why do you think there are as many cases of maids abusing
employer's children and old folks as maid abuse cases ? ... my
theory ? ... cos when you pay peanuts, you get monkeys ... I
actually met a fillipina lady who've worked as a maid in Singapore
before, she told me the conditions were terrible, like she was in a
prison, that Singaporeans were rude and seemed to have this disdain
for fillipinos, she now works as an au pair in Canada, with an
employer given vehicle to drive her charges around, wages more than
7 times her pay in Singapore, and she gets treated with dignity
(that's fodder for another thread there too) ...
yes, they'll keep coming, but what you'll get are not talents, but
"talents" ... the truly wretched from third world shitholes that
have nothing to lose ... do you think that's a good situation ?
...
as for your salaries observation, that's a shrewd one .... perhaps
that's what happening right now, but hey, you know what, it's
something that's happening all over the world too ... I just
rejected a job offer in Canada, cos I got to know that I was being
offered C$12000 a year less than a Canadian classmate of mine who
got hired by the same company ... why would they take away jobs
from Canadians in the first place ? ... cos they can get someone to
do it cheaper of course ...
The Halcyon days of our boom years are over, no employer is going
to pay some chap without much qualifications 5K a month in
Singapore when they can hire 10 Master degree holders at the same
price in China or India ... there are millions and millions of
people who are hungry enough, who have never tasted the good life
that we have, who are willing to accept a lot less ...
China graduated 25million people from her universities last year,
and her economy had the capacity to only absorb 10% of them
(statistic courtesy of the new york times, pay for the archive and
search for it) ... that's several times more than the population of
Singapore ! ... I sometimes wonder why companies would still invest
in Singapore at all, given the abundance of cheap, skilled, and
talented labour elsewhere ... perhaps the Singaporean worker still
gives good value compared to many parts of the world ... salary
levels are not set by the goverment, but dictated by market
economics, you can bitch and whine and hold out for a higher
salary, while watching jobs sail away to the yellow sea (or the
indian ocean) ... or you can ride the wave ....
but say it's not about FTs but about FWs, fine ... maids and
construction workers and road sweepers aside, FWs have
traditionally been a part of our economy anyways ... look at our
electronics industry, our manufacturing industry ... if not for the
legions of Johoreans crossing the causeway every single day, where
would we be ? ... would you rather a factory relocate to malaysia
all together, or up the FW cap and let half the factory be staffed
by FWs, but we Singaporeans would still get 50% of the jobs ? ...
the cynics have been saying that, hey ! ... it's the goverment that
benefits in taxes of course ... 
... but think of my example again
....
