How does the world see Singapore? Is it important? Not everyone may be interested to know what the rest of the world thinks of them, but in a country such as Singapore where freedom of expression is not a universally respected right, it is hard for people inside to give an objective view of the state of the nation. It is because many people in the rest of the world have the freedom to speak as they like, rather than to limit their words to whatever is politically acceptable, that we can look to them to give an honest and objective opinion on the reality of the social and political situation in Singapore.
The first thing to understand about how the world sees Singapore, is to recognise that Singapore is a small country, a little red dot if you will, and that many people in the world are barely aware of it's existence. Ask an average Englishman in London or American in New York about Singapore, and chances are all they can tell you is that it is very clean, that it is a refuelling stop on the way to Australia, and that chewing gum is banned. Given that chewing gum has not actually been banned in Singapore for a good few years now, you can see that most people have very little knowledge of what Singapore is really like.
The other interesting point to mention is that Singaporeans, or more accurately just the ruling PAP, have ideas about how they would like to be seen, and that is that they would like to be seen as a modern first world nation. The PAP take it as one of their crowning achievements that they have turned Singapore into a modern first world country, and the concept of "Swiss standards of living" is something that politicians have long offered as being the fruits of their hard work and high salaries.
So, although many people know very little about Singapore, is it still possible to get some insight into whether Singapore is really seen as a first world nation, is it seen as a country that respects the freedoms that first world countries hold dear, are Singaporean politicians respected or otherwise in the world at large? Fortunately, there are a good few organisations which make it their business to assess the political, social & cultural environment in most countries around the world. Since these organisations take the time to measure key performance indicators for almost every country in the world, it is fair to say they are not likely to be biased against the little red dot, and similarly, since these organisations have seen so much of the world, their view of us can tell us a lot about how Singapore fits in and stands up in the world.
First of all, lets consider the press. It is widely accepted that a free press and free speech are fundamental rights considered essential in first world countries. Luckily, a respected French organisation "Reporters Without Borders" goes to the trouble to assess this on a global basis every year. In the most recent survey Singapore ranked a lowly 136 out of 178 countries. Below is a selection of Asian and "First World" countries for comparison.
=1. Switzerland
11. Japan
19. UK
34. Hong Kong
42. S. Korea
117. Indonesia
128. Cambodia
136. Singapore
141. Malaysia
153. Thailand
It's fair to say that the world sees Singapore in a pretty bad light on this KPI. Sandwiched among our SE Asian neighbours Singapore is hardly a place for the rest of the world to look up to. The Swiss standard of living is a distant dream, since they are up in first spot, and those modern Asian powerhouses, HK, S Korea and Japan are far ahead of Singapore, which can only really claim to be a second rate Asian nation by this metric.
Secondly, lets look at democratic freedoms. Singapore from time to time proclaims itself as a "Westminster Democracy", and most of those first world nations it aspires to be amongst are themselves democracies; in fact Switzerland has one of the longest histories of democratic freedom in the world. Again, we are thankful to the Economist Intelligence Unit, based in another first world country, the UK, for going to the trouble of rating 167 countries on their democratic freedom. Again, Singapore ranks a lowly 82, barely outdoing HK which is an administrative region of China.
1. Sweden
8. Switzerland.
17. Japan
28. Korea
54. Thailand
68. Malaysia
69. Indonesia
82. Singapore
84. Hong Kong
Again, Singapore is a long way from first world status, outdone by almost all of it's Asian neighbours, the modern Asian leaders of Japan and S Korea are far ahead of the little red dot, which trails even Malaysia and Indonesia. Again, true first world status is achieved by Switzerland and other European countries, but Singapore is a second rate player in Asia, let alone the world as a whole.
The third metric of interest is civil liberties, again this is something which first world nations aspire to uphold and we are grateful to an American organisation called "Freedom House" for compiling data on a similar number of countries as presented above. Unfortunately the data is presented alphabetically rather than sorted from "most free" to "least free" but we can still compare the score in Singapore with that of it's neighbours.
1.0 Switzerland
1.5 Japan
1.5 S Korea
2.5 Indonesia
3.5 Philippines
3.5 Hong Kong
4.0 Malaysia
4.5 Singapore
4.5 Thailand
Again, the same trend is emerging, Singapore is stuck amongst or often below most of it's immediate neighbours, lags behind those countries seen as modern Asian leaders, such as Japan, S Korea & HK, and is far away from first world status or enjoying a "Swiss standard of living". In this index Switzerland has the best score possible and Japan and S Korea are one rung below on the ladder. Singapore is down in the basement with Thailand, being looked down on by Malaysia, Philippines and Indonesia.
The conclusion to draw from all this is that whilst most people don't pay much attention to Singapore, the reality is that in comparison to first world nations, on the metrics that first world nations care about, Singapore is a long way behind the world leaders. It's not a coincidence that all three of these surveys are carried out by organisations in first world nations (France, UK & US) because one of the things that makes first world nations such, is that they care about certain ideals and concepts enough to aspire to be seen as leaders in those fields. As long as Singapore has leaders who ignore such goals and ideals, Singapore will never be seen as a first world nation, and is very unlikely to move up in the rankings towards the Swiss style leadership positions that the rest of the world looks up to. In fact, as long as the current situation remains, it is highly likely that Singapore will remain as a second rate Asian nation for the foreseeable future.
Sunday 31 October 2010
Thursday 28 October 2010
Why is HDB a private company?
Back in the early days of Singapore, when the HDB was first founded, it had the very laudable goal of producing a large quantity of cheap public housing, and to reflect its public service mission, it was a government department famously run by Lim Kim San, who worked for no salary for 3 years!
Nowadays, the situation is very different. Not least because it is hard to imagine the PM's wife (or the MM's daughter in law) working for no salary, but more seriously because the HDB was incoprorated into a private company in July 2003 then in 2004, it was 100% bought out by Temasek Holdings. To me this seems strange, HDB has gone from a selflessly run public service, to being owned by a profit driven private company, presumably with a highly paid board and shareholders demanding a dividend and return on equity. If you doubt the fact that Temasek is not a profit driven organisation, just look at the reaction on line every time they announce another huge loss on one of their investments, and their complimentary efforts to boast of their rates of return. So there inevitably will be some tension in HDB between providing an affordable public service to Singaporeans, and delivering profit to shareholders and Temasek Holdings.
So the question is whether this is a hypothetical conflict of interest or a real cause for concern to Singaporeans. This question doesn't have a simple answer, we can only try to infer the reality by look at the affordability of public housing to the average Singaporean. Luckily, the analysis has already been done for us by Eugene Yeo at Temasek Review and unfortunately the answer is that housing in Singapore is either "Unaffordable" or "Severely Unaffordable" by the internationally recognised Median Multiple measure.
Of course the Singapore government, through the state controlled media, would like to promulgate the idea that housing is perfectly affordable, the ultimate answer is for Singaporeans to ask themselves if they truly believe that, or if housing actually feels more expensive and harder to come by every year.
Nowadays, the situation is very different. Not least because it is hard to imagine the PM's wife (or the MM's daughter in law) working for no salary, but more seriously because the HDB was incoprorated into a private company in July 2003 then in 2004, it was 100% bought out by Temasek Holdings. To me this seems strange, HDB has gone from a selflessly run public service, to being owned by a profit driven private company, presumably with a highly paid board and shareholders demanding a dividend and return on equity. If you doubt the fact that Temasek is not a profit driven organisation, just look at the reaction on line every time they announce another huge loss on one of their investments, and their complimentary efforts to boast of their rates of return. So there inevitably will be some tension in HDB between providing an affordable public service to Singaporeans, and delivering profit to shareholders and Temasek Holdings.
So the question is whether this is a hypothetical conflict of interest or a real cause for concern to Singaporeans. This question doesn't have a simple answer, we can only try to infer the reality by look at the affordability of public housing to the average Singaporean. Luckily, the analysis has already been done for us by Eugene Yeo at Temasek Review and unfortunately the answer is that housing in Singapore is either "Unaffordable" or "Severely Unaffordable" by the internationally recognised Median Multiple measure.
Of course the Singapore government, through the state controlled media, would like to promulgate the idea that housing is perfectly affordable, the ultimate answer is for Singaporeans to ask themselves if they truly believe that, or if housing actually feels more expensive and harder to come by every year.
What PM Lee's National Day Speech didn't say about FTs
PM Lee devoted a large portion of his National Day speech this year to the hot topic of Foreign Talent, an area for concern to many Singaporeans as the recent influx of FTs causes competition for jobs, housing, seats on the MRT and all the other public services that are shared by everyone living in Singapore.
Unfortunately he made it pretty clear that he is out of touch with Singaporeans real concerns on the influx of foreign talent, in so far as he focussed most of his examples on the benefits of attracting highly talented specialists from modern developed western countries, whilst neglecting to mention the negative impacts of effectively flooding Singapore with cheap labour from less developed Asian countries.
Take for example his comments about Microsoft, who hire the best IT brains in the world to deliver the sort of cutting edge software they are supposed to be known for. This sort of FT arguably is a real talent, who can contribute valuable skills to the economy of any country and which Singapore should probably be happy to accept in reasonable numbers. The real problem comes from more mid level roles in Engineering, Accountancy, Administration etc, roles that many Singaporeans go to University to study for, could surely do to a high standard, but find themselves directly competing with foreign nationals for. This is a completely pointless competition, as since there are plenty of Singaporeans who can do the jobs, the question of why the FTs are here at all is a very valid one, and one which the Minister Mentor's son did not address.
The oft cited response to this is that Singaporeans are supposed to train up, and better themselves to compete in the global marketplace, and on the face of it that is a laudable aim. The problems however with this reasoning are many. First and most obvious is that it is a bit brutal to tell your children to go get a Masters and compete properly after they've gone to University for a few years and got a degree in a good subject. This is not an issue for those lucky enough to get a job handed to them by their parents, but not all Singaporeans are lucky enough to be the son or daughter in law of MM LKY. Even more important than this though, is the fact that this "global competition" is not one of skills but of price. It is easy to see this from the fact that so many Foreigners of Dubious Talent (FDTs) come from countries with lower costs of living and salaries than Singapore, for a chance to earn some money for a few years and leave again.
What happens is that an enterprising young Chinese or Malaysian comes to Singapore to do a job that a Singaporean can do, (for example as an accountant in a car sales office) but with a view to living cheaply, saving up a bit of money (which is actually quite a lot back home) and then leaving again. Since they tend to be young, and their plan is to make money and leave after a few years, they are quite happy to live cramped in large numbers into small apartments or condos. The result of this is that young Singaporeans, trying for example to start a family, probably having similar qualifications as many of these overseas temporary visitors, simply cannot compete if they want to live a normal life, as their rental bills and thus salary expectations are bound to be higher.
PM Lee didn't talk about this side of the foreign talent issue because it is one that he has no answer to. It pushes the wages and standard of living for ordinary Singaporeans down, and the only people it benefits are the foreigners who head back to their own country with a nice pile of money to show for their time in Singapore. Actually, there is one other group that this benefits, and that is Singapore's government Ministers, who have performance related bonuses linked to GDP growth, and GDP can certainly be pushed up by importing cheap labour.
So the question for ordinary Singaporeans is this, does the government represent citizens own best interests, or their own performance linked bonuses when they import cheap foreign "talent", and why does PM Lee not want to address these questions in his national day speech?
Unfortunately he made it pretty clear that he is out of touch with Singaporeans real concerns on the influx of foreign talent, in so far as he focussed most of his examples on the benefits of attracting highly talented specialists from modern developed western countries, whilst neglecting to mention the negative impacts of effectively flooding Singapore with cheap labour from less developed Asian countries.
Take for example his comments about Microsoft, who hire the best IT brains in the world to deliver the sort of cutting edge software they are supposed to be known for. This sort of FT arguably is a real talent, who can contribute valuable skills to the economy of any country and which Singapore should probably be happy to accept in reasonable numbers. The real problem comes from more mid level roles in Engineering, Accountancy, Administration etc, roles that many Singaporeans go to University to study for, could surely do to a high standard, but find themselves directly competing with foreign nationals for. This is a completely pointless competition, as since there are plenty of Singaporeans who can do the jobs, the question of why the FTs are here at all is a very valid one, and one which the Minister Mentor's son did not address.
The oft cited response to this is that Singaporeans are supposed to train up, and better themselves to compete in the global marketplace, and on the face of it that is a laudable aim. The problems however with this reasoning are many. First and most obvious is that it is a bit brutal to tell your children to go get a Masters and compete properly after they've gone to University for a few years and got a degree in a good subject. This is not an issue for those lucky enough to get a job handed to them by their parents, but not all Singaporeans are lucky enough to be the son or daughter in law of MM LKY. Even more important than this though, is the fact that this "global competition" is not one of skills but of price. It is easy to see this from the fact that so many Foreigners of Dubious Talent (FDTs) come from countries with lower costs of living and salaries than Singapore, for a chance to earn some money for a few years and leave again.
What happens is that an enterprising young Chinese or Malaysian comes to Singapore to do a job that a Singaporean can do, (for example as an accountant in a car sales office) but with a view to living cheaply, saving up a bit of money (which is actually quite a lot back home) and then leaving again. Since they tend to be young, and their plan is to make money and leave after a few years, they are quite happy to live cramped in large numbers into small apartments or condos. The result of this is that young Singaporeans, trying for example to start a family, probably having similar qualifications as many of these overseas temporary visitors, simply cannot compete if they want to live a normal life, as their rental bills and thus salary expectations are bound to be higher.
PM Lee didn't talk about this side of the foreign talent issue because it is one that he has no answer to. It pushes the wages and standard of living for ordinary Singaporeans down, and the only people it benefits are the foreigners who head back to their own country with a nice pile of money to show for their time in Singapore. Actually, there is one other group that this benefits, and that is Singapore's government Ministers, who have performance related bonuses linked to GDP growth, and GDP can certainly be pushed up by importing cheap labour.
So the question for ordinary Singaporeans is this, does the government represent citizens own best interests, or their own performance linked bonuses when they import cheap foreign "talent", and why does PM Lee not want to address these questions in his national day speech?
Wednesday 20 October 2010
Singapore Fiddling Carbon Reduction Numbers
Singapore is an island nation, with vast amounts of low lying land reclaimed from the sea filled with shopping malls. The highest point on the island, apart from Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew getting on his high horse from time to time, is a jungle covered hill called Bukit Timah. It's probably fair to say that Singapore stands to suffer more than most countries in the event of climate change, and that is why it is such a disappointment that the government of Singapore is not being honest about what, if anything, it intends to do to prevent global warming.
The official line is that Singapore will achieve a 16% reduction in carbon emissions by 2020, based on a comparison with the "business as usual" case. There are a few problems with this, for example the magnitude of the proposed reductions is in fact very modest, and the making of the reductions is actually dependent on the rest of the world also agreeing to making significant commitments. Such a shame that the Singapore government is not willing to take a lead a topic that any forecaster can see is bound to be a significant issue for Singaporeans in years to come.
However, the real problem with the proposed reduction is not the magnitude or the lack of leadership, but rather that the numbers are completely disingenuous, and that this reduction is in fact nothing of the sort, because the "business as usual" case, which the reduction is supposed to be relative to, is a purely invented hypothetical scenario that appears to have no realistic basis in fact.
The Singapore government has published carbon emissions data from 1990 to 2007, and the average annual growth in emissions is 3.6%. What we might expect is that "business as usual" represents a continuation of that 3.6% trend, and the 16% reductions are below that. However, what we actually find is that the "business as usual" outlook predicts an arbitrary 5% annual increase in emissions, and not coincidentally at all, we discover that achieving the stated "goal" of reducing carbon emissions by 16% in 2020, actually involves nothing more complicated than "reducing" the annual growth in carbon emissions to 3.6%! That means, the reduction of 16% actually involves doing nothing at all.
So Singapore actually plans to do nothing on the topic of climate change, a course of action that will probably cause all sorts of problems for everyday Singaporeans, but less so for the rich elite who can always move to a nice bungalow or landed house on high ground in Bukit Timah.
The official line is that Singapore will achieve a 16% reduction in carbon emissions by 2020, based on a comparison with the "business as usual" case. There are a few problems with this, for example the magnitude of the proposed reductions is in fact very modest, and the making of the reductions is actually dependent on the rest of the world also agreeing to making significant commitments. Such a shame that the Singapore government is not willing to take a lead a topic that any forecaster can see is bound to be a significant issue for Singaporeans in years to come.
However, the real problem with the proposed reduction is not the magnitude or the lack of leadership, but rather that the numbers are completely disingenuous, and that this reduction is in fact nothing of the sort, because the "business as usual" case, which the reduction is supposed to be relative to, is a purely invented hypothetical scenario that appears to have no realistic basis in fact.
The Singapore government has published carbon emissions data from 1990 to 2007, and the average annual growth in emissions is 3.6%. What we might expect is that "business as usual" represents a continuation of that 3.6% trend, and the 16% reductions are below that. However, what we actually find is that the "business as usual" outlook predicts an arbitrary 5% annual increase in emissions, and not coincidentally at all, we discover that achieving the stated "goal" of reducing carbon emissions by 16% in 2020, actually involves nothing more complicated than "reducing" the annual growth in carbon emissions to 3.6%! That means, the reduction of 16% actually involves doing nothing at all.
So Singapore actually plans to do nothing on the topic of climate change, a course of action that will probably cause all sorts of problems for everyday Singaporeans, but less so for the rich elite who can always move to a nice bungalow or landed house on high ground in Bukit Timah.
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