Singapore Democrats

Why must PAP ministers demand that their minimum wage must run into millions of dollars? Top civil servants, including judges are "paid salaries" that are out of this world. But on the other hand, the wages of our workers are kept low and reduced further by foreign cheap labour allowed to enter freely from Third World countries.

Since becoming PRs and citizens is for the asking, why can't we have foreigners as ministers and top civil servants? Money saved this way can go a long way to finance other projects crying for funds.

We either have foreigners on the cheap as ministers or do away with the "minimum wage" of millions of dollars demanded by PAP ministers.

This article presents an opportunity for me to present this tough-nut-to-crack - ministerial incomes - from a different angle, not that all others are not valid.

Whether, it is the “right to rule” on delivering economic progress, not on winning elections fair and square, or about being the “best man for the job” or “moral right” as per Confucian concepts, it points back to something that I am now calling the culture of “elite entitlement”

Before I go on, I will say that I use the word “elite” very sparingly; the individuals from the 'elite/s' which includes the PAP themselves, that the PAP deliberately puts in place far from possess the qualities that qualifies them as true elite/s; 'elite' in Singapore is an artificial construct.

Indeed, their only role appears to be the flipside of elite entitlement, which is to act as a predatory force on the non-elites by dis-entitling them.

Elite entitlement is also the reason to justify so many other things, that of course flow from “the right to rule” because it is a “moral right” and reward for “being the best man for the job”:

1. the astronomically high incomes – I will follow up with another post that might illustrate this particular point more vividly;

2. blind respect and obedience to their authority;

3. an inordinately high, and unhealthy, degree of reverentiality towards them; normal levels of civility towards an “elite” would be interpreted as confrontational. (I happen to believe that this is a barrier to effecticve communication, and anathema to free speech.)

I am sure readers could come up with more examples of how elite entitlement manifests itself.

Funny, isn’t it? When it is these same people who charge disadvantaged groups with an “entitlement mentality” when their members asked to be given their rightful dues?

Specifically on the PAP’s elite entitlement to out-of-this-world incomes, they started out justifying it on the basis that it will prevent corruption. I responded by making many stinging online attacks against it charging that ‘the PAP must only attract the easily-corruptible’. They started changing their tune almost immediately after that; it’s now “elite entitlement”.

I start out with this quote by Lee Hsien Loong from the recent Charlie Rose interview:

[Quote]

“Our attitude is: you must pay for the quality of the person you want, and pay for the responsibility of the job which you want the person to do,” he explained.”And what can be more responsible than running a central bank or running an economy or running an education system, where you’re not only dealing with billions of dollars but where you make a mistake, the livelihoods and the futures of millions of people will be at stake.”You want the best person and you want him to be properly motivated and focused on his job and not based on a revolving door.”

[Unquote]

“Productive capacity”, the attributes needed for productivity by individuals, as well as the attributes needed for productivity in a work environment to enable those individuals, is a topic of both personal and and professional interest for me. When I use those criteria in it to make the assessment of the PAP’s productive capacity, there is only one conclusion that I draw; they are hardly fit to rule, much less being the best people to do it.

So much has already been written about the quality of their performance, so I will not elaborate on this aspect further.

After having the “prevent-corruption” crutch pulled out from under them, they went on to what is really the “economic rent” justification for their incomes.

“Economic rent” – os opposed to incomes determined by market forces – is income hat you pay to the rare few like baseball and (American) football players, and some celebrities. Even someone like the late newsanchor Barbara Frum was earning economic rent. (Yes, the levels that economic rent get even further skewed in a highly capitalist environment; score one down for the PAP.)

In all cases where the income is really economic rent, it is paid out on the basis that:

1. The person being paid economic rent is deserving of it because his/her talents – usually the result of natural attributes, and training and/or education – were further honed by widespread and highly intense competition involving large numbers of people.

2. That the result of that competition was rare, exceptional and often irreplaceable talent; and,

3. That not paying economic rent will result in a lowering in profitably greater than that of paying the difference between economic rent and an income at market rate. (If I’m not wrong, Barbara Frum was employed by ABC and not paying her the amount she earned would have resulted in loss of revenue to ABC greater than her income because of the ratings and thus advertising revenue her shows generated.)

Is any of the above true of either the situation in Singapore or PAP MPs and backbenchers?

Let’s see:

1. The PAP has completely disabled any political competition through brutal means.

2. They don’t know their jobs and have a very low productive capacity for them.

3. They can all take sick leave for the next year, and the people who are truly doing the work of keeping the country running – the civil service – will still ensure that the country runs. There will just be no public face to policy and no change in vision or policy direction for the next year. My point: most of the work is not done by them, and neither are they the true experts because the top echelon of the bureaucracy andother policy experts like academics and local and foreign consultants will still be responsible for it. Continued profitability is assured.

This brings us to the fundamental problem with the question of ministerial income. Can you use market- and corporate-based arguments for the determination of income in the public sector where profit is not the motive?

When people are attracted to a job because of the income, the ideals of public service become very easily corrupted; they would be in public service not because of the desire to be of service to the people but for self interest.

Now, why I am getting a sense of deja vu?

"The SDP's call for minimum wage rings louder and more urgently than ever."

It horrendous that civil servants are paid so much, but I think the argument here is that since civil servants are paid so much to prevent them from going into crime, then everyone else should also be overpaid. If you step back and think about it, how is overpaying everybody helping society? If everybody is overpaid, then what would happen to cost? No, 2 wrongs don't make it a right. Just because the civil servants are overpaid does not mean we should overpay everybody too.

The next point again is a fallacy. How does a minimum wage law help Madam Letchmi? You really believe that she will get a raise if there is such a law? She will lose her job if there's a minimum wage law. Evidence of that are already found in other countries with minimum wage law. Cashiers are almost out of existence here in the US because of the minimum wage law. Now, you bag and checkout your own items. Self service.

Robox, nice article. Which is why in my comments in a previous article that most Singaporeans are just packing their bags and leaving. I mean, if you are one of the elite, sure, you will have a good life. If you are out of the circle of elite, why stay to get further exploited? But even the elite are disgruntled. When you have all the money you want, your needs change. You want influence, you want the power to make decisions, etc. However, as part of the elite in Singapore, you have no such power unless you are right at the top.

people living in poverty face cumulative effects of deprivation which can lead to high stress levels, feelings of strain and utter desolation. i assume the madam in this case would be one such person living in much financial hardships. in addition to facing the lack of money, they face the loss of dignity and feelings of powerlessness as the rest of society act as moral vanguards, meting out moral judgements on them, blaming them for their individual failings.

people in power write the law defining what is and what is not criminal. law are thus simply an instrument whereby one group exercises control over others. The Crime Index emphasizes street crimes which members of the lower class are more likely to commit and not embezzlement or corporate crimes, which are more the province of the affluent and the powerful. a theft that yields a few hundred dollars is punishable by jail term and harsh fines, whereas polluting a stream or fixing prices which endanger public health or costs the public millions of dollars in artificially inflated costs, often draw a fine and no prison time.

crime is at times a natural consequence of inequality and repression in society. The cause of deviant behaviour can be two fold. one is the unequal distribution of resources needed to attain basic subsistence living. another is the unequal distribution of resources needed to follow acceptable paths to success. Our society emphasize a lot on success but the social structure does not provide the means for every person to gain the staus and the way success has been socialized and defined.

the function of the poor, of the poverty class is to subsidize the rich. it is not simply there are rich and poor. it is rather that some are rich because some are poor. without the poor subsidising by not acquiring their fair day's wage, where would the rich be able to get their multi-dollar profit from?

we must resist the notion that poverty is due to individual inadequacies and can be tackled by apolitical solutions. poverty and the poverty class is a structural problem with structural causes, seen especially in our neo-liberal economy, associated with economic and political factors like low pay, unemployment, recession, extinction of industries, widening income gaps, influx of migrant workers, deunionization leading to workers' losing bargaining power, etc. these are the root causes to the problem faced by poor people like the madam in this case i suppose.

There airse out of our economic system which exploits low paid workers and rewards the very rich. it is government action that is urgently needed to tackle growing inequality faced by the poor.

The honourable judge should reconsider such economic and social factors underlying the plight the Madam is in, external social forces which she has no control over. though she has some control over her action to take the money or not to take the money, yet, i wonder how free is the 'human agency' here, in her case, is she really a free agent, facing the enormous institutionalised barriers to gain a subsistence wage for living (i assume she is from the poverty class).

It will be good if we can approach using a restitutive justice approach instead of a retributive approach, since the goals of a justice system is to effect deterrence as well as to punish on behalf of the society against offenders who have broken the social contract. A restitutive approach can place her under parole or community work order as a form of getting the offender to pay back her offence to the society (it makes no sense to fine her $2000; where is the restitutive part?). this is also a better way for the community to learn how to accept her back as a society and accept her 'paying back', instead of having the entire society learn that the only way is thru a 'revengeful' one via harsh fine or in lieu of fine, go to jail.

Most interestingly, it is the poor committing violence and crimes against the poor , and pursued by the poor. They are all poor, unkind and unhappy, including the policeman. It is like putting all the chickens into a poor and crowded cage, they will start attacking each other, but provide great profits for the farmer.

I often see violence between bus drivers and passengers. I was wondering: you are all poor people , one driving a bus, one cannot afford a car, why are you fighting amongst yourself, you are the same kind, same working class.

For the sake of completeness, I post more on the topic of ministerial incomes.

Some people have used the size of the Singapore economy and the physical size of the country to argue against the high ministerial incomes. It think there is validity to it because it tellls us something about the scope of their jobs and whether income should also be comensurate to it.

But I will add one more point about the scope of their jobs.

Singapore is a city state, with the emphasis for the purpose of this discussion on "city". Thus the scope of their jobs, with the exception of the ministries of finance, law, defence, trade, and possibly a couple more, are more municipal than national in character; some are a mix of the two, though.

Except for their legislative function - and really, how valuable have they been there except as votes for the PAP - many cabinet ministers are actually doing the jobs of city councillors, the lowest paid politicians in a two- or three-tier government system.

Their astronomical incomes are also undeserving because of the nature of their jobs due as a result of its scope.

This time I will pick up on my own point from the first post.

"When people are attracted to a job because of the income, the ideals of public service become very easily corrupted; they would be not be in public service because of the desire to be of service to the people but for self interest."

I noted this order of events:

1. The vocal resentment towards the government's permissive policy of foreign workers/new immigrants was gaining momentum in the second half of last year.

2. The PAP government made some conciliatory moves.

(A secret portion of ministerial income is pegged to the GDP. With more people in the workforce by way of an influx from outside Singapore, the higher the GDP and therefore the portion of their income tied to the GDP. With a "calibrated inflow", there will therefore be a shortfall in their. This leads me to event #3.)

3. At the Budget debates this year, they voted for an 8.8% increase in their pay.

To make up for the expected shortfall in their incomes, perhaps?

Never let anyone convince us that their incomes are a private matter. It forms part of fiscal policy, like all items in the budget, and is therefore public policy.

Hi Buwakasha, thanks for the compliment. You said: "You want influence, you want the power to make decisions, etc. However, as part of the elite in Singapore, you have no such power unless you are right at the top."

It's true. Even the elites have ay least a latent dissatisfaction with the entire ystem. But they are also the most mobile and can pack up and leave at any time.

Buwakasha, I could have replied to you in the previous discussion, but a theme that you raised has been repeated here, anamely, your question, "How does a minimum wage law help Madam Letchmi?"

Well, the direct answer to it is that she would be earning substantially more than her current income. At her age and with greater experience and productive capacity behind her, she would have been earning even more than that. That might have been sufficient for her not to be tempted to pilfer money when the oppostunity presented itself; it is really about reducing the chances of people committing offences and crimes.

The indirect answer, and this is where I answer also to the similarly-themed questions in the prvious discussion, while the most direct beneficiaries of Minimum Wage are people like Mdm Letchmi, how do you think the mere existence of Minimum Wage acts to stall the free fall in incomes at higher levels - your level - in a deteriorating situtaion as the one right now?

It will stop the free fall for them too.

My contention with the "Minimum Wage raising costs for business, and will put people out of work" argument is that in the Singapore context, it is totally dishonest. The largest component, and I daresay, proportion, of operational costs comes from costs attributable totghose at the highest income earners: tehir incomes, their lack of a productive capacity, and the waste - which has a financial translation - that results.

Take another recent example with the introduction of ant-speculation measures, without which the affordability of flats for the lowest income earners as well as the problem of homelessness that it exacerbated would have continued unabated.

It folows the same principle: stop the predatory excess at the weakest section, an dthe rest of society will also be protected. How did you personally feel when those measures were introduced?

Incidentally, while it is the PAP government who introduced those measures, anti-speculation measures are a classic intervention from the Left - it is not the ultra-Left, as you claim for that would reger to communism.

I was the first person in Singapore who identified it here in this website as a contributing factor to runaway HDB prices. (But it might have come from the SDP tehmselves, being a party of the left.)

The immediate reaction just one or two days later was denial by Chua Mui Hoong. Then a couple of weeks later, the PAP introduced the anti-speculation measures. Go figure.

My point: there is tremendous value in the approach by the SDP and left-wing politics, because as cliched as it may sound, we are all not protected if the weakest among us are not protected.

Agnes Chia, thanks for your writeup. Singapore could really do with much, much more information coming from the sociological/social work angle.

I ope to see more ofyour posts.

She stole money because she needed it to pay her bills, and the sentence is..a fine?? That just makes everything even worse?

Isn't there some other kind of punishment that would work, considering she has repaid the money?

Robox, thanks for the reply. Here's some queries,

"Well, the direct answer to it is that she would be earning substantially more than her current income."

How so? Could you elaborate? As I understand, a minimum wage law is a law that restricts employers from hiring somebody below the minimum wage. It is not a law forcing employers to employ people at a higher wage. Employers can choose not to employ that person but employ some other person with higher productivity.

"At her age and with greater experience and productive capacity behind her, she would have been earning even more than that."

If that is true, she would be already be earning more. Unfortunately that is not true. She is not a slave to her current employers. If she indeed have that higher productive capacity, she would have gotten a higher salary. In any case, I do not see how a minimum wage law would change the situation for her.

"The largest component, and I daresay, proportion, of operational costs comes from costs attributable totghose at the highest income earners: tehir incomes, their lack of a productive capacity, and the waste - which has a financial translation - that results."

True, but you are refering to people directly or indirectly hired by our government. It is true that our government overpays people to either keep them in line so that they do not oppose them, or to keep them from quitting because they are so dissatisfied with their jobs. Take our military for example. No one wants to work there, but its the amazing high salary that keeps people there.

So the solution is to actually pay these people what they are really worth, much less. The solution cannot be to pay everyone else more, that would be crazy. You can't correct a wrong with another wrong.

http://money.ca.msn.com/savings-debt/gallery/gallery.aspx?cp-documentid=24079420&page=10

Hi Buwakasha,

I am going to break up my replies to you into several parts.

To my assertion, "...she would be earning substantially more than her current income", you asked:

"How so? Could you elaborate?"

It should be quite clear from one glance that Mdm Letchmi's salary is below minimum wage levels, taking into consideration factors like cost of living which is not only rising but is moving in an opposite direction from income being continually depressed.

The hardest hit by income deflation also happen to be the lowest level income earners.

It should be obvious that Mdm Letchmi belongs to that category of income earners.

Then you say, "As I understand, a minimum wage law is a law that restricts employers from hiring somebody below the minimum wage. It is not a law forcing employers to employ people at a higher wage."

Well, that's correct.

Then you go on, "Employers can choose not to employ that person but employ some other person with higher productivity."

Yes, that is exactly what spurs people on to higher levels of productivity.

Maintain low productivity levels, risk losing your job.

(Note: When I say "risk losing your job", I am not exactly answering your question which is more about employing people on the basis that they are merely *perceived* to be more productive, presumably at the job application and/or interview stage; a person's actual levels of productivity cannot be determined at either stage, even if an employer can make some guesses - hopefully educated ones - about potential productivity levels at the interview stage.)

Now, on to your next set of points where you say:

"If that is true, she would be already be earning more. Unfortunately that is not true. She is not a slave to her current employers. If she indeed have that higher productive capacity, she would have gotten a higher salary. In any case, I do not see how a minimum wage law would change the situation for her."

My retort is that you have painted an ideal world scenario of the employment/remuneration scene in Singapore that simply does not exist scene.

Minimum wage legislation cannot exist in a vacuum without other economic and labour reforms; it moves in tandem with those reforms.

The SDP's Economic Alternative implicitly acknowledges that because some of those reforms are explicitly mentioned in their economic plan.

In some respects, you are also putting the cart before the horse.

After that, to my point (edited for typos),

"The largest component, and I daresay, proportion, of operational costs comes from costs attributable to those at the level of highest income earners: their incomes, their lack of a productive capacity, and the waste - which has a financial translation - that results",

I actually agree with your reply. But I don't believe that this is problem that is confined to the government sector alone; I believe very strongly that it is a problem that is universal problem in Singapore and that includes the non-government sectors.

One important attribute of productivity is "enabling systems". What that means is that the conditions necessary for productivity have first to be created for produvtivity to be raised. That is the responsibility of the both governments as well as employers.

But with the PAP government, whose own productive capacity is embarrasingly appalling, continues to tripartite (read: "government interference in the non-government sectors) with the non-government sectors, and impose their own disabling culture on them, management which includes employers, in those sectors bring their disabling cultures into the workplace. (Much more of the transmission of the PAP government's disabling culture occurs by a process of osmosis.)

Which leads me to another attribute of productive capacity.

While we are accustomed to thinking of infrastructure in purely physical terms (ie. office space, computers, etc.), it actually also includes "organizational structure". This is a reference to:

1. the leadership structure of oragnizations;

2. whether the persons comprising the leadership structure themselves possess the attributes of productive capacity that accrue to the *individual* (I have not mentioned any here), as opposed to the attributes of productive capacity of the *environment* one works in; and,

3. whether those attributes enable or disable the workplace culture thus impacting on worker productivity.

My own observation is that the management culture in Singapore which in turn is a reflection of the PAP government's own management culture is severely disabling leading to unrealized productivity of workers.

I think I describe the typical workplace in Singapore.

Finally you say, "...the solution is to actually pay these people what they are really worth, much less. The solution cannot be to pay everyone else more, that would be crazy. You can't correct a wrong with another wrong."

I think you have seriously misrepresented the case for Minimum Wage. This is about a fair wage, and at all levels including the wage levels of the top income earners who are:

1. earning well beyond the actual worth of their work;

2. contributing disproportionately and excessively to operational costs; but,

3. are blaming those who add the least to costs for any rise in costs.

Think seriously about how wage is actually determined when you say something like this, "...the solution is to actually pay these people what they are really worth..."

First, wages are not about *people's* worth, but the worth of their *work*. And that is a most fundamental aspect of the culture of the predatory capitalism in Singapore that needs changing.

In Singapore, wage is determined not exclusively by market forces as often claimed, but more greatly by this culture.

"If you come to me, the employer, asking for a job as a cleaner, I have the right to judge you as being uneducated or (not having studied hard enough when you were at school). You are a bad person, and I have the right to hold you in the lowest esteem and pay you what I deem is *your* worth, and not the worth of your *work*."

Very feudal. And highly irrational!