Why benmarking ministers' pays is not apple-to-apple?

robertteh SG

Under the general law or rule of law there is a general principle " No One should be a judge or jury in his own cause"

Besides being tainted with conflict of interest, the benchmarking methodology itself is totally fallacious and flawed.

MM Lee's argument seems to be that just because they were some million-dollar earner in the private sector like Jack Welch or Peter Lim or Iacocca there ought to be some million-dollar ministers in the public sector as well.

Why must this be the case when the private sector success stories are totally different from those in the public sector.

Each one of the successful CEOs in the private sector has climbed his own particular ladder of success due to their own peculiar incomparable circumstances and such stories may not be replicated or repeated by another person.

Many years ago in 1970s many estate officers who have left the public sector to set up their own real estate practices have made it earning tidy sums of monies in various property management firms.

The later batch who left and set up their own firms in 1980s did not quite make it so well and many were earning less than those who stayed in the public service.

Some who have the legal service to join as partners in successful firms have made in certain years but many did not.

There is a question of timing as well as entrepreneurship and other factors determining who did well upon leaving the public sector and who did not.

Nor does the disparity in pays between private and public sector necessarily reflect a one-way brain drain from the public to the private sector. Many in the private sector are not getting anywhere that kind of monies as shown in the benchmark list.

If we conduct a survey among the current crop of ministers not many of them were earning higher before they were called to tea anyway.

Joining the profession of politicians is a different calling altogether. The high flyer CEOs in the private sector do not necessarily make better and more passionate public servants being totally different professions, requiring totally different aptitude and personality and characters.

Those who were awarded more in the private sector may not necessarily be overpaid as assumed by MM Lee in his benchmarking of ministers' pays to raise their own. For everyone of these successful CEOs or highflyers there were many who were paid less or much less than assumed by the benchmark.

If we try to get Iacocca to start his career in politics or another field all over again he might not have made it as every success is determined by its own particular combinations of entrepreneurship, investments or good timing for the particular success.

If we use MM Lee to benchmark ministers' salaries to successful few we are in effect giving the ministers a big lottery winning ticket without going through the luck of the draw or writing their own pay cheques so to speak.

It is quite illogical for MM Lee to draw up only the few successful CEOs in the private sector ignoring many other equally demanding CEOs who were paid less.

Such CEOs on the benchmark list may be entrepreneurs, bosses and proven individuals who have gone through much more before they reached their particular apex of success. Thus the benchmarking is not apple-to-apple comparison and is flawed from the start. Some of them are paid higher by their own firm in order to avoid paying all the profits to taxes.

So there is a lot of fallacies in MM Lee's argument that our ministers are worth as much as these few successful top-earning CEOs in the first place, But if we see his past policies and decisions many of them were look-good assumptions and hypes which do not necessarily translate to reality in practice.

00011000 SG

The way I see it, high compensations to the Ministers are fallacies.

The fallacy that help to keep the MIW going and going ........ at the expenses of the common ppl........

qlqq9 SG

Old man is getting more and more greedy, money minded as he age. So whatever crap that he can base on to justify getting more pay he will just base on that to argue his way though the crap may sound unreasonable. He is ruled by money.

00011000 SG

The old man just can't get it.... many things in life just cannot be compared.

Jacky Chan once said something like that....."that his next, next generations will not have to work for the rest of their life". Not one or two generations, mind you. Something like 30 generations thereafter, if I can remember the figure correctly.

So, does it means that we should pay mediacorp stars Jacky Chan's salary in order to raise our TV standard?

Even if we do, we will never get a Jacky Chan in Singapore. Why? Jacky Chan is the kind of actor that plays with his life, can mediacorp artists do so? And he has been trained since a kid - to be an acrobat.

The private sector is very realistic. You good, then only you see the pay. It is never like what the old man said "using high pay to attract ppl then test and train them at the same time for the job"