THE TEMASEK REVIEW

end kiasuism:

china is making a wise move…
what about us Singapore?
the politicians and policy makers say our population is too small for us to grow our domestic economy

well we can still grow our domestic economy if only our income gap is smaller and the incomes of the bottom 40% or 50% is much higher. i mean thats what china has to do even though it has huge population.

we need minimum wages, a proper social security framework to achieve that.

secondly we need to integrate with johor and riau province and create a larger pseudo domestic economy… most of the politicians and policy makers cant speak malay, dont understand anything about johor or riau unless through stereotypes they learn over lunch or golf. you hardly find a malay chap within the politicians or policy makers who is knowledgeable about johor or riau province either…. european regions are more diverse than singapore, johor and riau and they can integrate much better… there are so many cross border regions involving three or more countries which will fail alone but are currently prosperous due to integration…. why can kiasu singapore do it? the population of johor and riau are big enough to contribute to singapore’s domestic economy.

in fact if singapore helps to improve road links up to malacca and if we can cut down travel time to 2 hours by bus, that will make allow a lot more malaysians and tourists visiting those parts of malaysia to come to singapore to shop and for singapore goods to go up to those parts of malaysia in a much cheaper way. likewise if commercial shipping routes to all islands in Riau within 3 hours range can be established, single immigration processes be arranged, we can also substantially increase the pseudo domestic economy….