Leaders are the main stumbling block to further progress

robertteh SG · 2005-11-25T22:22:15+00:00

Agreed that in a controlled environment, with telvisions and media reporting what they say and all the propagandas, many get carried out and assume all kinds...

robertteh SG

="Johnnian"][quote="robertteh"][quote="acotis"]Robertteh,

It is dangerous to generalise like you did. You speak as if you are very sure of the internal budgetting of the government. Are you? Do you actually gather information on their accounts and after much tabulation realise that the taxes are actually used more to cover losses? No offence, but i find it hard to accept your argument. If you have detailed evidence, please provide them.

Robertteh
Dangerous - based on whose perception? Is it not dangerous to deny problems or access to assets as requested by ex-president Ong Teng Cheong in that problems will become greater if there is no accountability and transparency on asset management on the part of government.

Is it not more dangerous if people cannot see what is being done to their monies with clearly established facts and good corporate governance?

Taxes are meant to cover the government's operational costs. They fund a range of support services that the government provides for the citizens. Some goes to helping the poor break the poverty cycle, for example. Theres no free lunch in this world. By using the phrase "double taxation" you have just insinuated that the government spends too much in access for too little in return. Can you prove that?

Robertteh
Lands acquired by the government under the Land Acquisition Act belong to the people. If so, has the HDB the morality to charge HDB Flats at or close to market values plus inclusion of land costs again. Is this not double charging for land or double taxation?

I appreciate a good argument. If it is well supported, I will have no choice but to concur. But unproven claims do not make a good argument.

Robertteh
For the rest of major policy errors please visit page 11 of "Definition of True Democracy" thread of www.sgforums.com under "Speakers' Corner". I have given many suggestions with facts to Feedback Unit since 2001 such as the danger to produce many educated unemployed under persistent academic education system etc. I have also pointed that it is wrong for government to compete against people for business in the domestic sector of economy. Many other suggestions are awaiting their attention and I hope they will consider citizens' views and make changes.

So I do not just criticise wrong policies but I am giving them suggestions. Do not get me wrong that I am anti-government or criticising without facts.

Did they includes land cost? I dunno, still young havnt buy HDB yet. So you means when we buy the HDB flat ... there is a sub fee on the land itself ? Is the fee huge? or its just the maintenance fee of the land rather than the requisition of the land?

If it is the maintenance fee of the land, then how much ? Our surroundings is actually quite nice with garden etc. I dont mind paying that maintenance.

Robertteh

The first principle in any human progress is without doubt openness, discussions and deliberations as it is only when majority of citizens are interested to contribute to the governance that there could be the best solutions and choices that lead to progress and competitiveness.

Singapore leaders have been promoting a system to cultivate the bests of crop of the cream. Fair enough, we need to motivate people to study hard and excel there is no disagreement with such a system of meritocracy.

However, such a system may be too narrow that tend to confine to promotion of the academics and public administration without broad-based practical knowledge application and related entrepreneurship and creativity in the population.

Singaporeans have been denied of many opportunities to train the people to excel in applying practical knowledge applications and innovations. The great number of elites produced by our academic system of education have not upgraded our competitiveness or entrepreneurship or nurturing of a more innovative and knowledge application society.

Many academicians produced are now joining the rank of the unemployed because there do not possess the passions or drive or other practical abilities to become economically competitive or create jobs. This failure of our academic education system is very clear for all to see.

The one-party system is anti-progress and anti-mass participation in knowledge application.

Today the leaders still cannot see their own lack of understanding of what work in the actual world. They are still persisting in their past shortcomings and all the academic assumptions. They are the ones to have to change before the moribund economy can turn around.

OH-FF SG

Main reason is that Meritocracy by the awards of certifications are creating the impression that people who pursue other merits are worthless.

Worth becomes the value of the paper and not the value of the effectiveness in work and teamwork.

What other merits do you think our people continue to possess?

ben1xy SG

valid criticism. however, i would like to ask, how then should we select our future leaders?

robertteh SG

If more and more highly educated people become unemployed that is because our past policy of promoting academic education and producing the elites can only achieve limited success.

More and more citizens therefore can see that our leaders are now not so effective any more and are fast running out of solutions. They now can only keep talking about educations, importing more outside talents and not knowing enough how to make the citizens pursue innovations and knowledge application to develop their own strengths and resources to the fullest.

Can they do something more practical - motivate all citizens with lesser talks about their own kind of academic excellence. Go and promote practical knowledge application and innovations across the whole population. But more people must understand and ask for such change then the government will change.

OH-FF SG

Based on Public service ? Based on how much he has given? Or based on the capabilities of management ? And recruiting members into the Parties not based on family ties ?

But definitely not based on how much is taken.

ben1xy SG

u do realise the fallacies in such statement i hope? that's too sweeping a statement.

ben1xy SG

lol.. nice parting shot.

ok.. so lets tackle this issue slightly deeper. so what do we do with our brightest students? do we still send them to MIT, Harvard, etc?

Salman SG

Can we employ uneducated people to join the govt to balance up decision making?
But there are hardly any uneducated people in Singapore today.
I think its a high handed conspiracy by the govt to deprive Singapore of uneducated people and an uneducated point of view.

robertteh SG

You may not agree with the statement until you see more facts. I cannot give you statistics although statistics can lie but will be useful starting point of discussions. MOM statistics on unemployed have been a subject of much criticism because even university professors have problems with using such statistics.

For now, I will only point out that based on my own observation, many people with good degrees including MBAs are unemployed or underemployed.

A number of public service scholars are facing earlier retirements to make way for newly graduated scholars up the public career ladder to maintain some kind of public sector meritocracy integrity of sorts.

OH-FF SG

These people better come up with a 5 year plan or business model when they come back. And make sure they produce teams with effective business models to create jobs for our local "Less-than Elites".

How can they call themselves Elites when they take so much $$$(Salary) from our national funds and return us products that effectively take away our jobs and give away to contractors with the least capabilities to do the best jobs and the lowest bids.

It is very costly to see their $$$(Salary) when the end decision is people have to live with products that are bid lowest and our country men cut their salaries to compete for the bid for their projects.

ben1xy SG

thats the point i am trying to drive home. we must be objective and justify our comments with hard figures or it will be difficult for people to treat these comments seriously.

to attribute the increase in unemployment solely to the meritocratic system is a tad too myopic i reckon. We must benchmark against other countries, economic growth, etc. to be honest, IMO, we wun be able to achieve 5-8% growth like back in the 70's-80s, and unemployment will be a problem.

actually another issue that i think is pretty important is our ageing population.

OH-FF SG

Let me remind you that the Education only starts when you step into this business world model and sell your services or company's services and learn to be humble yet respected by your customers.

Throwing your Education as an Excuse for high salary puts you in the list of Liabilities in the cost of hiring you when you do not even contribute to sales and effective income for the company.

ben1xy SG

no lah, i ain't asking abt this. i understand booksmart doesn't equal more capable. wad i am asking is .. do we still send our brightest students to the top universities under scholarship?

OH-FF SG

You cannot stop the people who become booksmart and also system ladder smart.

These are the people who can climb ladders under controlled environments. Will they be washed onto the beach and left to dry when they are nolonger hired by govt bodies ?

Aren't these people the same as those who only learnt to collect salaries and sit in inactive management positions? And these are the same problematic people who hinders the development of younger and expansion of the company's teams?

These people are now hung out to dry. (No pity)

robertteh SG

So far the leaders have only used statistics to suit their case or assumptions. I do not see objectivity in their comparison basis whether it concerns education or economic performance.

They tend to make comparison so far with worse off countries and make many generalisations to show their assumed achievements. People sector of the economy is always excluded in their statistics when it comes to economic performance.

China being a large country is difficult to achieve progress but when China did achieve 7-9% GDP growth, our leaders will try to compare our growth rate of 5% to advanced country's growths.

It is a case of objectivity as you mentioned, but I do not see our leaders are willing to be objective in any comparison.

They would rather not talk about NKF or the 20 major policy errors as posted. So far they keep saying that our country is small and without resource just to avoid certain problems being posed by the citizens.

So do you still believe their claims of success is very truthful or full of biases.

By such an egoistic system of governing, I do not think we will make any headway any more. They will be postponing solutions to problems by such system of selective comparison with worse countries while avoiding comparison on an apple-to-apple basis. Their selective comparison has been their hallmark of governing the country so far.

Unless citizens understand the importance of objective comparisons,they will be confused by all the claims. I do look forward to their making some attempts to make comparison of performance based on objective standards, Until then, what is the point of trying to say that by comparison our economy is doing better than certain countries.

ben1xy SG

from the way i see it, a dilemna exist. i mean, we need to send the best students to the best institutions. but if we spend so much, its logical to try and lock them in with a bond and promote them up.

not an easy problem to solve

ben1xy SG

u do realise that by not making objective statements backed with ample justification, u r making the exact same mistakes that they r making. Whats the difference between u n them then? statistics can be skewed, false comparisons can be made... but at least it gives more credibility, albeit, improper.

I do hope that while fighting for more transparency and reforms, u do not fall into the same mistakes. coz some of your claims (not all) are not justified and a tad too bias. no offense intended, juz my frank opinion.

robertteh SG

I accept your comment that we ought to be objective not necessarily statistical.

ben1xy SG

thks for not taking offense Smile

ShutterBug SG

If you have a cup of black coffee, and you keep on adding a little bit of Tea into it each and everyday, until it over fills and runs over and you still keep adding Tea into it - in time it will become a cup of Tea.