CBF for SG workers?

Catknight SG

Does that mean we will have to work harder for lower pay?

frakfrakfrak SG

Of course la. Singapore is going down the toilet bowl with all the blood suckers at the top.

ShitSandwich SG

This should start from the top! Lead by example!

So can we have cheaper and better Ministers? Faster please!

If we don't see the ministers do CBF themselves, then ask them not to sprout nonsense..

frakfrakfrak SG

Well, you can't always blame the "million dollar" ministers. They have to be paid more (do they?) than what some towkay is willing to pay or else we all will get sold (further) down the river. The main reason I think is that alot of rich people in Singapore no longer see Singapore as being attractive to stay in and so are deciding to squeeze as much as they can from the heartlanders and migrate to other countries. Also, having alot of foreign business managers tend to maximize the bottom line at the expense of the country folk. All the "kill them all" and "suck them dry" attitude to business seems indicative of this. Small thing like EZlink card also want to cheat money until the issue gets an airing on Today and still they can "thick skin" the whole thing.The impact is getting more and more obvious and driving other people down the line to follow the same destructive attitude. Obviously, in society there must be some sacrifices to keep the whole thing together and the sacrificing is being handed to the guy at the bottom because he is powerless.

Short of communist style reeducation programs, more should be done to allow businessmen to be able to use Singapore as a jump point into the region instead of simply a place to fill the larder (with dodos?). Easier said than done and I think the towkays are choosing the easy way out. What's it in for them to stay anyway? Laksa? Rojak? Don't make them laugh la.

xtreyier SG

There is no need to mis-interpretate 'CBF'. Some do it ignorantly, but others wilfully to spread hate and doom.

Cheaper, Better, Faster is a strategy that will BENEFIT our workforce the most, and is the most practical solution to prosper in this new world.

CHEAPER - does not mean a cheap citizen workforce. It means the production end result being sold to consumers as being cheaper than any other company or country and would be competitive.

Once such products are cheap, profits based on quantity sold will increase a company's profit, thus the company survives and will be able to expand, to hire more workers, to give pay rises or bonus.

Better - does not mean reliance solely on foreign talent. We do have our own talents and if we believe that we are more educated than our peers in the asian region if not the world, then we should be more productive and intelligent to increase the productivity of a company we work in, which in turn will increase the profit performance of a company to benefit ourselves thru pay increments and bonuses, and most important of all - a job in hand.

Faster - being intelligent and productive, we should be making lesser errors or mistakes, and will help a company surge ahead of competitors thru producing services or goods at a faster turnaround workrate or performance. This in turn will be to our benefit as workers.

CBF is not asking you to accept being a low wage earner. It is an appeal for the collective workrate that we should be performing, given our intelligence and capacity for hardwork, to ensure we all survive as a nation in this globalised and highly competitive world. It is the only way out of the crisis, when other nations are still dazed and sluggish.

All i can say now is that the labour movement grassroots organisation had failed to explain clearly what CBF critically means. Perhaps they need more time.

xtreyier SG

Any Sec1 student will know why Singapore will not be able to have a thriving entreprenuership environment or homegrown MNC, because:-

1. We have no raw resources that we can sell such as steel or oil. Anything made here is imported and then exported out. We are sorely disadvantaged by such arrangement by its costings.

2. We are only a market of 3 million, not even a singer can hope to survive in this market, let alone grow MNCs or entreprenuers.

Better we work for MNCs, become middle management and work our way up thru experience beside foriegn talents and welcome cheap foreign labour to work here in order to attract MNCs.

There is a fear that such foreigners may replace us in the work arena, but as long as Singapore is our country, no foreigner will ever be able or even hope to replace us unless we all are dead. But we are not gonna roll over and play dead for sure and instead be competitive and take competition by its horn, and win.

Ultimately, it boils down to salaries and compensations for allowing such foreigness unto our shores? What's in it for us citizens? Are we to compete on same salary scale?

No, there is a win-win situation for all:-

Capitalism abhors wage controls and will leave for cheaper shores. We dont need wage controls or minimum wages. Bosses are entittled to their large bonuses for they provide the capital and take the risks. Our govt only tax them 18% and uses such monies as revenue for social spending or saving.

However, it is the workers who help bosses earn profits, and help our society with funds for social spending thru taxes. Thus the workers should be better compensated.

Half of the corporate tax should be given back to the citizen workers in the company, who made profits possible. Foreigners are never to be entittled to it, for they should be happy to work in Singapore alone, for in their own homes they would be jobless.

If a company makes 100 million a year, the boss is entittled to his bonus, other workers as well. The govt takes 18%, and must never forget that it is the citizen workers in that company who made it possible in the first place and should redistribute back 9% to the citizens workers.

If there is only 9 singapore workers there, then they get 1 million each, but taxable and CPF'able, whatever his/her position, be it the CEO or tea lady. They are citizens. Win - win solution for all. Refined it, and it may work. If not, then it is just another idea for consideration till something better comes along.

Pentaxdude90 SG

charlize SG

Yes sir, CBF all the way!

Atobe SG

There is no need to mis-interpretate 'CBF'. Some do it ignorantly, but others wilfully to spread hate and doom.

Why did the X-rat not dare to post its reply in the other thread that had featured this topic earlier on 14 Oct 2009 - ‘Lim Swee Say: Making the economy and workforce cheaper’ (*1). ?

With an average of 25 response per page, and the thread spreading across four pages that totalled about 100 respondents - there must be some common shared traits of idiocy that allow the X-rat to have such clear and positive understanding of the idiocy of Lim Swee Say.

Cheaper, Better, Faster is a strategy that will BENEFIT our workforce the most, and is the most practical solution to prosper in this new world.

CHEAPER - does not mean a cheap citizen workforce. It means the production end result being sold to consumers as being cheaper than any other company or country and would be competitive.

Once such products are cheap, profits based on quantity sold will increase a company's profit, thus the company survives and will be able to expand, to hire more workers, to give pay rises or bonus.

In the Singapore context, with land costs being high, utilities that are dependent on foreign imports, raw materials non-existent - if 'CHEAPER' does not mean a lower labor cost input, how brilliant it must be for the X-rat to claim that 'CHEAPER' does not mean a cheap citizen workforce ?

If the X-rat is alluding to the importation of cheaper foreign labor, and not a cheap citizen workforce - can the brilliance of an X-rat throw some light onto the plights of the many qualified Singaporeans who are affected by the Singapore Government open door policy towards 'qualified Foreign Talent' as well ?

Are Singaporeans more educated than our peers in the Asian Region, if not the World ?

The X-rat must be more brilliant than MM LKY, who believe that our limited 4.5 million population will reduce the propensity in producing brilliant and creative talents, compared with nations such as China, India, USA, Europe and Japan - where their population size is more then a 1000 times larger than Singapore.

"Let us not deceive ourselves: our talent profile is nowhere near that of, say, the Jews or the Japanese in America. The exceptional number of Nobel Prize winners who are Jews is no accident. It is also no accident that a high percentage, sometimes 50%, of faculty members in the top American universities on both the east and west coasts are Jews. And the number of high calibre Japanese academics, professionals, and business executives is out of all proportion to the percentage of Japanese in the total American population." - Lee Kuan Yew 1982

"I think Singapore has to learn from Hong Kong. What Hong Kong has is nimbleness, a willingness to drop the unsuccessful and change tack, while not making an issue of any differences between the bosses and the unions. If Hong Kong learns from Singapore, you'll lose your competitiveness." - SM Lee Kuan Yew – South China Morning Post – 27 November 1993

Faster due to intelligence and productive ?

Is the X-rat referring to the production lines that employ more foreign labor that are bussed into Singapore every day via the Woodlands ICQ - who are intelligent and productive working mechanically as part of the production lines ?

Or is this remark referring to the high-end sector of the Singapore Economy, in the rarefied air of high finance and service sectors, where our intelligence, speed and productivity is reflected in the sterling performance of our finance institutions ?

Unfortunately, the hope of making less errors have not been seen in the repeated lack of due diligence when Singaporeans learn of the disastrous lack of alertness and clear acumen that result in the loss of millions and billions in rushed decisions made to grab stakes in questionable investments ?

From the S$500 million failures in the investment of Singapore Reserves in a failed hard drive industry in Micropolis, to a US$3 billion loss in a Thai telecommunication takeover of Shin Corp, to the US$30 billion loss in flip-flop "long term" investments of buying stakes when the market is in a bubble growing stage, and selling when the bubble burst.

The brilliance of "cheaper, better, and faster" can only be impressed on the simplistic mind of a X-rat - who is no better then a X-rated kid indulging in its own fantasy of how politics is in Singapore.

If lower workrate is not part of a cheaper work-rate, and do not result in a wage earner bringing home a smaller or lower wages - what X-rated fantasy is the X-rat hoping to sell to the Singapore workforce ?

Given the kind of X-rated intelligence displayed, it is not surprising that the X-rat will expect Singaporeans to become a mechanical digit to have the capacity to absorb the abusive hardwork at lower workrates.

Obviously, the X-rat will prefer to ignore the calls by ex-PM GCT and ex-Secretary General Lim Boon Heng - to have Singaporeans move up the next technological rung, and to compete in the Global Economy at higher value added niche levels ?

All i can say now is that the labour movement grassroots organisation had failed to explain clearly what CBF critically means. Perhaps they need more time.

The X-rat quality in the X-rated kid in this Speaker's Corner should have volunteered to replace Lim Swee Say as Lim's personal spokesman.

Perhaps we will have less lollipop talk from all that a "Swee Say" hope to say, and have a X-rat produce its characteristic insufferable high-fallutin ideas to explain clear and simple words in "Cheaper, Better, and Faster".

Atobe SG

Any Sec1 student will know why Singapore will not be able to have a thriving entreprenuership environment or homegrown MNC, because:-

Is the X-rat being a self-declared defeatist in claiming that "Singapore will not be able to have a thriving entrepreneurship environment or homegrown MNC" ?

We should be wondering why will the X-rat contradict the current efforts by the PAP Government to teach entrepreneurship at Secondary Schools and Tertiary Institutions that are also supported by A-Star and the Economic Development Board ?

As matters stand, are there no homegrown MNC's ?

What should we call the Singaporean MNC's that are all Government owned - even as these are seemingly private corporations : Temasek Holdings, Keppel-FELS, Sembawang Shipyard, Asian Breweries, Singapore Telecoms, Singapore Powers, Surbana, Chartered Industries, Unicorn, and a whole list of other less high profile companies all goverment linked ?

1. We have no raw resources that we can sell such as steel or oil. Anything made here is imported and then exported out. We are sorely disadvantaged by such arrangement by its costings.

Obviously, it is clear as daylight that the X-rated experience is sorely lacking with its limited vision that raw resources will prevent Singapore from developing our private MNCs.

Without steel, Singapore has been able to become the top builder in off-shore oil exploration plaforms of various unique designs, and have not been disadvantaged by the need to import steel plates and a whole hosts of onboard equipment needed to make a oil-exploration platform to work.

Without any raw crude as a domestic natural resource, Singapore has been able to develop ourselves as one of the top three Crude Oil Refinery Centers, and with high paying jobs to locals.

2. We are only a market of 3 million, not even a singer can hope to survive in this market, let alone grow MNCs or entreprenuers.

Did the X-rated mind suddenly become aware that we are only a market of 3 million, but will believe that this 3 million population has the critical mass to produce talents that are comparable to populations having larger population size than Singapore's ?

How will the defeatist X-rated mind explain for the larger number of entrepreneurs and inventors in Hongkong, Switzerland, Israel, and Denmark, when the population sizes of these countries are close to that of Singapore's 4.5 Million population ?

Better we work for MNCs, become middle management and work our way up thru experience beside foriegn talents and welcome cheap foreign labour to work here in order to attract MNCs.

Can the X-rated mind believe its own lie that a foreign owned MNC will see a larger number of locals sitting in the top or middle management levels, in an environment where the Singapore Government has an "Open Door" Policy ?

It is only in a defeatist mind that opt out of its own challenges and prefer to play it safe to work for others instead of being daring to venture on its own.

If the forefathers of Singapore in 1819 through 1960s had adopted the same kind of defeatist attitude, they would have stayed home to work for the many Colonial setup in the various cities colonised in their respective Home Countries.

If the forefathers had not allowed their spirit of enterprise and venture to seek new fortunes for themselves, would we have a successful Singapore today ?

Singapore had more private enterprise from 1819 till the PAP Government stepped into governing a truly independent Singapore in post 9 August 1965, and decided to chop the feet of private capital, and takeover private enterprise out of their own fear of private capital being put into political support.

Singapore may continue to be our country, but when Singaporeans have no say or control over their own work arena, and allow the PAP Government to have foreigners replaced us, and stay in our midst to compete for residences that are affected by the artificial high prices willing ly paid by the high salaried foreigners - can we win in a war with one hand tied behind our backs by a Government that protects the foreigners and not Singaporeans ?

Ultimately, it boils down to salaries and compensations for allowing such foreigness unto our shores? What's in it for us citizens? Are we to compete on same salary scale?

Is the X-rated mind of a X-rat kid suddenly aware that there are differences in the "salaries and compensations for allowing foreigners unto our shores" ?

Are we not supposed to compete on the same salary scale as the foreigners ?

Or are the MNC's allowed to bring in their preferred "foreign talent" pay them high compensation arrangements, while cutting the costs of local management so as to be able to have their own "foreign talent" to look after their own interests ?

Will a Singapore Company have a Chinese National to be its CEO in its branch office in Beijing, or for that matter - a British Citizen as its CEO of its branch office in London, and then also local employees in the critical position as Financial Controllers in the branch offices ?

It has been a common practice to transfer as many staff from the Home Office to allow for confidential information to be handled internally.

This also applies to areas of special skills and or expertise that will be required to be kept in-house without too much high-tech details from being taught and transferred to third countries.

No, there is a win-win situation for all:-

What social spending has the Singapore Government have in its annual budget ?

Can 18% tax on the bonuses of "bosses" be sufficient to pay for the "social spending" when the Government abhors "social welfare" ?

What "social savings" are there, when the Annual Surplus of Singapore have been regularly transferred to the GIC and Temasek Holdings instead of being transferred into the National Reseves ?

Yes, Capitalism require "free market mechanism" to exist - could the failure of capitalism in Singapore in bringing economic progress due to the interference of the Singapore Government in the "free market mechanism" ?

Singapore will insist that the Singaporean Wages to be determined by a tripartitie committee of "Singapore Employers, Trade Union and the Government" - with the Government already overwhelming the 3-chair discussion, and all weighted in favor of the Government (which is also the biggest employer of Singaporeans, and with the NTUC being a symbiosis element of the PAP).

Obviously, the X-rat has little intelligence to appreciate the necessity of minimum wage to entice the Singaporean Employers to look at locals first - as the Government find it lucrative to reap in large surplus from the foreign worker levies that it collects from those semi-skilled workers that are recruited in large masses, at the expense of those trained in our polytechnics and technical institutes.

However, it is the workers who help bosses earn profits, and help our society with funds for social spending thru taxes. Thus the workers should be better compensated.

The X-rated mind is at its best when it strikes out a it adventure of fantasy with high fallutin ideals that it weaves to makes it false message more pallatable.

If a company makes 100 million a year, the boss is entittled to his bonus, other workers as well.... and The govt takes 18% - will the Shareholders agree to this before they get their cut first ?

The X-rat must be having an orgasmic fantasy to believe that if there are 9 workers in the company that makes 100 million a year, it will get one million dollars each !!

Can it work, or is this just another one of the X-rated fantasy that is no better than the toilet roll that it reads daily while waiting at the throne ?

With the X-rated ideas of returning half the profits of the company to the workers for making it possible, has the X-rat abandoned its "capitalist" position when it defended the Corporation in its abhorrence of "minimum wage policies" ?

It is amazing that the X-rat will double cross the "capitalist" position with its call to return half the profits to the workers.

Clearly, the X-rat is indulging in tom-foolery and not in any serious thinking even as it will shoot down more serious ideas and opinions of those who find Lim Swee Say's idiocy intolerable.

xtreyier SG

Thank you for your diatribe and rant, Turd. As it is, you had your wall of text say, and I had mine of which is more simplified for comprehension. Now, it is up to the readers to consider.

My post was never meant for you anyway, nor any other posts, because you are only interested in tearing down, sowing discord, fear, alarm and hopelessness.

Your agenda is plain for all see. What better technique than to do all the above, twisting words, lying, using half truths, false assumptions and then step in and offer up your beloved outlaw Dr.Chee, of the 'grow our MNCs, stop reliance on foreign MNCs, depend on sucidal ' domestic demand' ' without taking a good look at realilty, talking as if he is a noble prize economist winner!

Any hope you or him can ever give would only drive us deeper, as you are digging yourself only further deeper.

Let both of ours and other views stand as it is, for I am sure my fellow citizens, or at least, most of them, are not as stupid as you like them to be.

fireng SG

xtreyier is back again to post his nonsenses

xtreyier SG

xtreyier is back again to post his nonsenses

Nonsense is spelt without the 's' at the end. 8 words and you cannot even get it right, no wonder your intellect is limited to one liners.

Fantagf SG

xtreyier is back again to post his nonsenses

bo liao one is here.

Atobe SG

Thank you for your diatribe and rant, Turd. As it is, you had your wall of text say, and I had mine of which is more simplified for comprehension. Now, it is up to the readers to consider.

Is it not typical of a conceited X-rat to think that it has the capacity to play to a wider audience, when it cannot even dare to address specific issues that had exposed the bankrupt ideas that are nothing more then thin hot air ?

My post was never meant for you anyway, nor any other posts, because you are only interested in tearing down, sowing discord, fear, alarm and hopelessness.

Fear, alarm and hopelessness from my responses ?

Surely, I did not expect an X-rat to have such high regard to my abilities.

As far as hopelessness goes, can I be the one to spread such disheartening thoughts with my counter to the specifically negative X-rat statement expressed as - "Any Sec1 student will know why Singapore will not be able to have a thriving entreprenuership environment or homegrown MNC." ?

Is it not typical 'double-speak' of a X-rat in claiming that "Singapore will not be able to have a thriving entreprenuership environment" even as it contradict itself in another place by stating that "We do have our own talents..." ?

Only a X-rat will have the Singapore Talents to work for MNCs - instead of working in a thriving entreprenuerial environment.

It is comforting to know that the X-rat believe that there is some truth in my response, even as it refused to accept the entire piece as truth.

Why will the X-rat not attack the positions that are seen to be false assumptions, or the words been twisted ?

How many ways can one achieve "CHEAPER" product in Singapore - when land cost is high, raw materials are subject to the vagaries of high prices, and utilities for the manufacturing process are dependent on imported oil for power generation, and water require high cost of processing ?

Was there not a X-rat half-a-truth and false assumption made in the X-rat post that "CHEAPER" can only mean cheaper labor rates ?

Only the bankrupt mind of a X-rat will not dare to engage in attacking what it claims to be false in the response given to its own earlier posts that were based on thin hot air without any substance of any kind.

Any hope you or him can ever give would only drive us deeper, as you are digging yourself only further deeper.

Yes, the grave digger must dig itself deeper and further into the ground to prepare for the final resting place - is that not how a grave digger must perform to place the coffin for an X-rat ?

Let both of ours and other views stand as it is, for I am sure my fellow citizens, or at least, most of them, are not as stupid as you like them to be.

Has the X-rat lost the gloves that it had boasted in its anxiety to have a "one-on-one" match, and now prefer to smoke its way out of the spot light to its X-rated qualitites ?

Was that another piece of hot air from a kid indulging in too much comics, and believing itself to be an X-rated character resembling a rat ?

Only a X-rat will dare to state that Singaporeans are stupid, and do we need to understand the manner in which it will build its arguments based on hollow lines that it serves to Singaporeans, and which have been so easily exposed in my replies for its bankrupt ideas ?

Lim Swee Say has the ability to bring ideas down to its most basic and simplistic levels that his "high fallutin" ideas have been reduced to pure idiocy, which he believes that Singaporeans have no capacity to absorb the message without him murdering it into kindergarten simplicity.

Did the X-rated attempts by a X-rat kiddie produced any impact, even as the X-rat try so hard to further simplify Lim Swee Say's simplistic explanation of CBF to lower levels ?

charlize SG

Low wages.

High cost of living.

How to survive?

Haiz.

av98m SG

Low wages.

High cost of living.

How to survive?

Haiz.

Life sucks.

angel7030 SG

when u r poor, sucking also difficult to suck.

angel7030 SG

Low wages.

High cost of living.

How to survive?

Haiz.

many high floors building around, take yr pick

BenBenDeZhu SG

In wow, cbf means cant be fu*ked :o