Social Commentator: January 31, 2014 at 4:41 pm (Quote) Watta joke! Singapore’s a 3rd world economy disguised as 1st world through MANAGING PERCEPTIONS. Someone said in TRE that Singapore is “an advanced economy” – A rebuttal was duly put across that if Singapore is an advance economy there’s no reason there is such poor productivity figures within the economy? Poor productivity is inherent within poor economies because they do not have the means to capital resources and hence, higher technology to increase productivity! Poor productivity means greater mobilization but relatively poor use of labour input to achieve an output factor of production. In simple terms, it means it takes many hands to produce an item in a poor economy whereas in a developed economy, robotics (capital investments & use of technology) produces the item much quicker & without any human input. In technological-driven Japan, go to any Ramen shop, you’ll see that the dishes are washed using automation steamwash & money collection & food orders are done via a token machine. That is productivity in a service environment. In Singapore, low wage manpower are still being used to do these things! Singapore Inc is currently in a PROFIT MAXIMIZATION mode – the previous CPF-fuelled capital investment mode died in a fiery crash around year 2000. The 2 economic inputs that Singapore Inc controlled are shareholding/management (>60% GLCs/domestic market) and land resources resources (>70%). The 2 economic factors that are not crucial to Singapore Inc. are capital & labour! Because the S$ exchange rate policy is tied to the USD, USD monetary expansion provides a free flow of capital into Singapore – hence the zero interest rate policy (ZIRP) & easy money schemes of the past few years driving up asset inflation. Hence, businesses are probably using lots of debt to fuel expansion instead of investing in technology. There is a lot of short-termism in Singapore’s economy! Labour, on the other hand, is expanded by mass onshore immigration – hence, the lower wages & salaries imposed by incoming hungry masses of poor migrant labour attracted by the high S$ value (again MAS S$ exchange rate policy). The high Gini coefficients are not accidental but a reflect of the shift of declining wages & salaries towards the increasing shareholders & managements share of the profit pie! In PROFIT MAXIMAZATION, capital expenditure is given the short shift. It was no coincidence, SMRT breakdown implosion was the result of the lack of maintenance due to constant focus of profits by the SMRT management. In such a scenario, isn’t the cause of poor productivity the result of management decisions leading all the way up to the Singapore Inc. In a gist, “consistent rhetoric that wages can only rise with productivity growth – what is the fate of Singapore’s workers?” – LOL! The fate of the Singapore worker rests with Singapore Inc. yet the Singaporean worker is at totally at fault for the poor productivity (sic.) HEADS I WIN, TAILS YOU LOSE!
Posted on: Fri, 31 Jan 2014 14:52:32 +0000
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