Singapore Democrats

I know SDP is in need of funds and much effort must have gone into this publication...but would the $10 cost be a hindrance to propagation of your economic message?

For something as important as this (it's the economy, stupid as Clinton said) perhaps a lower cost price (to cover cost of printing and distribution)might help spread the message better.

Free PDF download might go far.

Just a suggestion.

Its good that the SDP is getting more professional. I think it has the potential to do very well. However, there's a part of the article where I think it could be rephrased or at least re-worded.

"Our biggest contention is the widening disparity between the super-rich in this country and middle- and lower income groups."

I doubt that is a contention at all. Nobody minds super-rich people if they were rich because they worked really hard and took risk that normal people would not. The question is about the the middle and lower income groups, not about the disparity. I mean I wouldn't be satisfied if we go communist and have everybody super poor. Sure, if everyone is super poor, there is no income disparity. That doesn't mean we are better off.

The opening statement of Gandhi's speech reads: "The PAP is fond of accusing the opposition of not offering an alternative vision for Singapore. It continues to propagate the untruth that its policies are the only ones for Singapore and that the opposition cannot come up with anything better."

I do not disagree with what he said.

But it seems that SDP itself has been cozying up to the PAP and agreeing with what the latter says about the shortcoming of the Opposition.

In a recent article titled "Because we stand for something", SDP stated: "The opposition has not done enough to articulate an alternative vision for this country. We are unambiguous in what we stand against, but are less clear about what we stand for."

Curiously, SDP has literally repeated PAP's accusation about the Opposition. It shows that it does not think too highly of the Opposition's intellectual abilities.

Of course, SDP wants to believe that it is the exception in the Opposition flock.

And maybe, just maybe, I might just agree with CSJ, at least in this area.

But there is someone who would get mighty upset with what SDP is saying now.

In he infamous interview with TODAY, Kenneth Jeyaretnam arrogantly said: "For the first time, you've got an Opposition party that is perceived as economically competent, credible, and proposing alternative policies that could really make a difference or change Singapore."

Of course he was referring to the Reform Party, but more specifically, he was brandishing his own "economic" double-first, Cambridge credentials.

KJ conveniently ignored the fact that CSJ has been churning out books that attempted to debunk government policies and proposed alternative ones. These include the minimum wages proposals and concerns about the employment of foreign labour, which KJ is currently coveting as his own.

Whether I agree with CSJ's proposals is immaterial. But minimally, he deserves credit for his effort and determination. thus far.

I read somewhere that in his speech, Dr Vincent Wijeysingha had stated that the SDP's Min Wage proposal is really menat to work in tandem with all the other policies proposed in It's About You.

This is apoint that I feel that the party cannot stress enough.

Not only does it loophole to attack the proposal with because very clearly, business costs WILL rise in response to MW legisdlation. However, that can only happen if MW is implemented IN ISOLATION from all the other necessary measures. Still, it is not just to forestall any cost-related counterarguments to SDP's proposal that this needs to be done because taken together with all other underline the important principle of non-exploitation of labour.

As a slight aside, at the recent economic forum organized by NUSPSA, the PAP's Indranee Rajah mentioned that - I am paraphrasing her words - 'the way forward is to raise workers' wages'.

Somehow, when a PAP MP proposes raising income whicjh ALSO will have the effect of raising operational costs, absolutely no one, not even in the opposition's ranks - I don't mean the parties but netizens - pounced on her words and allege the double standards that her party practises. Lim Swee Say's recent objections to MW was in part also due to concerns about raised operational costs if MW were implemented.

Is it only good policy when PAP policy results in raised costs but not when an opposition party does?

@ Buwakasha

From reading its alternative economic programme, the SDP has come up with "proposals and solutions" to the current economic problems that many Singaporeans face".

It's clear from its proposals that the SDP is not trying to bring about a society where everyone is poor. It wants an "equitable" society, an egalitarian economic system in which you don't find people collecting trash cans, card-boards, etc to eke out a living.

I think the SDP doesn't believe in a system where ministers help themselves with millions of dollars in "salary" while majority of our workers have to compete with alien cheap labour that are allowed into the country deliberately to suppress wages.

Let's promote and keep industries that offer decent employment to our people and not those looking for cheap labour from Third World countries. Singapore should not remain a "dumping ground" for industries offering low wages in order to "boost" GDP numbers to justify out-of-this-world income for PAP ministers, their relatives and cronies.

The existing system has also let in economic criminals, money launderers and the so-called super rich from the region and beyond to flood the country, thus creating a facade of "wealth and prosperity" all round.

"That doesn't mean we are better off."

seebeng

"egalitarian economic system in which you don't find people collecting trash cans, card-boards, etc to eke out a living."

Exactly, but the article degrades the so called "super-rich" and seeks to "close the disparity". My point is not to focus on the disparity, but talk more about why people need to collect trash cans, card-boards, etc to eke out a living. Also, it makes no mention of outlandish ministers salaries. Do you know why these people need to collect trash cans, card-boards, etc to eke out a living?

"with alien cheap labour that are allowed into the country deliberately to suppress wages."

This is where I disagree, I don't think Singaporeans are angry at alien cheap labour. I mean if someone is willing to work for less and can do a good job, that's just competition. Otherwise you might as well ban all imports of goods made in other countries. Aren't we better off on a whole if someone does something better at a cheaper price? You wouldn't go to NTUC and complain that the prices are too cheap would you? However, letting in too many foreign workers has consequences that might not be desirable, that is crowded public transport, safety issues, etc that must be balanced.

What really pissed me off is that when I was in NUS, the foreigners practically get free education. None of them paid any tuition and they get a stipend to boot. Locals are denied such privileges and we have to pay our way through college. That's nothing to do with foreign cheap labour.

Singapore is already a distance province of China. Only with China permission, SDP can relate such issue to Singaporean. All of you can see how LHL and GCT and even President Nat how they treated the Vice President of PRC. With so much respect and loyalty. The Vice President is meeting his Singapore cabinet to discuss the merger of Singapore with Mainland China. Why not as LKY had said before. Chine is Chinese and Singapore is Chinese but oversea Chinese. Its like a mother with her son working and having a home oversea he said. Then what would happened to the Malays and Indians Singaporean?? Illegal immigrant?

I was also from NUS and the international students got too many benefits!!! They don't need to pay the tuition fees at all but instead are bonded with Singapore companies on graduation. I have to find my own job after graduation and it almost kill me. People I know from China, India and some other countries got the jobs in ST electronics, kinetics, PSA and others government companies with ease. No need to wait and no need to be interview. Just wash feet and enter the workforce. They get free education mind you and we the locals must sponsor all of them. For what? For them to stay in Singapore and vote for PAP. Its already like 70% of the cohort are outsider and only 30% are locals students. With most of the local students are in SIM and oversea Uni. This has to be stop.

Buwakasha

The ever-widening income disparity, deliberately allowed to fester by the PAP elitist, has resulted in a rotten situation where workers “get $3 and ministers $1,000 for an hour's work....is exploitation at its ugliest”. SDP's alternative economic programme, a copy of which I bought at the Speakers' Corner last Saturday, touches on, among others, the obscene “salary” of PAP ministers. Bankrupt of sound economic policies and self-centered short-term measures to “boost” GDP numbers that are then used to justify their vulgar “income”, the PAP ministers are allowing Singapore to become the Monte Carlo of the East and a haven for money launderers, economic criminals wanted in neighboring and far away countries.


Competition, whether it is in the job market or business, has to be left to market forces, but should not be determined by government manipulation and distortion intentionally embarked upon by a neoliberal, crony capitalist regime at the expense of ordinary Singaporeans, vast majority of whom are wage earners.


On the one hand, the PAP, in particular Lee Kuan Yew, boasts about having moved Singapore from a Third World country to the First World within a generation. But on the other, it has opened the floodgate to let in cheap labour from Third World countries to sardine-pack the place to feed hungry, low-value-based MNCs, GLCs and TLCs.


If Singapore is to be a country, a nation of people rooted here with loyalty and patriotism, then it's the bounden duty of the “elected” government to make sure that industrial and other economic developments take place to provide “living wage” to those at the bottom and middle level of society who form the majority of the population. Our workers should not be made to suffer “poverty wage” by the influx of foreign cheap labour to satisfy the greed of the PAP elitist regime.


By the way, the monopolistic NTUC supermarkets visible all over the island are not “cheap”. Maybe, for the NTUC chief Lim Swee Say and all his ilk, everything in Singapore is “cheaper, faster and better”. But not for the average Singaporean, 86 percent of whom live in HDB estates. They go about in a state of despondency over the mass of alien faces in their midst and the ever-increasing cost of living.

When I was an undergraduate student, the first thing we learn is intellectual honesty - giving credit where credit is due, proper citation, and representing oneself truthfully.

This applies to academia, to business, to friendships, to real life, yes, even to politics.

Unfortunately we have all witnessed many occasions when the PAP steals the ideas churned out by opposition parties and audaciously parries them as their own.

The SDP, NSP, WP, all have at some point been plagarized. The SDP however has been most vocal in pointing out the lack of intellectual honesty on the part of the PAP. Other parties who have fallen victim must stand up to defend themselves likewise.

The last thing we need is a fellow opposition leader or party doing the same thing as what the PAP has been doing. I hope intellectual honesty prevails amongst all oppositions. This is how we differentiate ourselves from the PAP.

I don't know how helpful this is but with the issue of equitable income distrubution a major plank of It's About You, I hope that the following American study would be helpful. I quote from a portion of it:

http://www.people.hbs.edu/mnorton/norton%20ariely%20in%20press.pdf

[Quote]

Subtitle: Americans Prefer Sweden

For the first task, we created three unlabeled pie charts of wealth distributions, one of which depicted a perfectly equal distribution of wealth. Unbeknownst to respondents, a second distribution reflected the wealth distribution in the United States; in order to create a distribution with a level of inequality that clearly fell in between these two charts, we constructed a third pie chart from the income distribution of Sweden (Figure 1).2 We presented respondents with the three pair-wise combinations of these pie charts (in random order) and asked them to choose which nation they would rather join given a “Rawls constraint” for determining a just society (Rawls, 1971): “In considering this question, imagine that if you joined this nation, you would be randomly assigned to a place in the distribution, so you could end up anywhere in this distribution, from the very richest to the very poorest.”

As can be seen in Figure 1, the (unlabeled) United States distribution was far less desirable than both the (unlabeled) Sweden distribution and the equal distribution, with some 92% of Americans preferring the Sweden distribution [Robox: Sweden is usually dismissed as "socialist" by Americans] to the United States.

[Endquote]

Interestingly, in an an article commenting on the above study, rightwing American economist Bryan D Caplan who made news in Singapore last year after he was commissioned (and paid) to write a paper extiolling the virtues of PAP rule, he takes the typical of the stand of those who support predatory capitalism:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39798688/ns/business-bloomberg_businessweek

[Quote]

"It's probably a good thing that the public underestimates how much wealth inequality there is," says Bryan D. Caplan of George Mason University, since "they tend not to understand the ways that wealth inequality is good."

{Endquote]

Unfortunately, the article does not say why Caplan thought that wealth inequality is a good thing; perhaps neither did Caplan himself.

"the monopolistic NTUC supermarkets visible all over the island are not “cheap”."

Cheap is relative. Cheap does not mean affordable. It means relatively low cost. Tell me if not NTUC, then where can you get things less expensive? I think NTUC is still cheap.

"workers “get $3 and ministers $1,000 for an hour's work....is exploitation at its ugliest”."

Again, these are 2 separate issues. whether workers get $3 or $100, does not justify such a high wages for ministers. Suppose ministers get only $3 and workers get $3, would that be okay? No. Suppose workers get $100 and ministers get $1000, would that be okay? No. Ministers aren't forcing workers into slavery and paying them $3. $3 might be okay if the cost of living was not going up due to inflation. Perhaps the real problem is inflation.

Buwakasha

Since NTUC is PAP and PAP is NTUC, its supermarkets throughout the island have a monopolistic stranglehold on the daily needs for basic essentials of the people. NTUC supermarkets have a captive consumer base. From this vantage point, the NTUC, instead of looking into and protecting the rights of workers at the national level, is colluding with the employer organisations to turn our workers “cheaper, better and faster”. And the so-called labour movement NTUC is headed by a cabinet minister who gets “paid” millions of dollars that the PAP government calls “salary”.

SDP's alternative economic programme, a copy of which I bought last Saturday at the Speakers' Corner suggests a minimum wage policy. So, there is no need for us to engage in an exchange here based on your “suppose ministers get only $3 and workers get $3, would that be okay?” proposition.

Contrary to your claim, the PAP ministers are indeed responsible for “forcing workers” into slavery. Through the constant manipulation of its immigration policy and tinkering with market forces, the greedy PAP has allowed close to two million aliens in the recent past to flood our tiny island. This influx of mainly foreign cheap labour has resulted in our low and middle income workers to be paid Poverty Wages and not Living Wages. It has also resulted in low-and-middle-income workers searching for more than one job with long working hours and without tenure of employment.

In fact, inflation is an invisible move to shift the financial burden onto the shoulders of the already exploited workers by the capitalists and their corporations. Well, that is another discussion for another day.

Seebeng,

NTUC is PAP. That I agree. I think NTUC products are cheaper than anywhere else. You agree? NTUC minister salary is off the chart, ie he's overpaid. Not just NTUC minister, but all ministers in general. You agree?

"suggests a minimum wage policy."

Could you elaborate on what you mean by that? Does the policy apply to all, some people or are there exceptions in terms of the kind of work or the kind of people doing the work. That is, do you differentiate between students versus working adults versus retired individuals.

"close to two million aliens in the recent past to flood our tiny island"

I resent that not because they drive wages down but because our infrastructure of our tiny island cannot support massive foreign immigration within a short period of time. I doubt you are against immigration. Our forefathers were immigrants too.

Those who go to NTUC supermarkets out of necessity do know for a fact that “NTUC products are 'NOT' cheaper than anywhere else”.


I find it strange that you are asking me to “elaborate” on SDP's minimum wage policy! From the word go, I've been saying that I'd bought and read a copy of SDP's alternative economic plan. Similarly, you could do the same and then come up with your critique. I'm sure you would agree with me that a person ought to know what he/she is talking about. Otherwise, it's best not to comment.


The reason for the current influx of foreign workers, among other things, is the result of PAP's stagnant economic policy. PAP's industrialisation strategy of the past, based on Cold War rivalry between two contending superpowers, worked in Singapore's early stages of nation building, but not anymore.


Our forefathers came to a British colony to better their lives and were treated by the colonialists as stateless immigrants. But we are, since 1965, an independent, sovereign nation, with its own citizen army, committed to consciously promote loyalty and patriotism among the citizenry to build a cohesive nation. Those who believe in building a nation-state has to place the interests of the citizens first above all else.


But the self-centered PAP insists on continuing with its moribund economic policy of relying on cheap labour. The result: a massive inflow of cheap labour from Third World countries and a hemorrhagic exodus of skilled, qualified Singaporeans seeking emigration elsewhere.

I agree with crescit. when my friend asked about the solution that you guys have, i was surprised when i can only send him a link of buying the alternative economic plan.

propagation might not go far if this approach is taken.

the only other time you can promote the AEP, is only in the rallies, and i doubt that you have enough time to convince them otherwise.

Will PAP come clean and let us know whether they are still targeting a total population of 6.5 million by 2020, by which time native Singaporeans will be a minority? PAP can be lord over foreginer-bought-citizens, but native-born citizens (I Appeal to all) MUST reject this empire-building from Mr Lee PAP agenda. We must save our own and nobody is going to lord over us anymore after all these decades.