http://sg.news.yahoo.com/blogs/singaporescene/wake-riot-now-population-white-paper-084429101.html
I think the article is by a ex-PAP member or to similar
effect.
Either way he's Plan A and in Particular Plan B are probable and
logical outcomes.
I have quoted Plan B below and in general it is similar to my
own and I think some forumners views towards the future of sg.
Plan B
What is Plan B? It is certainly not some watered-down version of
the Government’s plan that the Workers' Party has presented.
Plan B has to deal with the other alternative -- that of an AGED
(rather than ageing) population, with a small work force, but a
small immigrant population.
Plan B is an economy less reliant on foreign workers, with
Singaporeans taking up jobs in construction, and all the other
manual work that we now take for granted.
In this, critics of the Government, as well as opposition
politicians, need to be honest too.
There will also be social costs to plan B, and these costs will
also be painful for Singaporeans to adjust to.
Firstly, Singapore will need higher taxes from a smaller active
work force to support an aged population. There will also be a less
vibrant Singapore, with old people making up a larger proportion of
society. We may even have to draw down on our reserves, if taxes on
the work force are not to become prohibitively high.
We will (as we are already presently) have to get used to more
old people taking on work that the young do not want; retirement
age also has to go up. The entire economy has to be re-configured
to adjust to an aged workforce, a task that will be fraught with
risks and no guarantee of success.
In order for more Singaporeans to take up the jobs that foreign
workers are now doing, wages have to go up. But that means prices
may have to go up as well.
If bus drivers are to be paid more in order for Singaporeans to
take these jobs, then bus fares will either have to rise, or taxes
have to rise in order for the Government to subsidise fares. Homes
may be built less cheaply, even if productivity rises. That means
either HDB flats will either cost more, or again, more tax revenue
has to be raised for bigger subsidies.
Singaporeans have to learn to do a lot more household
maintenance jobs, like in some developed countries, where
blue-collared jobs are highly paid. These are also not easy
challenges to adjust to.
Plan B is a possible scenario, but it is not enough for
detractors of the PAP to criticise its immigration policy and not
present the alternative with the trade-offs. There is no perfect
solution and both sides in the debate must be honest about the
costs of the options available.
The problem I fear is that the shock of the riots of Little
India has irreparably tarnished the PAP’s immigration plan. Every
conversation it will have from now on will consciously or
subconsciously be associated with images of foreign workers
flipping over a police car and setting it on fire.
The Committee of Inquiry will not be as important as the
Government presenting to the population how it intends to manage
the growing foreign migrant worker numbers, needed to build the
infrastructure for a larger population.
And it needs to be a convincing story.
Otherwise, it is time to seriously consider Plan B.
