yes, I would say that the plight of lower educated and lower
qualified workers are the biggest challenge facing us now, but I'd
still say heavy social spending is not the way to go, the attendent
social cost is simply too great, and to go down that path from
which we can never return would be suicide (as i mentioned in my
thread, would anyone in Singapore today be willing to pay 40%
income tax and 14% GST to pay for social welfare ? ... )
as for foreign talents, I realised where I am now, that we are not
the only country engaged in global talent hunting alone, in this
global driven economy, a country's wealth is no longer solely
determined by the amout of natural resources (a non issue for
Singapore anyways), I have professors from Mexico, Germany, Poland,
Israel, Iran, China, Ukraine, Nigeria teaching me, and for science
majors like me, the local goverment is actively encouraging me to
stay, (of course, ironically, should I decide to stay on here after
graduation, I would be a "foreign talent" too, and yes, some people
here are very resentful of FTs also ). FTs are an inevitable
neccessity in this knowledge driven economy, unfortunately
so where does that leaves us ? ... now that the salad days of the
mid 80s to 90s are well and truly over, we have no choice but to
swallow some "bitterness" as the economy structrally re-adjust, to
the un-initiated, structural re-adjustment means the loss of
certain types of jobs that'll never return, in our case low tech
assembly lines for instance, pressing widgets together etc, all
these jobs have now gone to China, or better yet, been replaced by
robots, these types of jobs won't come back even when the economy
recovers. The rise of China is a reality, the evolving knowledge
driven economy is a reality, and whinning and bitching at the
goverment won't help, because there isn't much the goverment can do
really,
what are we to do as individuals ? I like the term "life long
employability", that would mean having skill sets that would make
you attractive to employers, for those chappies who like to tell
themselves that paper qualitications doesn't really much, I'd say,
don't kid yourselves, the days of O level or A level managers are
over, I remember back in my poly days lecturers telling us that
with a diploma, after a while, you can become an "engineer", I
learnt much to my chargrin, that in most other countries, being an
"Engineer" means that you have sat for the Professional Engineering
Board Exams and have a P.E on your name card ! and for that matter,
most "engineers" overseas do have it ! Remember the Nicoll Highway
collaspe ? ... why do we have an Ang Moh Engineer signing the plans
? but locals to execute them ? ... of course it would be nice to
have a local doing the signing, but there simply isn't many
Singaporean P.E around in the first place !
That would be for the younger chappies, chappies like me, what
about the older folks then, like the middle aged lady you mention
(and my mother too I would add, she got retrenched 10 yrs ago after
the company she was working in as an admin supervisor changed
hands, and being middle aged and no degree, has been a house wife
since ), I confess that I have no satisfactory answer, yes, some
companies certainly do practise agism (along with sexism and racism
for some too), but I'd like to warn everyone that things will
probably get worse, the wage cost in Singapore is still high
compared to other developed economies in the region, take Hong Kong
and Taiwan for instance, I was shocked to learn that the expected
starting pay of a fresh grad in Hong Kong would be even slightly
lower than what a fresh poly grad in Singapore can expect to earn !
and because we're still some distance off from that point, I think
the income gap in Singapore will only widen.
