Friday, January 13, 2006
$1,000,000,000 for the poor this year. This sounds may like a very sound government and fiscal policy on the surface. It generates good-will in the people, seeing that the government is making an attempt to better the lot of the poor, while at the same time re-distributing wealth and thus closing the rich-poor gap. At the same time since the marginal propensity to spend for lower income groups is higher, this will lead to greater spending on the part of the people, pushing the economy towards full employment, while a 20% of that amount will automatically be placed into Medisave, thus contributing to savings.
A perfect policy? Perhaps so, but only on a very superficial level. The main problem in Singapore today is no longer the very poor. Although their plight is a cause for concern, their size have been reduced considerably since the 1960-70s. The main problem today is a lack of jobs for the young professionals. Fresh out of university, many of today's graduates find it increasingly hard to find job, and of those that are employed, they are employed on a contractual basis that is open to review every 5-10 years. When this is meant to encourage efficiency, it pushes the limits of employees, hindering investments such as property and cars that will take commits up to 20 years to honor their debt. This is a problem that is very real and has not met with any response as yet from the government. When a generation is unable to be gainfully employed at the junior management level, it will mean that a bottleneck will form and no capable senior management to take over when the current generation retires.
Any simplistic answer to this problem is simply incorrect. The numerous replacement of the syllabus is testament to that. Without a radical shift away from the examination system of assessment, piecemeal renaming of courses and 10% allocation of project work is simply not enough. On the other hand, it is difficult for the MOE to teach creativity and life-skills to students. So its a tight-rope to walk between teaching the fundamentals and educating the students on the skills required. And education is not the only problem. Work-place environment, pay schemes, working hours, have all led to an increasingly competitive environment. To keep expecting more from the citizens is simply not the answer, neither is the constant reminder to work even harder to 'catch up' with the neighbors.
Of course this policy maybe a foundation for further improvement in the Singaporean society to motivate it work harder. However, the question is no longer whether Singaporeans are working hard, but rather how much harder can they work.
11:40 PM
