To Reena....I suppose you must be from India. If you relaly are, Im just so sorry. Im a property agt. I've seen and served many Indian Tenants/ Buyers. I just have 1 word for you...Cheapskate! So what if you live in a condo. Let me tell you. Just last week, I met a Indian gal who claims she works for Citibank. Rented this condo for $2500 / mth. The owner wanna sell the unit so I have potential buyers coming to view the unit. I remember ckearly that day was very hot. When I went into the house, I ask her, ' you just came back?' She replied 'No, I was home the whole day'. Can you imagine, 3b/rm unit, all the windows close shut, aircon not on. I have to request for the aircon to be on so that my buyers will feel comfy while viewing the unit. She atred into my eyes and say " PUB Very expensive u know" WTF! $2500/mth for a 3 b/rm unit and staying alone, u tell me turn on a/c for few mins very expensive? Then why dont open windows? 'becoz dusty and noisy' You might say this is just 1 special case. I have receive alot of Indian Tenants who are either engineers or IT specialist wanting to rent HDB units. Whats their budget? $1200/mth for 2+1 or $1500 for 3+1 f/furn and with a/con, must near MRT.Hello....i suppose you people are not paid cheap to come here and work, so why behave like cheapo? Save all your $ for what? Wanna go back Indian buy rice field is it? Just becoz our g'ment gave you a WP you begin to sing their praise. Next time you step into the train and see many CHinese next to you, please ask them their nationality. It'll be a bonus if you get 10 replies coz they might not even understand what you say because they aren't local. Hahahaha

Let go out on a limb here to say that there arent enough trained Singaporeans to support the size and nature of our economy. If there are an oversupply, yes prioritizing Singaporeans would work. But putting the burdern on companies to ensure that Singaporeans get the those tupe of jobs first is unnecessary with a low 3% unemployment rate. We have over 2 million foreigners working here, giving those unemployed 3% priorty would not solve the problem, we will still need these foreigners. So thats not going to solve to the problem.

From another perspective: Using extremes as case study, if an MNC comes into Singapore with 500 million dollars to develop a hub to manufacture widgets for the region, and they need to hire 100 foreigners; and all their highly paid foreign employees pay Singaporean taxes at 20% per annum, eat at restaurants everyday, send their kids to school, shop in malls, and the company pays 17% taxes from regional revenue, and employ ZERO Singaporeans, VS, if MNC leaves because the employment rules are too onerous. Which one would be more favourable for Singapore and Singaporeans? Would we really be better off without those tax income? Does 100 high paying foreign employees reduce the GPI? SO the answer is not in the extremes but somehere in spectrum. So if its Goldilocks says its just right, does it mean its the only thing thats right?

I get that the GPI tool is a measures a basket of subjective and objective dimensions.
Using your example: A divorce adds to the GDP, but the break up of a family reduces the GPI, but wouldnt the divorced couple be happier than if they were stuck together in misery? How would we measure all these positive and negative consequences as it cascades. And how would we quantify that in a consistent, comparable model necessary to determine progress?
In a parallel example, wouldnt it be like a blood pressure monitor which compensates for your mood at the time. Would it be considered broken or the best thing since sliced bread?

There are employers that are in Singapore just to employ thousands of foreigners and enjoy deep tax breaks. The EP scheme is currently unlimited- there are no quotas. Hence they can do destructive things to our economy ie. employ one Singaporean to 10 foreigners (which is common). I have worked in and have many relatives who work in companies where the ratio is 1 SG:5 foreigners. So the SDP's paper should address this major structural problem. The introduction of a quota of 8 singaporeans to 2 foreigners wld go a long way. If you come to Singapore, you must be here to employ Singaporeans- it's as simple as that.

The second major problem, strongly related, is that the govt changes Singapore's 'economic direction' with such little concern for Singaporean's welfare - now biosciences, next finance, next genomics, next film, etc, that few Singaporeans end up with the right skills to get employed! You can't be trained for bioscience, and when EDB's push to get bioscience companies fails, how will you get employed? It's the same with AmGen coming to Singapore- you can tell they don't intend to employ Singaporeans because how many of us are skilled in running clinical trials? All of our biosciences graduates have had to move to publishing or other industries. They are here because of lax foreign worker quotas.

So the SDP Paper should propose alternative policies to 1) companies that intend to employ Singaporeans can come 2) require companies to train Singaporeans for jobs that fit the world economy's needs 3) companies that can't do this are not welcome

The point is to mandate a transfer of essential skills to Singaporeans. Or to train Singaporeans well in these same skills. Whether film, art, computers, etc.

Lastly note that most other countries, eg Australia use the word Skilled Workers to refer to workers that come into these countries. Only Singapore is as stupid as to refer to them as 'talent' - which denies that Singaporeans are also talented and highly educated.

Singapore's Population Bubble.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-14/ponzi-schemes-built-on-people-always-crash-too.html

The retirement age should be set at 65.

Now it is Retirement and Reemployemnt act.. retires at 62 with the employers having the option to reemploy on lower pay on yearly contract till 65 years old. The prerogative to reemploy is with the employer.

Most employers including the Stat boards are not keeping the staff beyond 62 years old.