The answer is out there
Channel News Asia
11 Jan 07
Middle class wages have been stagnant in the past 5 years, according to economists, and this could lead to social instability. These concerns were shared at the annual Institute of Policy Studies Singapore Perspectives conference...
123, 000 jobs were created last year and economists estimate some 70 percent of these jobs went to foreigners.
"With the rate of immigration even among unskilled and semi skilled labour (Eh, I thought every foreigner is a talent. Not meh?) at a rate twice of what we experienced in the 90s, at a rate fastest in the developed world, the question is does this dampen our real wages as we grow? Does the strategy itself dampen real wages and depress real wages at the low and middle end of the spectrums? They are sacred cows but we should step back and think about them," said Yeoh Lam Keong, Vice President, Economic Society of Singapore.
This is old news. A few years ago, two NTU Economics Professors reached an even grimmer conclusion -- I think they said 90% of the jobs went to foreigners. They were chided by Manpower Minister Ng Eng Hen, forced to retract their report and to apologise publicly.
But, other than the strong words, the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) did not publish was incapable of publishing their own data side-by-side the Professors' data and of pointing out how the "error" occurred - the two professors defended that their conclusion was based on MOM's data!
Well, this time round, is the Manpower Minister going to explode again?
Doesn't really matter. He can explode all he wants. Chinese saying: paper cannot hide fire. Even if you censor the entire internet, people can still scribble the truth using just a low-tech marker:
JOBS FOR FOREIGNERS, NS FOR SINGAPOREANS!
Trinity: The answer is out there, Neo, and it's looking for you, and it will find you if you want it to.
posted by The Human Battery @ 1/12/2007
2 comments
2 Comments:
"Middle class wages have been stagnant in the past 5 years"
Actually I was guessing that middle class wages have been stagnant in the past 10 years since the 1997 economic crisis. OK, this Ah Q human battery stand "happily" corrected by the official statistics of IPS :-P
Btw, is there any statistics on the immigration of foreign talent? In the early 90's, companies provided training to upgrade their staff's skillset when they cannot find the relevant talents under their roost. Nowadays, if cannot find talent in-house, just import foreign talent cos it is "cheaper". Want to upgrade? DIY on your own time and money.
Nowadays, statistics originating from this Matrix Island can no longer be trusted. For example, on the one hand, the Department of Statistics is the custodian of official statistical data. On the other hand, a parliamentary committee is an official government group tasked to do serious work. Yet, both of them can produce different statistics on the same subject. I don't make allegations. The evidence is here.
So I say: Let's trust our own gut feelings - what we see, what we observe. The Matrix Masters and their statistics cannot be trusted any more. And when a goverment loses the trust of its citizen, it is going down the slippery road...
Post a Comment
<< Home