hee hee... Tripwire never fails to crack me up...
he's got a point... talent is more of a matter of character and
attitude than paper qualifications... it IS easy
to get a PhD... its a matter of getting a good supervisor and an
ulu topic... the rest of it is just research, research and more
research...
i don't underrate PhD holders... research is hard work and time
consuming... thats the issue here, not so much if a person is
"talented" or not. A person fully deserves to be called "doctor"
for putting himself through this rigourous mental exercise. but the
point is, if u can find the time, u can do it too 
and forget Japan... they have no immigrant labour problem cos they
don't like importing foreign labour! they've only done it
once ... when they gang pressed koreans cos most
of the men were sent to fight the war...
here's something to chew on... automobile assembly the world over
is labour intensive except for japan, because it
is highly automated with robots... why? its
cheaper to import labour than to invest in technology what...
every nation faces context-specific problems on top of the wider
problems faced by many countries in the same situation. now, the Sg
gov't could have done more
to help the people, just like the Japanese gov't could do more to clean up the banks
and the zaibatsu and the korean gov't could do more to settle its union
disputes, but no... they're all stuck...
why?
Sg faces structural unemployment. there is essentially nothing the
gov't can do other than to encourage workers to re-train, encourage
service-related industries to invest and try to promote job
creation.
and to create jobs and attract investments, u have to make it
easier for investors to bring in their own people. they may abuse
the system (thats what lawyers and accountants are for...) but at
least they create some jobs for Sg rather than
none at all if they set up elsewhere.
no country and system is perfect... ours certainly isn't. the good
thing about globalisation is, that YOU get to move around as well
as the other guys as long as u have the skills to exploit the
opportunities.
lets moderate our views here and try to be more constructive. no
point slamming and slamming without having anything constructive
coming out of it. its easy to criticize... but what would YOU do if
u say u can make it better?
