TR EMERITUS

In Parliament on Friday Indranee Rajah reiterated like a broken record the constant PAP refrain that we need more immigrants and new citizens, using the hook that TFR has now fallen to 1.05. In the best PAP traditions of ensuring that anything must be due to factors beyond the Government’s control while anything good is the result of the PAP’s superior foresight, she tried to blame it on last year’s Year of the Tiger. However the trend has been steadily downwards from the 1980s when it was already well below the rate of 2.1 required to maintain a stable population. In fact a rate of 1.3 in the absence of immigration would lead to a halving of population size in 45 years or so while a rate of 1.05 if sustained would mean a much faster population drop, possibly as few as 30 years. The PAP Government have always been sanguine about Singapore’s low birth rate and slow to adopt family friendly policies. Reform Party has since 2015 advocated paying mothers a taxable child benefit of $300 per child per month to the age of 18, an amount which should probably be increased to at least $400 now. In addition we have said preschool and university education should be free and all education fees abolished. LHL and the PAP have constantly said that such generous policies would bankrupt Singapore and that hard choices have to be made with limited fiscal resources. While this year’s Budget takes baby steps towards providing more help for families with children in the form of enhanced cash payments, they only last till the children are 6 and a half whereas support should be given till the child reaches adulthood. Furthermore the Child Development Account can only be used at approved institutions, such as kindergartens (where the PAP benefits directly through the PAP Community Foundation) and in paying for medical care at hospitals under the MOH Holdings umbrella. This is another way in which budgetary resources are channelled to Temasek and GIC as MOH Holdings’ revenues are excluded from the Budget and may be transferred to our sovereign wealth funds. Also the assistance is slanted towards richer parents because of the co-matching scheme in which higher savings in the account are matched by the Government. The parents who need the most help are those who are unlikely to have savings. The Government’s eugenicist underpinnings are also evident in the Working Mothers Child Relief Scheme. After much criticism from me, the PAP have finally listened. This Budget makes it slightly less a tax break for rich women by capping the maximum amount per child but it is still an unnecessary subsidy for the rich and not to the people who are likely to need it most. Far better to provide a fixed cash benefit for all mothers with children which can be clawed back by making it taxable. In the context of the Government’s admitted staggeringly large surpluses of nearly $400 billion since 2005 and total public sector (including Temasek and GIC) surpluses of well over $1 trillion over the same same period, with total reserves of about $3 trillion, the Government’s indifference in the face of our plunging birth rate and unwillingness to do more than provide a few crumbs, magnified to appear a generous hand out by their media monopoly, looks absurd. The Government pretends that it spends a lot with the smoke-and-nirrors charade of the Net Investment Returns Contribution. However most of this is not real spending. Instead of the NIRC farce, we should easily be able to afford to spend another $80-150 billion a year on improving the lives of our citizens without putting a dent in the reserves, just slowing what should be their rate of growth. But then the PAP are imbued with a social Darwinian ethic that believes that Singapore benefits from ruthless competition among those at the bottom, though strangely this Darwinism does not apply to the elite’s wives, children and relatives who ensure they get the plum jobs, starting with the PM who has consistently hidden from Singaporeans for 20 years what he pays his wife and whose son works in the family company. No matter if the native population dwindles to zero because they can always be replaced by fresh blood from outside. The PAP says Singaporeans have to welcome foreign talent but then ensures that the dice are loaded against Singaporeans, and in particular male Singaporeans. PAP policies of ruthlessly extracting a surplus from Singaporeans while lying and deceiving have resulted in a situation where in the absence of immigration Singapore would rapidly become a ghost town. This makes the PAP claims to be safeguarding the reserves for future generations particularly nonsensical. Singaporeans need to ask themselves who precisely the reserves are being safeguarded for. Or, and this would be the ultimate cynical con trick by LHL and his Ministers, is this philosophy of social Darwinism a facade and the reality is that the reserves have disappeared, whether through mismanagement or even fraud. Until we change this Government we will never know.     Kenneth Jeyaretnam   About the author: I’m a Singaporean economist who became an opposition activist. I blog to provide an alternative to the porkies that the Pinkies tell. It just so happens that my alternative is the truth. That’s why I’ve never been sued in any civil or criminal court no matter how hard hitting my criticism. I’m quoted and interviewed and asked to speak across the world but largely censored in Singapore in an effort to silence my political opinions. The left hate me because they think I split their vote and because I eschew their outmoded economic models. Models that don’t work. The Right and the Conservatives hate me because I’m a liberal. I’m not sure what the middle think of me. I don’t think there are more than a handful of people in the middle, here in Singapore. I’m a Singaporean born and bred, dual heritage, my parents Singaporean established here before the State of Singapore was created. I’m not Eurasian. I read economics at Cambridge and could be broadly described as from the Keynesian school but I believe in interventions. I was formerly a successful hedge fund manager. After economics and politics my greatest interests are history, film and Makan. I run but I run so I can eat like a Singaporean.      Read More →

1. The Net Investment Return Contribution (NIRC) in Singapore is a portion of the investment returns from the country's reserves that the government uses to fund its annual budget. It was introduced in 2009 and is calculated as a percentage of the net investment returns of the Singapore government's past reserves. Under the NIRC framework, the government is allowed to use up to 50% of the expected long-term real returns on its net assets managed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and GIC Private Limited (GIC). The contribution is set at a minimum of 50% of the net investment returns on the assets. The NIRC is an important source of revenue for the Singapore government, and it helps to ensure the country's fiscal sustainability. It also helps to maintain the stability and security of the country's reserves over the long term. The NIRC provides a predictable and sustainable source of funding for the government's expenditures, which includes investments in infrastructure, education, healthcare, and other social services. 2. The Net Investment Return Contribution (NIRC) in Singapore is calculated based on the net investment returns, which include both realized and unrealized gains and losses. Realized gains or losses refer to the actual profits or losses that the government earns when it sells an investment, while unrealized gains or losses refer to the potential profits or losses that the government could earn if it were to sell an investment at the current market value. In the case of the NIRC, both types of gains and losses are taken into account when calculating the net investment returns. This approach provides a more comprehensive view of the returns generated by the government's investments and helps to ensure that the NIRC is based on the overall performance of the investments, rather than just the realized gains or losses. It's worth noting that the NIRC is calculated based on the expected long-term real returns of the government's net assets, and not on the actual returns earned in any given year. This approach helps to ensure that the contribution is stable and predictable over the long term, even if the actual returns fluctuate from year to year. 3. It is possible for the Net Investment Return Contribution (NIRC) in Singapore to be negative if there is a big loss in the market value of the investments managed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and GIC Private Limited (GIC). This is because the NIRC is calculated based on the net investment returns, which is the difference between the investment income and the investment expenses. If the investment income is negative, meaning that the investments have experienced losses, the NIRC can turn negative. In such a scenario, the government would not receive any contribution from the net investment returns, and it may need to draw on its reserves to fund its annual budget. However, it's worth noting that the NIRC is calculated based on the expected long-term real returns of the government's net assets, and not on the actual returns earned in any given year. This approach helps to ensure that the contribution is stable and predictable over the long term, even if the actual returns fluctuate from year to year. 4. The investments of Temasek Holdings are not included in the Net Investment Return Contribution (NIRC) in Singapore. The NIRC is based on the net investment returns of the government's past reserves, which are managed by two entities: the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and GIC Private Limited (GIC). Temasek Holdings is a separate entity from MAS and GIC and manages its own portfolio of investments. While Temasek Holdings is wholly owned by the Singapore government, its investments are not part of the government's past reserves and are therefore not included in the calculation of the NIRC. However, the investments of Temasek Holdings can still contribute to the overall economic growth of Singapore and generate tax revenues for the government. Additionally, Temasek Holdings can choose to invest in sectors and companies that support the government's strategic goals and priorities, such as investments in infrastructure, healthcare, and education.   Tan Kin Lian *Written with assistance of ChatGPT      Read More →

I make no secret that I detest working in the office and regard white collar work as a form of masturbation where people get a high on being in a cubicle because they happened to have had the good fortune of spending three years in a cocoon so that someone who has done nothing useful would be able to issue them a certificate as a validation of their cleverness. Sure, I’ve worked in a professional organization for the last nine-years of my life. I do so because it provided me with the steady income, which allowed me to contribute to the family that I was building and now, I have a chance to feather a small nest for the day I am too crippled to be of any use to anyone. It pays relatively better than blue-collar work too. However, I make it a point of doing all the physical work in the office because it gets me away from the office and needing to look at files and spreadsheets, thus making things tolerable. I do appreciate the fact that work professionals do. A good lawyer saves you a lot of trouble. A good accountant is must have when it comes to managing money. As a former US president pointed out – you would want the surgeon operating on you to know everything that there was to know everything to know about surgery. So, I am not against professionals or academic study per se and I whilst I detest entering offices, I appreciate that it works for some. What I am against is office culture and the need for paper qualifications being imposed on me. I admittedly took a “serious” job late in life and now that I achieved what everyone expected, I'm left wondering if my life was better for it. Sure, I have an nice, respectable title and the income helped pay down the house for a while. However, when I had a lot less anger towards the world and respected the clients I worked with when I was a freelancer. Being an employee has its benefits but there are things about it that grate on me. One of them is an obsession with visibility rather than with actual production. I remember when I first started at the Bistrot and my colleagues would urge me to look for things to do because the boss wanted to see his staff being busy. Now, I get why you need to do things on a job but I don’t see why I should look for things to do for the sake of doing it. My time in the Bistrot was best spent focusing on important things like making sure premium wines moved rather than inventing things to do so that the boss would feel that he was getting hour’s-worth out of me (I made the point to him that as long as I managed to sell a certain number of glasses of wine, I was actually paying myself). What is true in the blue collar world, is even more so in the office where people have come to take great pride in the fact that they burn their spare time in the office and how they are so consumed by work that they don’t eat, sleep or drink. Now, I get that working long hours from time-to-time is necessary and as an uncle who once pointed out to me, the days when you knocked off exactly at six-o’clock have long gone. Here in East Asia, we take particular pride in being among the most hard-working people on the planet. The Japanese and Koreans in particular, make no bones about the fact that they devote their lives to the company they work for. However, whilst there are times when putting in the hours are necessary, one has to ask whether the hours worked are necessarily beneficial. Why do we equate long hours spent in a cubicle as being the same as hard work? I could, if pushed to, sit in the office and send emails out at obscene hours but would that mean that I was hard working or productive? Let’s take a look at the countries that work the longest hours: [LINK] Now, let’s look at the countries that are deemed as the most productive: [LINK] The most obvious point here is that there is no correlation between the places that work long hours and the countries that produce the most per worker. If you argue that the average Irish worker is lazy for working 39.7 hours per week when compared the average Mauritanian who works 54 hours a week, the automatic counter is that the Irish workers gives significantly more back in terms of what is produced. Go to any given office in a developing country and you are bound to find people running around like there was a lot to do. Posting letters is a full time job for some people in the office and they become very busy at it. In the developed world, offices are different. One has to avoid sitting near the exit because at the end of the day, there will be a stamped. Are we saying that people in developing countries are more hard working and dedicated to their jobs than those in developed ones? Well, maybe they are but why aren’t companies leaving developed countries to hire more devoted and hardworking employees? Well, it could be because the guys in the developed countries are more productive? In a way, the problem in developing countries is the fact that bosses like the appearance of busy and hence you get workers who become busy but nobody knows what they are busy doing. I’d call this being busily unproductive. The solution is simple. Instead of paying people to look like they are doing work, why don’t we actually pay people to produce work. Hence, instead of spending time in an office until the wee hours of the day, people will focus on getting things done and busily unproductive might finally be an oxymoron.   Tang Li *Although I’ve been based mainly in Singapore for nearly two decades, I’ve had the privilege of being able meet people who have crossed borders and cultures. I’ve befriended ministers and ambassadors and worked on projects involving a former head of state. Yet, at the same time, I’ve had the privilege of befriending migrant labourers and former convicts. All of them have a story to tell. All of them add to the fabric of life. I hope to express the stories that inspire us to create life as it should be.      Read More →