the week: you want these guys to run your lives?
The week of budget debates have yielded some really interesting speeches. But before we delve into them proper, let us first look at the People's Action Party (PAP) and how they perceive their role in the Singapore. This is best summed up in this quote from Lee Kuan Yew:
What we are preventing is duds getting into Parliament and government. Any person of quality, we welcome him but we don't want duds. We don't want Chee Soon Juan, or J.B. Jeyaretnam. They're not going to build the country.
Lee Kuan Yew, Hard Truths to Keep Singapore Going
This is the argument that the PAP brings to every election - that they are fielding the best candidates in Singapore, they have the best talent in Singapore, and therefore you should vote for them. There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting the best people to run the country, and there is also nothing inherently wrong with believing you have the best people to run the country. After all, any party must believe that they have people of caliber if they wish to run this country. The problem then is that the PAP believe that they are better than everyone else. This is best summarised by the quote below:
I am often accused of interfering in the private lives of citizens. Yes, if I did not, had I not done that, we wouldn’t be here today. And I say without the slightest remorse, that we wouldn’t be here, we would not have made economic progress, if we had not intervened on very personal matters – who your neighbour is, how you live, the noise you make, how you spit, or what language you use. We decide what is right. Never mind what the people think.
Lee Kuan Yew, The Straits Times, 20 April 1987
This philosophy persists in the PAP till today. This is the narrative that is constantly being pushed by the PAP: that they are the best, that if you vote in the opposition Singapore will suffer, that Singapore is too fragile and small to survive the incompetence of the opposition. That if you vote in the opposition, you will repent. And because of that they believe that only they can make the right choices for you. This has led to a style of top down governance that not only borders on authoritarianism, some might say that authoritarianism is a special administrative region within Singapore. The idea that the Government knows better than you what is best for yourself is an absurd notion; you have your best interests at heart. So long as those interests do not interfere with anyone else's rights, you should have the ability to pursue them. And this line of reasoning, that the Government is made up of the best and brightest, and therefore they know what's best for the country, only holds up insofar as the PAP is the best and brightest.
Are they really?
The Budget Speeches
Poh Li San is coming for your bubble tea
When I first saw a clip of Poh Li San's suggestion of having the Government regulate and reduce the number of bubble tea stores, I thought while her suggestion to regulate the number of bubble tea stores was ridiculous, the underlying problem she was trying to address was important. So with a bit of charity, I thought she actually had a good point to make. With that in mind, I decided to peruse the rest of her speech, to see if there were any other points of merit in her favour. Unfortunately, not so. I'll discuss the other points she makes first, before (as Jen Psaki would say) I circle back to her point on preventative healthcare.
Let me just say that these have to be the most tepid takes I've ever seen. She has landed on the safe side on every issue she has brought up, and basically added nothing to the conversation. She could have just voted yes for the budget and the world would have lost nothing from it. Her first take on the increase on the highest income tax bracket from was: even with the increase it is lower than many developed nations; and apparently she had spoken to "several" high-income earning Singaporeans, who are supportive of these taxes. Great work, I guess? So you've spoken to maybe five to ten friends, all of whom by and large agreed with you, and your takeaway from this is that it is a good policy. That evidence is at best anecdotal. Perhaps what is more telling is that she goes on to talk about how some high-income earners felt it was not fair to share with those "who did not work as hard as they did", and Ms Poh's response to that was not to disabuse the people of the idea that people who don't belong to the top income bracket was not working as hard, instead she tacitly agreed with that notion1. This is the mindset: if only you worked harder, if only you did as much work as them, then you would be rich too. It is your fault for being lazy and unmotivated, that is why you're so poor. And you are the burden that the rich in society have to upkeep with their hard earned money.
I am glad that she went on to talk about the how the low cost of foreign labour has artificially depressed wages in Singapore and that there was a need to slow the supply of foreign labour2. Of course, she would never admit that it was the PAP's policies over the years which had led to this easy supply of foreign labour. While many people view this labour as necessary, with the common wisdom in Singapore being that Singaporeans are not interested in these jobs. But there is a bit of a chicken and egg issue at play here: are Singaporeans not interested in these jobs and therefore the need for foreign labour, or have the easy access to foreign labour made the wages so depressed that Singaporeans have no interest in them? Singaporean companies also have no need to innovate when labour is so cheap. Our construction industry is medieval compared to that of other countries, this building in China is a great example. You might say: China? Isn't that where our cheap labour comes from? You're absolutely right, over the past three decades while we've been languishing in the vast pool of easy and cheap foreign labour from places like China and India, they've innovated and today their technology and techniques put us to shame. The PAP would never admit it, but it was their policies which have enabled this, and while they might be trying to course correct now, it might be already too late. So while I'm glad that she did acknowledge it was a problem, it would take real courage from within the party to actually call it out and change it.
Next, she covers the Goods and Services Tax (GST) increases, and the need for new green research and development. There is a line in her speech which basically suggests that retirees should go back to working part time to supplement their income so they can afford the increase in GST.3 She thinks that retirees should go back to work because they won't be able to afford the new GST. If that is indeed the case maybe they should relook the tax increase. I would also like to see any MP who would talk about preventative measures like higher seawalls, things that can adapt to global warming instead of this idea of "more RnD", which while a very trendy thing to say, actually adds very little to the conversation. There are a large number of studies and estimates, and a non-insignificant amount of them show that it is already too late to course correct for global warming. Human beings are pretty good at adapting to new situations, but very bad at slowly changing our habits to match an invisible threat, like the proverbial crab in the boiling pot. Singapore's emissions are also not by any measure likely to dent the entire global output, so if it would suit us better to adapt to rising sea levels and increasing temperatures than to attempt to become carbon negative.
Finally on to the part of the speech that most Singaporeans actually heard: the closing of bubble tea shops. I actually agree with the underlying notion that we should focus on preventative care instead of focusing on treatments, and that obesity is a huge problem. In fact just for the COVID 19 pandemic alone, obesity was a deciding factor for how badly the virus affected you. 78% of all hospitalisations in the United States were overweight or obese. Ms Poh has actually found a problem that needs solving, but once again she misses the mark on the solution. But this will be the only solution that someone with a paternalistic mindset can offer: the people are obese, so we must take away the food that makes them obese. I was against the Vaccine Differentiated Safe Management Measures (VDS) from the very beginning. Not only did it set bad precedent for what a Government can do to its people under the pretext of "emergencies", but there was no sound scientific basis for having these differentiated measures in the first place. The same faulty logic used to justify VDS can be applied to differentiated measures for obesity:
Weight is a personal choice. You can choose to eat more or less, just like you can choose to take the vaccine;
Since obese people take up more hospital beds than non-obese people, and therefore use more public resources, there needs to be differentiated measures for them.
While it remains to be seen if ever the PAP would ever consider implementing such measures, look at the language with which they are already starting to use: Health Minister Ong Ye Kung referred to chronic illnesses like diabetes as the next "pandemic". After all, never let a good crisis go to waste, and with great crisis comes great power. And it's just crises all the way down.
Ang Wei Neng is coming for your degrees
Ang Wei Neng might have the dubious honour of having the most brain dead take ever uttered in Parliament, which is quite the feat considering he stands amongst contenders like Josephine Teo and Chan Chun Sing. Mr Ang identifies a big problem in today's education system: a university degree is no guarantee of preparing anyone for the workforce today. He acknowledges that the paper qualifications that we get from the universities may not be enough, that soft skills acquired over the course of education or real work experience might be more important in today's world. He is right of course. There are an infinite number of things you can only learn on the job, and a university education can only go so far. What is his solution for this? Mr Ang wants to introduce a "time stamp" on degrees, so they expire after five years, requiring graduates to constantly renew their paper qualifications.4 Let me rephrase this: Mr Ang's solution to paper qualifications being obsolete is to introduce the need for an endless cycle of requalifying for more paper qualifications.
This is an idea which can only be thought up by the PAP, and their inane love for paper qualifications. This guy started his career in public service in the Singapore Police Force, and spent the latter half of his career bouncing around the public transport Government linked companies (GLCs) where old civil servants are conveniently parked. He is so out of touch with the job market today I'm surprised they let him give this speech at all. Just know this: these are the people who think they know better than you on how to run your lives.
Louis Ng might be the best backbencher in the PAP
I'd be remiss if I only mentioned the bad without the good. Mr Ng is an MP who has impressed over the past years. This year is no exception. From proposals to end smoking in houses, to allowing cats in HDB flats, and reworking performance appraisals for teachers, this man has plenty of good ideas. Which is the reason (one can only assume) he has not made minister yet. There are plenty of things to like about his speech: Mr Ng spends this year's speech speaking about the plight of social workers, and the type of help they need. A social worker's job is by no means easy even in the best of times, and during the COVID 19 pandemic their jobs had gotten exponentially harder. There are concrete steps outlined in the speech which could help social workers and multiple salient points made, especially on the need for regular community work rather than intervening only when the situation gets dire. Perhaps the best part of the speech is that he did not mindlessly end off with "I support the Budget" like the rest of his colleagues.
So you really want these guys running your lives? Do you actually believe the PAP pitch that they have the most competent people in Singapore? Think about your average co-worker, and how many times they screw up at work. These people are no different from that. The Louis Ngs are far and few between, you are more likely to get a Poh Li San or Ang Wei Neng. The myth of hyper competence has been built on the backs of capable leadership from Lee Kuan Yew and his founding team, but that is not the same PAP of today. And without this supposed hyper competence, why even vote for the PAP?
1 "Some high-income earners may feel that they have worked very hard for their success and that is not fair to have to share with others who did not work as hard as they did. I do agree that nothing is absolutely fair and it is never possible to completely justify who should be paying more or less taxes."
2 "We have to find a way to win [sic] ourselves of [sic] the heavy reliance on foreign labour as the easy availability of foreign workers has depressed are blue-collar workers' wages and it will continue to do so. There is no easy solution and we will need to assist our low-wage Singaporean workers by slowing the supply of foreign labour." (I think it was supposed to be "ween ourselves off")
3 Will the Government give more support to social enterprises that help to match interested retirees and able persons with special needs with micro jobs?
4 He has since said he merely said it to provoke thoughts. Let's be real, who actually buys this "just kidding" routine?