PAP has turned Singapore into a land of foreigners

LazerLordz SG

There is a book that is worth reading, from the other side of the fence.

-Multitude by Antonio Negri.

Anyway, there is another ideology that talks of dismantling the entire globalisation that we are going through right now, an all out global resistance and backlash to the politics of suppression and earning profits on a rolling basis, where one low-cost maquiladora moves up the chain, and investors move on to the next region.

It will end someday, and it will be bloody.It's a scenario not too far fetched and entirely plausible.

Atobe SG

Originally posted by oxford mushroom:
Time and again you have failed to understand the issues surrounding healthcare costs. The high costs of medication has nothing to do with the costs of production. It is the high costs levied by the pharmaceutical companies, a consequence of patent protection which lasts 20 years. You cannot manufacture patented drugs and sell them cheap without infringing patent rights.

Biotech is the one of the fastest growing industries...just read the figures from our economic reports and you will have the answer. You are not a healthcare professional and so perhaps you do not understand the implications. Ask your financial advisor: which is the most profitable induistry in the world today.

Perhaps not being a healthcare professional allow one to have an outsider's view from afar, instead of being myopically trapped in the midst of the forest and unable to differentiate one tree from another.

We can bury ourselves with all kinds of costs when discussing healthcare, but every cent that can be saved - as in your emphasis of importing cheap medical expertise - can only benefit Singaporeans.

Can we question your expertise in the Biotech and the depth of knowledge in the entire spectrum of this field ?

The Singapore Health Service has avoided high costs of patented medicines by not offering these for standard use except for those who will pay for it.

What is the objective of Singapore involvement in the Biotech Industry - either with direct investment or other form of funding towards their R+D ?

Is the objective to get a share of the subsequent profits, or is the objective to make advance medicine cheaper and available to Singaporeans, or to create job opportunities for Singaporeans who will FINALLY enter this field sometime in the near or distant future ?

While getting around to unravelling the mysterious decision of promoting BioTech industry in Singapore when no Singaporeans are available to man the various positions, should we not lower the costs of medicine with whatever that is TRADITIONAL and regionally available ?

We can put our advance SCIENTIFIC prowess to gain the best use of the many traditional medicine that are used at such low costs by the various communities within the ASEAN countries - with cheap local raw materials.

In our fixation with western science and medical researches - how much do we know of the regional traditional medicine, and how many can we document and-or determine to be useful and practical for further development to be offered as medicine to the high cost BioTECH discoveries ?

Atobe SG

What can we expect a Doctor to know of industrial management ?

Why would you look at the lower end of an industry with such disdain ?

Even the Economic Review Committee formed after the 2002 downturn had identified that Singapore had lost too many second tier (low end) manufacturing capacity, which had provided a substantial employment opportunity, as well as a support to the main industry.

Color pencils was an example to show that a country cannot simply concentrate its attention on - the new flavor of the decade - BioTECH, but will also need to maintain existing industries to keep a balance of traditional job opportunities and not be overly dependent entirely on "high risk-high gain" industries that may only be short term.

Why are you so quick with your knee jerk reaction based on your medical expertise - as a doctor - in your love affair with your preferred BioTECH field of specialised knowlege ?

Yes, automation helps to improve productivity and it also help to keep a traditional industry alive and relevant to the community, and at least it does not need to export its specialty to a low cost country (as in your example) and help to prevent more workers to join the unemployment line.

The difference of the Faber-Castell example - with that of a pharmaceutical product - is that the raw materials were native to Germany and not imported as you have wrong assumed, if only you had watched that Discovey Channel feature.

Look at the marketing teams for pharmaceutical companies compared to those in the retail sector, say, for cosmetics. A marketing manager in the cosmetic sector typically handles a dozen or more products and there are 3 or more new product launches per month. There may be 2 or more marketing persons in the pharamceutical company handling just one drug and new product launches come once a year or longer. Yet the pharmaceutical industry employs more marketing personnel and spends far more in marketing than any other industry. Why? Because the profit margins are higer and they can afford it. They also pay better, but you can take a person off the street to sell cosmetics, but not pharmaceutics.

Is there any morals left in the pharmaceutical industry and medical practitioners - getting rich from the sick and near death ?

Anyway, your explanation is very telling in reinforcing my effort to tell you that upgrading an older worker is much simpler said then done.

It is not that an older worker is not willing to upgrade to a higher skill, but can he ?

Your statement - " you can take a person off the street to sell cosmetics, but not pharmaceutics " - reinforces a statement in my ealier post :
'an experienced doctor can easily become a car salesman, but can an experienced car salesman upgrade himself to be a doctor - and to be as good as the experienced doctor who change profession ? '

Exhortations for older workers to upgrade can only occur when the skill required for the next job is marginally higher, and not a quantum leap in expertise or dexterity of skill, or knowledge.

Any job that can be done more cheaply in a cheaper economy will be lost to us. We have to focus on jobs that cannot be outsourced because they are service jobs that must be performed locally (eg. nurses, waiters) or the skill required is beyond the capability of the foreign competitor. Service jobs may be difficult to outsource, but if foreign workers come into Singapore as they do, our workers cannot compete as well. So essentially, if our workers do not want to accept a lower wage like the foreign workers in Singapore, they have to go into hi-tech industries where we still have a relative advantage.

Here again, going into hi-tech industries will depend on the current levels of education, knowledge, experiences and training of the Singaporean worker that will allow retraining to be effective for a change in occupation at a late stage of the Singaporean's life.

We cannot expect an assembly line worker in electronics to be retrained to be a high-tech lab technician in a BioTECH industry; nor can we expect a hawker center cleaner to upgrade to become an equipment technician.

What other high end job awaits such a Singaporean ?

Atobe SG

continuation:

You must not forget that increased productivity also means you need fewer people to do the same job. The UK manufacturing industry accounts for a sixth of total exports and only 15% of the workforce. Their output has not dropped, but the workforce in this industry has been declining year on year. The reason: factories that survive have increased productivity and employ fewer workers and so remain competitive. The others have outsourced their work overseas. So increased productivity does not always mean more jobs, especially if the increase in productivity comes as a result of automation, which can also be replicated in cheaper economies.

When we think of outsourcing to cheaper economies, we used to think of them as low-cost, low-skill centres. Unfortunately, we are up against a greater challenge. China and India are fast becoming low-cost, high-skill economies and we have to go one up against them to survive. Bringing in machines and automation alone is no longer a viable solution...the Chinese are already doing that.

We have to move up the skill ladder and leverage on our reputation as being more responsible maufacturers of high-value goods like pharmaceuticals, compared to China, for example.

Can every worker in Singapore become lab technicians in the pharmaceutical industry, or some other BioTECH industry, or some other Medical Science Research Facility - all in your narrow expertise in medicine and medical science ?

If every other country - First World countries as well as Third World countries - also get into this area of high-value pharmaceutical goods - are we not all not swimming in a very small and confined pool ?

BioTECH is a mere flavor for this decade, it will not last forever - so it is best that you start reading out of your narrow specialised medical field, and perhaps also consider alternative energy sources from sugar cane, palm oil, vegetable oil, and recycled cooking oil; or perhaps into fashion and fashion wear from new ethnic fibres; or trend setting consumer products.

The future is also in the search for drinkable water - with the sea being a vast resource, the most efficient and cheapest cost to make seawater drinkable will win the race.

I have a good foreign friend who has the best job as a Product Research Designer; he once said to me that he has the best job in the world, as he is paid to DREAM for six months in a year while living in the wilderness.

At the end of the six months, he will meet with the sales-marketing team, product design - manufacturing team, raw material purchasing team, finance team and advertising publicity team.

They will review all the dreamed up products and brainstorm together to project the next flavor, the next trend, based on their researched knowledge of social, cultural, economic, and political situation of their respective target markets.

This is the length that other advanced countries will push themselves to success that a person can be paid to DREAM.

Can a government and a country of pragmatists appreciate the value of such talent ?

Can we think beyond our own experience, training, knowledge, and environment ?

oxford mushroom SG

Sure...tell our cancer patients to pick up a packet of herbal medicine on their way home to die..Why not discover new pharmaceuticals from these local raw materials? Sure, that is done ALL THE TIME, but by the time the drug is on the market, the price shoots up. Sigh, that's the problem of someone who does not understand medicine...

I have made my point and there is no purpose arguing with you. You have walled yourself in and refuse to accept any idea that agrees with the government's policy. You talk about colour pencils in Germany, wonders why we cannot emulate them and later admit that unlike them, we would have to import the raw materials. In any case, I see that as a sunset industry that will be lost to developing nations soon without protectionist policies.

I have never disagreed that it is not easy for older workers to upgrade their skills in a different industry. The fact is, I do not see any alternative. The ah sor who lost her job working in a disk drive assembly line is not likely to be able to compete with her foreign counterpart in the same industry. The only way to retain her level of pay is to work in a new industry that is prepared to pay better. Miners and steel workers in the UK have not managed to retain their jobs, have they?

In a global economy, consumers go for the cheapest goods of the best quality and employers go for the cheapest staff that are the best skilled. What to do with our own citizens that are too expensive and with low skills? I am sorry, but the world does not owe us a living. Government subsidies can only go so far...

Students who do media studies may have to go overseas to find jobs and that may well be true of our low-skilled workers as well. Singapore may be too expensive for them if they cannot compete. It's a tough message but it is true.

We have to see the signs and upgrade our skills constantly, moving to different industries as the need arises. Failure to do so is to be condemned to extinction. Evolution and natural selection will not stop just because you say so.

Wind6 SG

Guess is our own fault then for everything tat is happening now in sg Laughing

LazerLordz SG

we have some blame to carry.

Atobe SG

Originally posted by oxford mushroom:

Sure...tell our cancer patients to pick up a packet of herbal medicine on their way home to die..Why not discover new pharmaceuticals from these local raw materials? Sure, that is done ALL THE TIME, but by the time the drug is on the market, the price shoots up. Sigh, that's the problem of someone who does not understand medicine...

Maybe it is about time you take a serious look at TCM and give it a little more respect as your peers from Singapore and advanced western countries have all done.

Fortunately not all doctors (especially the TCM trained) are as mercenary as a Western trained doctor imbued with the Hippocrates Oath that make true hypocrates out of our western trained doctor like yourself.

Are you sure that the wall you see around me is not the wall that you are looking over and surrounding your own tight little space ?

I have made my point and there is no purpose arguing with you. You have walled yourself in and refuse to accept any idea that agrees with the government's policy. You talk about colour pencils in Germany, wonders why we cannot emulate them and later admit that unlike them, we would have to import the raw materials. In any case, I see that as a sunset industry that will be lost to developing nations soon without protectionist policies.

Which idea is agreeable with the government's policy ?

The color pencil industry in Germany was an example that traditional industry that is seen to be inefficient can be upgraded - as much as you are suggesting workers to upgrade and trained to a higher level of productivity - why do you see it any different ?

Are there protectionist curtains raised to protect German made Faber-Castell sold in Singapore or any countries in South-east Asia ?

The point of Faber-Castell being mentioned was to show you that a country cannot simply give up their home grown industries simply due to intense competition from low-cost centers.

I have indicated to you that the Swiss Swatch found a way to beat the Japanese Casio, and that low-cost centres may no longer hold sway when the likes of Audi, Toyota and Honda have found it profitable to expand their facilities in their supposed HIGH-COST home country.

You have already said that Higher Productivity is the answer and that is true as seen in the case of Audi, Toyota, Honda, and Faber-Castell - and for your information, no government subsidies were offered.

Singapore has lost its second tier manufacturing capacity and soon our over dependence on low cost centres will result in a higher price to be paid in one form or another.

I have never disagreed that it is not easy for older workers to upgrade their skills in a different industry. The fact is, I do not see any alternative. The ah sor who lost her job working in a disk drive assembly line is not likely to be able to compete with her foreign counterpart in the same industry. The only way to retain her level of pay is to work in a new industry that is prepared to pay better. Miners and steel workers in the UK have not managed to retain their jobs, have they?

What would you suggest that "ah soh" to upgrade herself for ?

Which hypothetical industry would you think that "ah soh" can enter to find a high paying job from her previous work at a disk drive assembly line ?

My hypothetical analogy about a Doctor being easier to be a salesman, then it is for a Salesman to upgrade to be a Doctor - at the same competence level as that Doctor who became a salesman.

In other words, it is NOT possible for a worker to be upgraded to a level of expertise that is beyond the worker's basic education level, present training exposure and work experience.

In a global economy, consumers go for the cheapest goods of the best quality and employers go for the cheapest staff that are the best skilled. What to do with our own citizens that are too expensive and with low skills? I am sorry, but the world does not owe us a living. Government subsidies can only go so far...

Students who do media studies may have to go overseas to find jobs and that may well be true of our low-skilled workers as well. Singapore may be too expensive for them if they cannot compete. It's a tough message but it is true.

We have to see the signs and upgrade our skills constantly, moving to different industries as the need arises. Failure to do so is to be condemned to extinction. Evolution and natural selection will not stop just because you say so.

Is there such a thing as the cheapest goods of the best quality ?

Surely you have heard of the Chinese saying "yi fen chien, yi fen huo" ?

Or in plain simple English - you get what you pay for.

If the employers go for the cheapest staff that are the best skilled, what are the Foreign Talents doing in Singapore - commanding the high pay that you say that they are supposedly taking away from Singaporeans ?

Did anyone in this thread ask for subsidies ?

Or was the call made for a level playing field in this globalisation game ?

Certainly no one in this forum had said that anyone owe us a living - only you keep harping on this.

Most of us have said that we need to protect our job market - and I have extended it by saying that we open our job market as a reciprocating response to those other countries that open their job market to Singaporeans.

will4 SG

As long as these Chinese national n Indian national contributed to Spore, they will
be welcomed. Their skill is accepted here as they willing to work harder than local.

stormy__turbo SG

i tell u arh, the england ppl play soccer at singapore poly very zhuai, siao zhang…they thing they got abit skill can kao bei, play play wif them say we lousy…let 3 goals in nia they say we noob, then me and my buddies chiong goal, use skill but nv play rough, they say we wat wat fcu k la…like they england best like tat, if england win world cup, i take my pants down and say see my cock

will4 SG

Second generation PR need to serve NS. Neutral

will4 SG

I do ehard the govt actually gave scholars to foreign students.

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