Tan Kin Lian's Blog: Economic strategies committee

Monday, February 15, 2010

Economic strategies committee - real change or just words?

Read this article by Dr. Wong Wee Nam. I share his view that we should not continue to follow the strategies that do not seem to work. We need new approaches, rather than keep repeating the same nice words.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...: New vision. Same old people.; February 15, 2010 11:40 PM
Anonymous said...: 换汤不换药。

Total failure, total wayang. Totally PAP.; February 16, 2010 12:24 AM
Anonymous said...: Frankly for the Committee to come out with new "out-of-the-box" ideas is not easy. Easy to spell out but not easy to implement to succeed, that is.

Because the education, culture and political system simply do not allow it to flourish! And these are the most difficult to change for obvious reasons.

Things like entrepreneurship, risk taking, creativity, inventiveness etc cannot be done top down but must be spontaneous from bottom up.

And definitely cannot simply be legislated by committees.; February 16, 2010 1:36 AM
Anonymous said...: Wise up! When you read any of these economic strategies reports on Singapore, keep one single thought uppermost in your mind:

How does any of these strategies benefit me immediately?

Beware of the "trickle down economic" strategies and propaganda.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickle-down_economics

"Trickle-down economics" and "trickle-down theory" are terms of political rhetoric that refer to the policy of providing tax cuts or other benefits to businesses in the belief that this will indirectly benefit the broad population.[1] The term has been attributed to humorist Will Rogers, who said during the Great Depression that "money was all appropriated for the top in hopes that it would trickle down to the needy."[2]

Proponents of these policies claim that if the top income earners invest more into the business infrastructure and equity markets, it will in turn lead to more goods at lower prices, and create more jobs for middle and lower class individuals.[citation needed] Proponents argue economic growth flows down from the top to the bottom, indirectly benefiting those who do not directly benefit from the policy changes. However, others have argued that "trickle-down" policies generally do not work,[3] and that the trickle-down effect might be very slim.[4]; February 16, 2010 12:12 PM
Anonymous said...: Actually, I wonder how many of the "wise ones" on the ESC truly believe what they wrote, without any reservations? It will be very interesting if their homes and offices are bugged and we can really hear the words behind the scenes.; February 16, 2010 4:12 PM
Anonymous said...: If you are paid more than $1,500,000 a year for a Junior Minister and $3,500,000 for a President, they must continue to tell the public that they are well worth the money regardless whether the policy is old. The baby boomers know that these policies have been tried but it is the new generation that are ignorance.

If the President is paid so much and doing almost the same as previous Presidents, what is then the meaning of KPI, productivity, "faster, cheaper and better"

My conclusion is the method of performance measurement use at the top is different from the heartlanders. For the heartlanders, all you need to do is work harder, be cheaper thus you can become faster. From this, you increase productivity, drives up GDP & GNP so that the millionairs will conclude that THEY have done a GREAT job and give themselves more millions a year.

So who is the sucker? Of course, it is the Faster, Cheaper and Better person...

Who is laughing to the bank? Not the heartlanders, of course.

You continue to struggle and fight for a place in the local U and they just skip and send their Children, Grandchildren overseas so as to escape the stress and come back with a Degree. All this is because we agreed to pay them millions a year.; February 17, 2010 9:21 AM