s economic activity, and construction would raise our GDP. But what then when the construction work is complete?
Ultimately, if real wages do not go up because of inflation, real wealth would not be created for the population.
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