Yeoh Lam Keong, adjunct senior research fellow at the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) and Vice President of the Economic Society of Singapore, told Yahoo! Singapore that the government should be trying harder to cap total population at 6 million or below by 2030 and around 6.5 million by 2050. This will involve constraining workforce growth to 1 per cent between now and 2020 and around 0.5 per cent after that rather than the 1 to 2 per cent between now and 2020 and 1 per cent thereafter proposed in the government white paper. Arguing that the positive economic benefits of the higher proposed growth in workforce do not outweigh the negative societal consequences that will come with the larger expansion of population size, Yeoh said economic history of other developed countries like the US and Northern Europe indicated that such higher workforce growth and related immigration is unnecessary for a vibrant economy. He explained that the 0.5 to 1 per cent difference in extra annual workforce growth may be the difference between a liveable and cosmopolitan but reasonably indigenous and more egalitarian environment like Switzerland, and a horrendously crowded, unequal and highly foreign environment like Dubai. The problem I have with the white paper is that the tradeoffs considered between good jobs and economic dynamism, and population and workforce growth are overly mechanistic, economically simplistic and astonishingly sociologically and politically naive, Yeoh said. With the proposed 6.9 million population by 2030, Yeoh added that Singapore might be moving towards Dubai, where there is difficult social tensions and little national soul. In short, it proposes trading the birthright of our basis for national identity and social cohesion for the dubious pottage of 0.5 to 1 per cent extra workforce growth on the narrow, unsubstantiated belief that it somehow makes for a more secure and vibrant economic future, he said. In the same vein, Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) said the intention to raise the population to 7 million is extremely worrying. There are no justifiable reasons for the PAP to raise the population by such a large number in such a short span of time. The population explosion will cause further economic, social and psychological stress for the people, as well as add to national security implications, said the SDP.
Posted on: Tue, 27 Jan 2015 03:09:31 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015