due to my FYP commitment, its only now that i have the time to share my views with my dear readers with regard to the Singapore Budget 2010. where the national debate had only ended on 12th march. within my different circles of friends, not many are interested in governmentary, public policy and what not, but i believe that understanding the government's direction does give us some insights of preparing ourselves for the near future. nonetheless, we all pay tax, we should have the right to know where our hard labour goes to!
this year, or i should say, for the coming decade, the key focus are:
i dunno how you all think bout these pointers, to me, they all just sounded just as general as any other year's budget plan.
Raising Productivitywow, this term had definitely cause quite a stir in lectures for the graduating students, regardless of faculty. i definitely appreciate the government's effort in upgrading the work skills of all our fellow citizens out there. its a good thing, that the government took up initiative to set up new councils and committees to undertake and monitor these continual upgrading of skills, hoping that we can attract foreign investors, seeing great potential and reliability in our workforce, to want to setup their plants here.
very nicely that our minister had put it across, 'for 3 million workers that we have, if all of us just put in 1% more of effort, that is 30 thousand more people in the labour effort'. so here comes my question to this whole thing of productivity, singaporeans had always been working hard, we are reknown for that, and for decades, in every business, employers try means to increase productivity, its not a new thing, we are squeezed dry, work till 9pm every night, lost our appetite for sex, hence a distinct drop in babies count, but why aren't we seeing the cold hard cash that the foreign investors are supposed to throw in? somehow the efforts does not gets its equilvalant payoff.
i dun think PAP is dumb, they are the elites of the society before they see the gates to parliamentary, so what should we do other than working even harder? what exactly does this productivity means? in business sense, using lower cost to yield greater output? so i hire more foreign workers to run our factory production line and give no shit to drowning singaporeans?
and hey! now we have increase in levy for engagement of foreign workers! hmmm i wonder is this a ploy by the government to make us work harder. more expensive foreign labours does not equate to higher hiring opportunities for singaporeans, end up its either the singaporeans having to work harder due to shortage of manpower or the operation cost increases which drives our foreign investors away, which ultimately, the consumer will still bear the cost which makes us even poorer though we become more hard working.
or is it just another stun to tell us that they are on our sides, to get our votes on their side?sounds pretty wrong ar? but i dun have any solution too, i seriously thought that what the opposition's suggestion was a total joke, 'remove the levy completely and rely on the dependency ratio' (dependency ratio - a ratio pre-set to any industry for local to foreign workers). how can we solely rely on figures composed by the government to reflect for the actual demand-supply of the labour market? any dumbass will know that its impossible, and to think that they are opposition parties who trust our civil servants' competency, weird right?
i'm no smarter than our ministers, i fully respect them for one thing regardless their proposed solutions and plans works, at least they came out with something. but i do hope to see increment in our real wages, somehow, our money is really becoming smaller. missed the days when MacDonald Value Meal is at $4.50.
Growing globallyGovernment helping in development for potentially fast growing industry, hoping in coming years, they will help pull up the slower growth ones - if i'm the growing one, making big money, u think i'll throw back to help meh? keep for myself la! wonders which dickhead will do that... growing globally, only thing i can think of - work in singapore, spend in malaysia! i earn S$2500 here, i spend 6000RM there! yea, that's what it meant to me.
for all these years, R&D had already been the key focus for the manufacturing industry, and yes, it will be real nice that we can come out with our very own in-house global product like iphone to woah the rest out there! woohoo! so hard selling is done in the universties, to attract the top breeds to enter academic courses, to do reseacrh work, hoping that out of a 1000 students, 1 would emerge as the next bill gates or steve jobs. so what about the 999? so much which is invested into our education, yet we produces batches of unemployed graduates into the labour market, lan lan to get a job in their irrelevant fields. well, then other countries are bound to be growing globally too, having their men here as expatriates, taking all the key roles in the industry, forcing the academic students to join the teaching or armed forces. so which end of the productivity scale are we looking at?
well, nice plans for boosting partnership between SMEs and the foreign giants, and huge amount being pumped into the R&D for 'growing' industries. but are we focusing on the wrong areas? how come our biopolis have yet to produce drugs to cure cancer, why is shell only hiring 8 chemical engineers and why ain't airbus and boeing building their plants at seletar?
growing globally, instead of reaching out, we seems more like reaching up in the bottomless pit. hmm... i shall grow my thoughts in being a global citizen then! working overseas seems like a good choice, might even find a foreign girlfriend too, since houses and cars are much cheaper out there!
All singaporeans in growthtalking bout car and house, being a singaporean, where got money? its a vicscious cycle altogether,
no money => no car => no girlfriend => no wife => no family => no drive => no productivity => no job => no moneyin the pond, the big fish eats all the fishes, the government tries to help the small fishes to grow them bigger, how about those medium sized ones, left alone not just gasping for food, but for air.
sometimes i'm real impress with our ministers, they are real smarty pants, coming up with progressive property tax to lower cost of houses, but yet subtlely increased the COE by folds! could you believe it, for a 1.5L toyota vios, the COE can cost up to $34,000, which is like 70% of its price! and not to forget, new gantries for ERP are always in the process of installments!
hello? can't you understand the chain flow above? no car where got wife and baby, then who the hell cares bout productivity? so is our dear ministers gonna take bus or MRT? obviously not, they just got pay-raise of 8.8%, they must have been very productive! think i need not re-emphasize how welly-paid our ministers are, i wonder if they even owns an EZ-link card. hmm... all singaporeans in growth..
another thing caught me in bewilderment, is that SM Goh commented that the foreign talents must 'do fair share contributing as Singapore citizens', yea! that's a good one there! so they come here to work, test out a bit, then decide on the citizenship, while doing so killing the grades of singaporeans, taking the seats on the train, spitting in our parks, adding noise pollution at queues and corridors, and worst of all, they get to enter the casinos for free, taking the free drinks and food! ROAR!
well, at the very least, they budget does look deep into the issue in healthcare for the elderly. thumbs up for that!
i'm not exactly against our government. but do they really see what we want, or they are simply out of the viscious cycle? hmm, think they should read my blog and i should join the PAP too, dear friends of Hougang, vote for me k, at least i am your true-blue, localised authentic neighbour.
