By: Phillip Ang
Minister after minister has kept making unverifiable statements to prepare Singaporeans for a severe economic downturn.
Unsurprisingly, PM Lee claims “we are pursuing the right strategies” but he does not know if the “right strategies” will work wonders in a year, a decade or a century.
The problem with our “right strategies” is they are merely economic shortcuts to generate GDP growth.
How can economic strategies be “right” when the issue of stagnant productivity has yet to be addressed? The fact is, PAP has been increasing the population to grow the GDP and till today, nothing has changed.
Since Lee became PM in 2004, the foreigner population saw an increase of 1.19 million or 108% while citizen population increased by only 12%. The Population White Paper is a step in the same direction for the next 14 years. It will of course increase GDP growth but is PM Lee “pursuing the right strategies”?
PM Lee cites statistics on our educational system and concludes young Singaporeans have many more opportunities than a generation ago. But without more opportunities in the 1980s, a degree could buy meals at different restaurants. What is the point of having more opportunities when a degree cannot be eaten?
30 years ago, Singaporeans had meaningful opportunities such as buying affordable homes which are fully paid in 20 years or less. And Singaporeans had no second thoughts about having sex in a small space or rather a bigger space before HDB shrank flat sizes.
Without more opportunities 30 years ago, more babies were born.
By “opportunities”, perhaps PM Lee meant Singaporeans’ lost opportunities?
Truth is, PAP has been creating more opportunities for foreigners in order to help our GLCs – managed by scholars and elites – to lower business costs.
PM Lee says it’s not so hard to print more degrees or produce more graduates and the difficult thing is to train people and to build the economy at the same time, etc. It appears PM Lee is trying to impress upon SIT students the difficulty in running our little red dot. If running Singapore is really too demanding for PM Lee, why don’t PAP ministers just quit and not beg voters at elections?
PM Lee then claims Singapore is “unique among many of the developed countries” because PAP has ensured we do not have a youth unemployment problem. As usual, PM Lee wastes no time in taking pot shots at South Korea and Taiwan in order to get his point across to … students.
But if PM Lee were the leader of South Korea or Taiwan, the unemployment problem would still be an issue.
Unabashedly, PM Lee claims “We are not made of candy floss… We are not like the strawberry generation – these are durians, very tough”. Sure or not? PAP elites have never tasted failure and suka suka rewrite legislations to its advantage all the time. Is someone who always hits under the belt as tough as durians or softer than tofu?
The takeaway from PM Lee’s speech is PAP has already done its part in anticipation of a severe economic downturn. PAP is totally prepared to deal with the crisis and the ball is in ordinary citizens’ court.
But of course we know it’s 100% – pure PAP bullshit.
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Republished from the blog ‘likedatosocanmeh‘.