I believe the australians werent very happy about the
government for allowing black africans into their country
because they always associate them with diseases. Is that where you
are coming from?
The healthcare system we have today wasnt pass on to us by the
British or the Malaya, it is something
which was established by our government, and something
which we could claim to be uniquely Singapore.
Personally I think it will be more interesting to see how the
younger generation is going to fund the healthcare needs of
the baby boomers in other developed countries.
No that's not where I am coming from, I have nothing against FTs
nor do I think they bring in diseases... can't say the same for
those who work illegally here without santion though, an issue that
our government has pointed out.
However what I am pointing out is that unless our extremely low
local fertility rate is turned around, we are going to see a lot of
new healthcare issues rise in the future, and in fact, the low
fertility rate ought to be a national healthcare isse, one that our
own government unfortunately, as they have admitted, have utterly
failed at solving despite decades of effort.
Of course, there were some questionable policies that we put in
place, which started to cross the line into eugenics as well:
By the 1980s, the government had become concerned with the low
rate of population growth and with the relative failure of the most
highly educated citizens to have children. The failure of female
university graduates to marry and bear children, attributed in part
to the apparent preference of male university graduates for less
highly educated wives, was singled out by Prime Minister Lee Kuan
Yew in 1983 as a serious social problem. In 1984 the government
acted to give preferential school admission to children whose
mothers were university graduates, while offering grants of
S$10,000 to less educated women who agreed to be sterilized after
the birth of their second child. The government also established a
Social Development Unit to act as matchmaker for unmarried
university graduates. The policies, especially those affecting
placement of children in the highly competitive Singapore schools,
proved controversial and generally unpopular. In 1985 they were
abandoned or modified on the grounds that they had not been
effective at increasing the fecundity of educated women.
The eugenic principle was abused by the Nazi Party in Germany
during the 1930s and early 1940s to justify the attempted
extermination of entire social and ethnic groups and the
establishment of selective breeding programmes. Modern eugenics is
concerned mainly with the elimination of genetic disease.
The term was coined by the English scientist Francis Galton in 1883, and the concept
was originally developed in the late 19th century with a view to
improving human intelligence and behaviour.
In 1986 Singapore became the first democratic country to adopt
an openly eugenic policy by guaranteeing pay increases to female
university graduates when they give birth to a child, while
offering grants towards house purchases for nongraduate married
women on condition that they are sterilized after the first or
second child.
