徐顺全表示民主党过去五年吸引了许多新人，党员的整体素质也比从前高了

游润恬 from Lianhe Zaobao, 28 February 2010

徐顺全，一个因官司不断而令大家似乎熟悉又很陌生的政治人物，其言行举止往往引来诸多议论。新加坡民主党昨晚庆祝成立30周年，他加入这个反对党从政也已18年，人们脑海中至今还在问他当年到底有没有逼走一手创立民主党的波东巴西区 (Potong Pasir) 议员詹时中？本报记者日前趁30年党庆，邀他作访谈，希望他能对读者的诸多疑问作出答复。

民主党成立30年，巅峰时刻是什么时候？最低潮的时刻又是什么时候？

徐顺全博士（48岁）的答复似乎会让人们大感意外。他说现在是它的巅峰时刻。

“我相信民主党还没有达到真正的顶峰，不过到目前为止，现阶段必然是最光辉的。”

他表示民主党过去五年吸引了许多新人，党员的整体素质也比从前高了。这些新人不但可提供新的政治视角，还懂得善用新媒体进行宣传，使民主党可以做很多以前做不成的事。

五年前没有资源 办25周年晚宴

比方说早在五年前，他就想举行民主党25周年晚宴，却因缺乏资源，只好打消念头。今天，民主党不但能在乌节路的凯煌酒店办30周年晚宴，还能出版第一本纪念特刊，80页全彩色印刷。

他认为最重要的是全体中央执行委员的团结。

“对他们来说，集体奋斗的目标，凌驾于个人理想之上。”

民主党在1991年大选时，一举把当时的秘书长詹时中（波东巴西区）、主席林孝谆（前武吉甘柏区）和蒋才正（义顺中区）三名候选人送入国会。自从詹时中在1996年离开后，民主党在国会里再也没有代表。照理说，上世纪90年代在詹时中领导下的民主党，应该已达到巅峰，徐顺全却认为那是最低潮的时刻。

“我加入民主党不到几个星期，就已感觉到党内领导人之间强烈的紧张关系。当时的民主党不是一个党，它从来就不是一支有共同理念的团队，只不过是一群同床异梦的人凑在一起。出现状况时，大家各有主张，要往不同的方向走，结果是树倒猢狲散。”

詹时中在1992年一手把当时在新加坡国立大学担任心理学讲师的徐顺全带进民主党，参加马林百列集选区补选。当时的总理吴作栋为了把现任副总理张志贤引进国会，而让马林百列集选区的议员集体辞职，以举行这次补选。

徐顺全竞选失败，隔年因呈报德士车资不实等遭国大开除。詹时中原本支持他，后来却动议中委会谴责他。党内其他中委不赞成詹时中的做法，民主党于是陷入分裂。詹时中跟着辞去秘书长职务。

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Australia’s Environment Minister Garrett demoted after scheme bungle

AAP, 26 February 2010

ENVIRONMENT Minister Peter Garrett has been demoted, with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd stripping him of responsibility for the troubled household insulation scheme.

Mr Rudd says there had been some “serious problems” with the program’s implementation, but has resisted calls to sack Mr Garrett over the bungled rebate program.

The program was scrapped last week after being connected to four deaths, nearly 100 house fires and at least 1000 electrified roofs.

But in Sydney today, Mr Rudd announced the establishment of a new stand-alone Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, to be headed up by Penny Wong, which has effectively sidelined Mr Garrett.

Under the reshuffled portfolios, Mr Garrett will be appointed minister for environment protection, and has retained heritage and the arts.

Greg Combet has been given direct responsibility for the insulation program, with Mr Rudd naming him as the minister assisting the minister for climate change and energy efficiency.

Mr Rudd admitted the changes were a demotion for Mr Garrett, saying there was no point “sugar coating” his decision.

“I believe it is now important for Minister Garrett to now concentrate on core responsibilities of environmental protection, and of course in heritage and the arts,” Mr Rudd said.

“There is no point sugar coating this. This does mean a different range and reduced range of responsibilities for Minister Garrett.”

The prime minister said he told Mr Garrett of his demotion this afternoon.

“I indicated to him the course of action I’d be taking. He accepted my decision,” Mr Rudd said. – AAP

DPM Teo Chee Hean praised govt for making “good progress” in past productivity drives

Written by Our Correspondent

Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean became the latest PAP leader to urge Singapore workers and companies alike to boost their productivity.

The sudden change in tune is stunning given that his colleage Minister without portfolio Lim Swee Say had been exhorting Singaporeans to be “cheaper, faster and better” since last year.

DPM Teo chairs the newly-formed National Productivity and Continuing Education Council and as expected, he heaped praises on the “progress” made by previous productivity drives without substantiating his statements, made during a community event:

“We have made good progress in the past in our productivity drive and that is why we have been able to move our economy forward and have good jobs for many Singaporeans. But this is a constant effort and we have to renew and re-double our efforts,” he was quoted as saying in Channel News Asia.

According to a press release by the Reform Party last week, Singapore’s labor productivity lags far behind that of other advanced economies:

“In manufacturing alone our productivity grew by an average of 0.7% p.a. over the period 2000-08 whereas South Korea, Taiwan, Sweden and the US managed 7.4%, 5.2%, 4.8% and 4.6% respectively over the same period. Out of a group of 17 economies we were second from bottom.”

[Source: Reform Party]

It is strange that DPM Teo would consider such a shocking figure of 0.7 per cent as “good progress”. Perhaps he is not aware of the Reform Party article as he has been depending only on the state media, described as a “trusted” source of news in Singapore by Minister Lui Tuck Yew for news only.

While all the PAP MPs have nothing but good words for the government’s renewed productivity drive so far, Kenneth Jeyaretnam of the Reform Party casts doubts on the target 2 to 3 per cent productivity growth rate set by PM Lee which had shocked even Minister Lim Swee Say himself:

“The Honourable Minister talks about the need to raise our productivity growth rate to 2 to 3% per annum from its current level of less than 1% p.a. However, given that productivity fell by 1.1% in 2007, by 7.8% in 2008 and by 4.7% in 2009 (for a cumulative fall of 14%), we require at least six years of productivity growth at 2% p.a. to get back to where we were in 2006.”

DPM Teo added that there are “many things” that need to be done again without elaborating:

“Our economy has changed and our workforce has moved up in terms of skills and productivity levels. And so we have to see how we can move even further up. While we have moved on, I must say the countries which are ahead of us have also moved on, and those countries behind us have also moved up. There are many things that need to be done. Companies need to take the lead. Workers also need to take ownership for their own upgrading and the government has a lot of work to do in the facilitation. It requires the companies, unions and government to work together.”

Under Singapore’s unique “tripartite” system, a government organization NTUC is charged with dealing with all matters pertaining to Singapore workers on their behalfs. But NTUC has been harping on the productivity issue for the past decade with no results to show.

DPM Teo should consider consulting Mr Kenneth Jeyaretnam, a double first-class economics graduate from Cambridge University with a wealth of experience in the finance industry.

With due respect to DPM Teo, he spent his entire career in the navy and government and is hardly the best person to take charge of Singapore’s productivity drive.

As a matter of fact, he should walk his talk by boosting the productivity of his cabinet by cutting their pay. Despite a lackluster performance, Singapore’s ministers are expected to receive a hefty 8.8 per cent pay rise this year.

HDB to finally consider introducing rules to curb speculation in public housing market

Written by Our Correspondent

After months of denying that the prices of HDB flats have spiralled out of control, National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan finally relented and said last week “the Government is looking into ’something’ regarding measures for the HDB market.”

Though he did not reveal the details, property experts interviewed by the Straits Times “reckoned the Government could extend the minimum occupation period for those who bought their flats with bank loans as well as make checks to ensure owners are not flouting the rules.”

Mr Mah has received alot of flak lately over his inept handling of the matter which has caused considerable distress and anguish to ordinary Singaporeans who are increasingly priced out of the public housing market, especially the resale one.

The prices of HDB flats have almost doubled in the last few years, with that of resale flats hitting a record high in June 2009 when the economy was mired in recession.

The abnormal situation is caused largely by the lack of foresight of HDB to plan well ahead to build more flats to meet the expected increase in demand for housing fueled by uncontrolled immigration.

Recent launches of BTO flats are more than 5 to 10 times subscribed even in less popular areas like Choa Chua Kang, an indication of how serious the housing shortage has become.

Only slightly more than 11,000 new flats were built between the years 2006 – 2008 when there were over 90,000 PRs and 20,000 new citizens alone in 2008:

 

[Source: HDB Financial Report 2008/2009]

Below is a graph illustrating how the rise in the prices of resale flats coincides with the rise in the number of foreigners in Singapore between the years 2000 and 2008, courtesy of Kojakbt, the moderator of 3in1kopitiam:

Due to the ruling party’s liberal immigration policy, foreigners now made up 36 per cent of Singapore’s population, up from 14 per cent in 1990.

The prices of HDB flats are kept artificially high by building less flats than needed to meet the demand and increasing the population via immigration.

Unlike in other countries, PRs are allowed to purchase public housing in Singapore from the open market with few restrictions. Some PRs have “spoilt” the market by over-paying for the flats. An Indonesian PR was reported in the media to pay $653,000 for a 4-room resale flat in Queenstown when he could well afford a condominium.

According to official figures, PRs form 20 per cent of the buyers in the resale market though some real estate agencies like ERA put the figure higher at 40 per cent.

The state media has been trying to deflect public anger from the government and PRs by pointing the fingers at private property owners for snapping up the resale flats when they constitute only about 5 – 7 per cent of the buyers.

With elections around the corner and public sentiments fast turning against the ruling party, HDB has to be seen as “doing something” to placate angry Singaporeans.

Mr Mah has to act quickly so that he will not be “caught offguard” again. As for Singaporeans who bought the flats as such obscene prices, they will have to pray that hard that prices will continue to rise and not drop in the next few years with more flats being released into the market.

 

Related articles:

>> Why HDB is unable to reveal break down costs of new flats now

>> HDB blames Singaporeans for not selecting flats when given the chance

>> Singaporeans worried about retirement after depleting CPF to pay for over-priced HDB flats

>> Mah Bow Tan acknowledged that rising HDB flat prices has sparked “fresh concerns”

>> PM Lee: Govt does not have control over prices of resale flats”

>> COVs of resale flats shooting through the roof

>> HDB resale price index hit record high in 2009

>> Singaporean wants PRs to live in rented flats instead of buying resale flats

>> Singaporeans wants PRs to be banned from selling HDB flats at a profit

>> Shanmugam: Singaporeans likely culprits for driving up HDB flat prices

>> Mah Bow Tan: HDB flats remain affordable

>> Means testing for PRs to buy resale flats

>> Immigration and public housing: should the govt or people plan ahead?

>> Grace Fu: hard to predict demand for housing

>> Indonesian PR bought 4-room flat at $653,000

>> Mah Bow Tan asks home buyers to be realistic

>> PAP MP blames young couples who cannot get a flat for not planning ahead

>> Home affordability: HDB versus the public

>> Demand vs supply: so many applicants, so few flats

>> Number of applicants exceed number of flats

>> HDB to increase supply of flats

>> Mah: don’t compare with prices in the past

>> ERA: 40 per cent of HDB flat buyers are PRs

When will Singapore’s public housing bubble burst?

OPINION

In a speech made last week to Tanjong Pagar residents, Singapore’s octogenarian leader Lee Kuan Yew admitted unwittingly that Singapore’s housing market is heavily dependent on foreigners.

“To continue to grow and prosper while slowing the intake of foreign workers, the same number of Singaporean workers must produce more. Otherwise, there will be a deflating economy, and knock-on effects on jobs and asset values. Instead of many job opportunities and rising asset values, including prices for resale HDB flats, the reverse will happen… fewer jobs, lower salaries, lower asset prices… pay will fall and so will the number of jobs and promotion,” he said.

The prices of HDB flats have sky-rocketed in recent years due to rising demand fueled by immigration amidst a limited supply of new flats.

Only about 3,100 flats were built in the year 2008 when there were more than 70,000 PRs and 20,000 new citizens in the same year alone.

Prices of resale flats increased by 8.2 per cent with Cash-Over-Valuation (COVs) doubling the last quarter of 2009, a year which saw Singapore mired in recession.

Recently launched Build-to-Order (BTO) flats were oversubscribed by more than 10 times, an indication of how acute the housing shortage crisis has become.

Government leaders have remained oblivious to the inherent dangers posed by the rising prices and sing in unison to the official stance that it helps to “generate wealth” for Singaporeans.

Common sense will tell us that it is impossible for prices to continue going up and it is only a matter of time before the prices drop.

A property bubble in the public housing market has been building for quite some time and Singaporeans will be “caught off guard” when the crunch comes.

According to figures obtained from HDB Infoweb, the median prices of resale flats have doubled in the last four years when it took nearly a decade for it to do so.

While prices have already reached astronomical levels with some property agents asking nearly a million dollars for 5-room flats in prime districts, the wages of ordinary Singaporeans have lagged far behind the rise in housing prices.

At some point, the market will have to crash because there will no buyers for the overpriced flats. So the question on the mind of everybody is: when will Singapore’s public housing bubble burst?

Probably in the year 2013 or earlier.

Stung by criticisms from Singaporeans at its failure to provide adequate housing for first time home buyers, HDB has predictably increase the supply of flats in a classical knee-jerk response to the housing shortage.

Four BTO projects have already been launched this year with a projected number of 12,000 new BTO flats being built which will be completed in three to four years time, earliest by 2013.

A glut of new private and public housing will be completed in 2013 thereby increasing the supply of flats which will surely cause the prices to drop even at the present rate of immigration.

Between now and then, who can guarantee that there will not be another global financial crisis?

Singapore’s economy is heavily dependent on foreign workers and investments which explains why it became the first Asian country to enter into a recession in 2008.

Any slight knock to the global economy will turn back crucial foreign direct investments (FDIs) from Singapore leading to an exodus of foreigners with disastrous consequences for the housing market.

About 6o to 70 per cent of buyers of Singapore properties in the private sector are foreigners while they make up about 20 per cent in the HDB resale market.

As their values have already been overly inflated, the resultant drop in prices will be equally as much if not more.

There is a good chance that prices may be rolled back to the 2006 – 2008 levels meaning a drop by nearly 50 per cent which will plunge many Singaporeans into financial distress.

The public housing market had crashed once in 1996 and this time it would be worse as prices had far exceeded the 1996 levels.

Singaporeans will have to pray that foreigners continue to buy up properties in Singapore to keep their asset values going up.

Unfortunately, with the emergence of China and India as economic powerhouses, the attractiveness of Singapore as magnet for foreign investment will continue to decrease in the next few years.

With lower economic growth, declining wages and fewer investment opportunities looming ahead, will Singapore’s public housing market continue to soar as before?

When the crash finally comes, many Singaporeans will see their entire life savings being wiped out in an instance.

Perhaps that is the only way to wake up apathetic Singaporeans from their slumber and revamp the entire system once and for all.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao unfazed by brickbats thrown at him by anonymous netizens

Written by Our Correspondent

Despite some harsh criticisms and brickbats being hurled at him by anonymous netizens during an online chat, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao maintained his cool and answered the questions as best as he could.

The event, titled “I have a question to ask the Premier” was conducted yesterday jointly by the central government and Xinhua News Agency.

This is not the first time the IT-savvy Premier, who kept a Facebook, had engaged with netizens in cyberspace directly.

While PAP leaders have always cast aspersions on the credibility of netizens who choose not to reveal their identities, Premier Wen appaers to be comfortable with them.

Below are some questions posed to him (translated from Chinese):

Paris Island from Hubei province:

“Hello Premier Wen! How are you going to eradicate the rampant corruption going on in the villages??”

Handan netizen from Hebei province:

“Premier, the mayor of Handan kept changing once in a few months. How are you going to develop Handan at this rate?”

5 Chinese words from Beijing:

“I and my partner are struggling to earn enough money to support our family. Life is really too tough nowadays. Our family income is only RMB$2,000 monthly and after deducting the healthcare insurance of RMB$1,000, we have little left.”

Baihua from Shanghai:

“10 questions for you: why are there so many corrupted officials? why is the government so autocratic? why don’t we have freedom of speech? why is the system so inadequate? why are the wages of the farmers so low? …..”

Good man from Guangdong province:

“Corruption is a major problem in the country, but how come the central government has been tackling the problem, the number of corrupted officials continue to grow???”

As we can see from the above examples, the Chinese netizens minced no words and dare to challenge and even criticize Premier Wen publicly in a public forum viewed by millions of people without any fear.

What is surprising is that the Chinese media did not censor or moderate the comments to “save the face” of Premier Wen. Neither did they castigate the netizens for not showing him respect.

(A few years ago, a ST journalist rebutted Lee Kuan Yew during a live dialogue session. He was later criticized in the Straits Times for not showing “respect” to Lee.)

Premier Wen did not dismiss the complaints of Chinese netizens. He acknowledged their concerns and tried his best to answer their questions to the best of his ability.

No Singaporean will ever dare to ask such difficult, sensitive and sharp questions to their leaders whether in real life or in cyberspace out of fear of being “fixed”.

In any case, the PAP leaders seldom display that kind of empathy as demonstrated by Premier Wen.

During a recent interview with the National Geographic magazine, Lee Kuan Yew described Singaporeans as “champion grumblers”. Try telling that to the Chinese.

GLC Employee AL: What do we do with a government that operates on failures?

OPINION

The Singapore government preaches about materialism and performance under all odds.

Like in all cases, performance relies on morale. How does the PAP, expects us to go the extra mile, to work harder, to excel when we’re being paid crap? When the cost of living is not manageable, when most of us are at the “Hand to Mouth” state? When our minds are not at peace thinking about our future, or are we machines to work relentlessly without feelings?

Our bread and butter being threatened by so many issues, being afraid we might be left with just breadcrumbs to deal with. In the battlefield, if you shatter the enemies’ morale, the battle is as good as won. Morale is a catalyst for productivity, and let no one tell you otherwise.

The value of materialism which the government upholds with such valor has not been helping anyone at all. It separates us, each man fighting for his place among the top 5% of Singapore which is “physically and mentally endowed”.

This “fighting” does not create growth, but merely a social gap between citizens and an income gap which rewards only the “elites”. The growth of a few individuals, acts only as a morale destroyer for those hanging in the lower rungs of society.

Materialism makes those up there, want to stay there and go higher, and the only way to do that is to keep pushing those already low, lower.

We all know that the Singapore government has a system in place, which makes the rich richer and the poor poorer. How can there be true growth and productivity in this system? This is not a classic case of wanting more for less, but wanting gold for copper.

The government has made a system, preached ideals and has expectations which all contradict each other, an epic failure. It’s like wanting a person to move left, right and back all at once. Have they done anything to fix it? I don’t think so. That means a failure every day they don’t. How long has this been going for? Years, that means 365 failures X the number of years. A government that operates on failures.

“Applause please”

Its pretty annoying when we’re overworked, underpaid, fatigued and frustrated, and some “PAPimp” ministers who don’t even have a clue about wha thet majority of Singaporeans are going through, comes along yapping about how we should live our lives and do our jobs.

Actually we should be the ones teaching them how to do their jobs, and deciding how much they get paid. Technically speaking they are serving the public, that makes us their bosses right?

So if we’re bosses and our staff are not performing as promised what should we do? What must we do, if even after all these decades, their PERFORMANCE is not only not up to standard, but  actually deteriorating? What if they’ve made too many human errors in their years of service? What should we do, when our staff orders us around, when they arrogantly tell us how to run the business after all these failures? Are we still going to keep them in our payroll?

There are 82 PAP MPs in parliament now and seriously, who knows what they’re there for? Maybe we should cut the amount of manpower we have in the government and give them the wages majority of us get.

The rationale, “Oh! I know! Lets make Singapore attractive for Singaporeans who have migrated elsewhere! And to make this country to keep in pace with other countries where THE GOVERNMENT IS AFRAID OF ITS PEOPLE AND NOT THE PEOPLE AFRAID OF THE GOVERNMENT!”.

I would love to see the looks on their faces when these cowards look at each other with the phrase “overworked and underpaid” grabbing them by their nuts. When we, the people of this country start showing them who’s boss, and the time is coming soon.

The math is pretty simple: The lower the wages and the higher the cost of living, the lower the morale. The lower the morale, the lower the level of productivity.  Not, rocket science at all. If the government still can’t figure it out they don’t deserve their salaries and positions. We should just fire them.

This is a quote from a 62 year old man I’d like to share with you guys and finish up this piece:

“How to retire, you tell me? Need to work until die la, some more cut my pay but need to work the same. Never mind! You cut my pay $300, I work $300 less. Mai Chup Siow!”

SM Goh: inter-faith harmony in Singapore is active, not passive

Written by Our Correspondent

During a speech made at the opening of a new church yesterday, Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong “says inter-faith harmony in Singapore is active, not passive, meaning religious groups make it a point to stay in touch, allowing them to clear up any misunderstandings that may arise.”

“It’s not just passive harmony, but active harmony.We have the Inter-Religious Organisation, where the leaders meet often so that they are in touch with one another, so they are able to very quickly react to any misunderstanding and put things right,” he added.

His remarks came in the aftermath of the a controversy sparked by Pastor Rony Tan from Lighthouse Evangelism who made some insensitive remarks about Buddhism and Taoism during a church session.

He had since apologized for his words after being hauled up by the ISD for questioning.

The inter-religious organization is set up under the auspices of the state to promote mutual understanding and dialogue between the various religions in Singapore.

Though SM Goh appeared to be impressed by the role played by inter-faith dialogues in maintaining religious harmony in Singapore, others are more circumspect.

A Buddhist monk, Venerable Dhammika blogged about his personal experience at such sessions:

“I doubt that inter-religious dialogue, at least as it is conducted in  Singapore, really brings about a change in how the different religions feel about each other. I have often attended inter-religious gatherings and I have noticed that everyone is friendly, accommodating and open-minded. The participants are already respectful of other faiths. The ones who could do with a bit of tolerance – the bigots, zealots, fundamentalists and the evangelicals, won’t come. Here in Singapore several major denominations have pointedly refused to join the Inter-religious Organization which they see as fratranizing with Satan.”

The Singapore government frequently organized such inter-faith dialogues to promote interaction between leaders of various religious faiths in Singapore.

As they are not compulsory, the participants are usually those who are tolerant and respectful of other faiths, as pointed out by Venerable Dhammika and as such is “all too often just an exercise in the converted preaching to each other.”

The state media, which has been busy of late trying to paint a rosy picture of “religious harmony” in Singapore should consider interviewing the religious leaders who have never attended such dialogues to solicit their views on the matter.

FIVE KEY WAYS TO IMPROVE YOUR LISTENING SKILLS

Hi! everyone,

Good listening is not only an essential ingredient of effective communication, but it also helps us to stay well connected with others. Most of us aren’t good listeners; however, listening is a skill that everyone can master, if we choose to do so. You may find some of the tips below useful:-

1. Make it your mission to understand

To achieve anything successfully, you need to have a mission. Similarly in the mastery of the listening skill, a mission is required. We must always seek first to understand the speaker, what he intends to tell you, what is his intention. To be a good listener, you have to listen attentively after you have acknowledged what he had said.

2. Acknowledge everything the speaker says

Acknowledging everything that the speaker says is totally in contrast to ignoring or disregarding the speaker. You need to respond positively by validating what he says. This will encourage him to tell you more since you show interest in listening to his story. You may acknowledge him through verbal and non-verbal response such as nodding your head, maintaining eye contact or other expression you deem fit. Counter response is important as it shows two ways of communication instead of one way. To be effective, you must respond similarly to the speaker’s action. If he whispers to you, whisper back to him. Flow with him is the answer.

3. Avoid interrupting.

I hate to say this – You cannot do both talking and listening simultaneously. You may do it directly or indirectly. Indirect way happens when you assume what the speakers are going to say before they say it, you not only annoy them, but you will also miss the real message. Ask questions if you have doubts and try to see the other person’s point-of-view. If you are unsure of the meaning ask for clarification and then if you are still not sure repeat it back to them, for instance, “So, what are you saying is, you don’t like this article because this topic is not your cup of tea and it has nothing to do with its author, is that correct?”

4. Agree with everything you are told
Please don’t get me wrong to mean that you have to agree exactly what they say. For the above example, you know the reason why he dislike this article. It is nothing wrong for you to agree with him if this article is also not your cup of tea. You are looking from his perspective, and not your perspective. Do you see the difference? Here, you are agreeing with the reason he told you. Can you see how the art of true listening operates.

5. Be patient

Especially when you don’t understand what they say. Never get upset because it won’t solve any issues but will only create more. Ask politely after the speaker has finished speaking what they wanted to say.

I trust the above is helpful to you. Please feel free to add in any other tips which you think is helpful. Thank you in advance for your kind participation. By now, you may able to see that to live happily, you need to stay well connected with others. Therefore, good listening skill is crucial in establishing good relationship.

James Oh

About the Author:

James Oh is an accountant by profession and he works as a Financial Controller for more than 10 years with several companies in Singapore and Malaysia. He is a full member of the Singapore Institute of Director and he also obtained a LLB (Law degree) from the University of London in 2003. He is happily married with 3 loving kids.

James blog at http://liftyouup.blogspot.com

The Myth of Asia’s miracle

By Paul Krugman writing for MIT

A CAUTIONARY FABLE

ONCE UPON a time, Western opinion leaders found themselves both impressed and frightened by the extraordinary growth rates achieved by a set of Eastern economies. Although those economies were still substantially poorer and smaller than those of the West, the speed with which they had transformed themselves from peasant societies into industrial powerhouses, their continuing ability to achieve growth rates several times higher than the advanced nations, and their increasing ability to challenge or even surpass American and European technology in certain areas seemed to call into question the dominance not only of Western power but of Western ideology. The leaders of those nations did not share our faith in free markets or unlimited civil liberties. They asserted with increasing self confidence that their system was superior: societies that accepted strong, even authoritarian governments and were willing to limit individual liberties in the interest of the common good, take charge of their economics, and sacrifice short-run consumer interests for the sake of long-run growth would eventually outperform the increasingly chaotic societies of the West. And a growing minority of Western intellectuals agreed.

The gap between Western and Eastern economic performance eventually became a political issue. The Democrats recaptured the White House under the leadership of a young, energetic new president who pledged to “get the country moving again”–a pledge that, to him and his closest advisers, meant accelerating America’s economic growth to meet the Eastern challenge.

The time, of course, was the early 1960s. The dynamic young president was John F. Kennedy. The technological feats that so alarmed the West were the launch of Sputnik and the early Soviet lead in space. And the rapidly growing Eastern economies were those of the Soviet Union and its satellite nations.

While the growth of communist economics was the subject of innumerable alarmist books and polemical articles in the 1950s, Some economists who looked seriously at the roots of that growth were putting together a picture that differed substantially from most popular assumptions. Communist growth rates were certainly impressive, but not magical. The rapid growth in output could be fully explained by rapid growth in inputs: expansion of employment, increases in education levels, and, above all, massive investment in physical capital. Once those inputs were taken into account, the growth in output was unsurprising–or, to put it differently, the big surprise about Soviet growth was that when closely examined it posed no mystery.

This economic analysis had two crucial implications. First, most of the speculation about the superiority of the communist system including the popular view that Western economics could painlessly accelerate their own growth by borrowing some aspects of that system–was off base. Rapid Soviet economic growth was based entirely on one attribute: the willingness to save, to sacrifice current consumption for the sake of future production. The communist example offered no hint of a free lunch.

Second, the economic analysis of communist countries’ growth implied some future limits to their industrial expansion–in other words, implied that a naive projection of their past growth rates into the future was likely to greatly overstate their real prospects. Economic growth that is based on expansion of inputs, rather than on growth in output per unit of input, is inevitably subject to diminishing returns. It was simply not possible for the Soviet economies to sustain the rates of growth of labor force participation, average education levels, and above all the physical capital stock that had prevailed in previous years. Communist growth would predictably slow down, perhaps drastically.

Can there really be any parallel between the growth of Warsaw Pact nations in the 1950s and the spectacular Asian growth that now preoccupies policy intellectuals? At some levels, of course, the parallel is far-fetched: Singapore in the 1990s does not look much like the Soviet Union in the 1950s, and Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew bears little resemblance to the U.S.S.R.’s Nikita Khrushchev and less to Joseph Stalin. Yet the results of recent economic research into the sources of Pacific Rim growth give the few people who recall the great debate over Soviet growth a strong sense of déjà vu. Now, as then, the contrast between popular hype and realistic prospects, between conventional wisdom and hard numbers, remains so great that sensible economic analysis is not only widely ignored, but when it does get aired, it is usually dismissed as grossly implausible.

Popular enthusiasm about Asia’s boom deserves to have some cold water thrown on it. Rapid Asian growth is less of a model for the West than many writers claim, and the future prospects for that growth are more limited than almost anyone now imagines. Any such assault on almost universally held beliefs must, of course, overcome a barrier of incredulity. This article began with a disguised account of the Soviet growth debate of 30 years ago to try to gain a hearing for the proposition that we may be revisiting an old error. We have been here before. The problem with this literary device, however, is that so few people now remember how impressive and terrifying the Soviet empire’s economic performance once seemed. Before turning to Asian growth, then, it may be useful to review an important but largely forgotten piece of economic history.

‘WE WILL BURY YOU’

LIVING IN a world strewn with the wreckage of the Soviet empire, it is hard for most people to realize that there was a time when the Soviet economy, far from being a byword for the failure of socialism, was one of the wonders of the world–that when Khrushchev pounded his shoe on the U.N. podium and declared, “We will bury you,” it was an economic rather than a military boast. It is therefore a shock to browse through, say, issues of Foreign Affairs from the mid 1950s through the early 1960s and discover that at least one article a year dealt with the implications of growing Soviet industrial might.

Illustrative of the tone of discussion was a 1957 article by Calvin B. Hoover. Like many Western economists, Hoover criticized official Soviet statistics, arguing that they exaggerated the true growth rate. Nonetheless, he concluded that Soviet claims of astonishing achievement were fully justified: their economy was achieving a rate of growth “twice as high as that attained by any important capitalistic country over any considerable number of years [and] three times as high as the average annual rate of increase in the United States.” He concluded that it was probable that “a collectivist, authoritarian state” was inherently better at achieving economic growth than free-market democracies and projected that the Soviet economy might outstrip that of the United States by the early 1970s.

These views were not considered outlandish at the time. On the contrary, the general image of Soviet central planning was that it might be brutal, and might not do a very good job of providing consumer goods, but that it was very effective at promoting industrial growth. In 1960 Wassily Leontief described the Soviet economy as being “directed with determined ruthless skill”–and did so without supporting argument, confident he was expressing a view shared by his readers.

Yet many economists studying Soviet growth were gradually coming to a very different conclusion. Although they did not dispute the fact of past Soviet growth, they offered a new interpretation of the nature of that growth, one that implied a reconsideration of future Soviet prospects. To understand this reinterpretation, it is necessary to make a brief detour into economic theory to discuss a seemingly abstruse, but in fact intensely practical, concept: growth accounting.

ACCOUNTING FOR THE SOVIET SLOWDOWN

IT IS A TAUTOLOGY that economic expansion represents the sum of two sources of growth. On one side are increases in “inputs”: growth in employment, in the education level of workers, and in the stock of physical capital (machines, buildings, roads, and so on). On the other side are increases in the output per unit of input; such increases may result from better management or better economic policy, but in the long run are primarily due to increases in knowledge.

The basic idea of growth accounting is to give life to this formula by calculating explicit measures of both. The accounting can then tell us how much of growth is due to each input–say, capital as opposed to labor–and how much is due to increased efficiency.

We all do a primitive form of growth accounting every time we talk about labor productivity; in so doing we are implicitly distinguishing between the part of overall national growth due to the growth in the supply of labor and the part due to an increase in the value of goods produced by the average worker. Increases in labor productivity, however, are not always caused by the increased efficiency of workers. Labor is only one of a number of inputs; workers may produce more, not because they are better managed or have more technological knowledge, but simply because they have better machinery. A man with a bulldozer can dig a ditch faster than one with only a shovel, but he is not more efficient; he just has more capital to work with. The aim of growth accounting is to produce an index that combines all measurable inputs and to measure the rate of growth of national income relative to that index–to estimate what is known as “total factor productivity.”

So far this may seem like a purely academic exercise. As soon as one starts to think in terms of growth accounting, however, one arrives at a crucial insight about the process of economic growth: sustained growth in a nation’s per capita income can only occur if there is a rise in output per unit of input.

Mere increases in inputs, without an increase in the efficiency with which those inputs are used–investing in more machinery and infrastructure–must run into diminishing returns; input-driven growth is inevitably limited.

How, then, have today’s advanced nations been able to achieve sustained growth in per capita income over the past 150 years? The answer is that technological advances have lead to a continual increase in total factor productivity–a continual rise in national income for each unit of input. In a famous estimate, MIT Professor Robert Solow concluded that technological progress has accounted for 80 percent of the long-term rise in U.S. per capita income, with increased investment in capital explaining only the remaining 20 percent.

When economists began to study the growth of the Soviet economy, they did so using the tools of growth accounting. Of course, Soviet data posed some problems. Not only was it hard to piece together usable estimates of output and input (Raymond Powell, a Yale professor, wrote that the job “in may ways resembled an archaeological dig”), but there were philosophical difficulties as well. In a socialist economy one could hardly measure capital input using market returns, so researchers were forced to impute returns based on those in market economies at similar levels of development. Still, when efforts began, researchers were pretty sure about what they would find. Just as capitalist growth had been based on growth in both inputs and efficiency, with efficiency the main source of rising per capita income, they expected to find that rapid Soviet growth reflected both rapid input growth and rapid growth in efficiency.

But what they actually found was that Soviet growth was based on rapid growth inputs–end of story. The rate of efficiency growth was not only unspectacular, it was well below the rates achieved in Western economies. Indeed, by some estimates, it was virtually nonexistent.

The immense Soviet efforts to mobilize economic resources were hardly news. Stalinist planners had moved millions of workers from farms to cities, pushed millions of women into the labor force and millions of men into longer hours, pursued massive programs of education, and above all plowed an ever-growing proportion of the country’s industrial output back into the construction of new factories. Still, the big surprise was that once one had taken the effects of these more or less measurable inputs into account, there was nothing left to explain. The most shocking thing about Soviet growth was its comprehensibility.

This comprehensibility implied two crucial conclusions. First, claims about the superiority of planned over market economies turned out to be based on a misapprehension. If the Soviet economy had a special strength, it was its ability to mobilize resources, not its ability to use them efficiently. It was obvious to everyone that the Soviet Union in 1960 was much less efficient than the United States. The surprise was that it showed no signs of closing the gap.

Second, because input-driven growth is an inherently limited process, Soviet growth was virtually certain to slow down. Long before the slowing of Soviet growth became obvious, it was predicted on the basis of growth accounting. (Economists did not predict the implosion of the Soviet economy a generation later, but that is a whole different problem.)

It’s an interesting story and a useful cautionary tale about the dangers of naive extrapolation of past trends. But is it relevant to the modern world?

PAPER TIGERS

AT FIRST, it is hard to see anything in common between the Asian success stories of recent years and the Soviet Union of three decades ago. Indeed, it is safe to say that the typical business traveler to, say, Singapore, ensconced in one of that city’s gleaming hotels, never even thinks of any parallel to its roach-infested counterparts in Moscow. How can the slick exuberance of the Asian boom be compared with the Soviet Union’s grim drive to industrialize?

And yet there are surprising similarities. The newly industrializing countries of Asia, like the Soviet Union of the 1950s, have achieved rapid growth in large part through an astonishing mobilization of resources. Once one accounts for the role of rapidly growing inputs in these countries’ growth, one finds little left to explain, Asian growth, like that of the Soviet Union in its high-growth era, seems to be driven by extraordinary growth in inputs like labor and capital rather than by gains in efficiency.

Consider, in particular, the case of Singapore. Between 1966 and 1990, the Singaporean economy grew a remarkable 8.5 percent per annum, three times as fast as the United States; per capita income grew at a 6.6 percent rate, roughly doubling every decade. This achievement seems to be a kind of economic miracle. But the miracle turns out to have been based on perspiration rather than inspiration: Singapore grew through a mobilization of resources that would have done Stalin proud. The employed share of the population surged from 27 to 51 percent. The educational standards of that work force were dramatically upgraded: while in 1966 more than half the workers had no formal education at all, by 1990 two-thirds had completed secondary education. Above all, the country had made an awesome investment in physical capital: investment as a share of output rose from 11 to more than 40 percent.

Even without going through the formal exercise of growth accounting, these numbers should make it obvious that Singapore’s growth has been based largely on one-time changes in behavior that cannot be repeated. Over the past generation the percentage of people employed has almost doubled; it cannot double again. A half-educated work force has been replaced by one in which the bulk of workers has high school diplomas; it is unlikely that a generation from now most Singaporeans will have Ph.D’s. And an investment share of 40 percent is amazingly high by any standard; a share of 7O percent would be ridiculous. So one can immediately conclude that Singapore is unlikely to achieve future growth rates comparable to those of the past.

But it is only when one actually does the quantitative accounting that the astonishing result emerges: all of Singapore’s growth can be explained by increases in measured inputs. There is no sign at all of increased efficiency. In this sense, the growth of Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore is an economic twin of the growth of Stalin’s Soviet Union growth achieved purely through mobilization of resources. Of course, Singapore today is far more prosperous than the U.S.S.R. ever was–even at its peak in the Brezhnev years–because Singapore is closer to, though still below, the efficiency of Western economies. The point, however, is that Singapore’s economy has always been relatively efficient; it just used to be starved of capital and educated workers.

Singapore’s case is admittedly, the most extreme. Other rapidly growing East Asian economics have not increased their labor force participation as much, made such dramatic improvements in educational levels, or raised investment rates quite as far. Nonetheless, the basic conclusion is the same: there is startlingly little evidence of improvements in efficiency. Kim and Lau conclude of the four Asian “tigers” that “the hypothesis that there has been no technical progress during the postwar period cannot be rejected for the four East Asian newly industrialized countries.” Young, more poetically, notes that once one allows for their rapid growth of inputs, the productivity performance of the “Tigers” falls “from the heights of Olympus to the plains of Thessaly.

This conclusion runs so counter to conventional wisdom that it is extremely difficult for the economists who have reached it to get a hearing. As early as 1982 a Harvard graduate student, Yuan Tsao.) found little evidence of efficiency growth in her dissertation on Singapore, but her work was, as Young puts it, “ignored or dismissed as unbelievable.” When Kim and Lau presented their work at a 1992 conference in Taipei, it received a more respectful hearing, but had little immediate impact But when Young tried to make the case for input-driven Asian growth at the 1993 meetings of the European Economic Association, he was met with a stone wall of disbelief.

In Young’s most recent paper there is an evident tone of exasperation with this insistence on clinging to the conventional wisdom in the teeth of the evidence. He titles the paper “The Tyranny of Numbers”–by which he means that you may not want to believe this, buster, but there’s just no way around the data. He begins with an ironic introduction, written in a deadpan, Sergeant Friday, “Just the facts, ma’am” style: “This is a fairly boring and tedious paper, and is intentionally so. This paper provides no new interpretations of the East Asian experience to interest the historian, derives no new theoretical implications of the forces behind the East Asian growth process to motivate the theorist, and draws no new policy implications from the subtleties of East Asian government intervention to excite the policy activist. Instead, this paper concentrates its energies on providing a careful analysis of the historical patterns of output growth, factor accumulation, and productivity growth in the newly industrializing countries of East Asia.”

Of course, he is being disingenuous. His conclusion undermines most of the conventional wisdom about the future role of Asian nations in the world economy and, as a consequence, in international politics. But readers will have noticed that the statistical analysis that puts such a different interpretation on Asian growth focuses on the “tigers,” the relatively small countries to whom the name “newly industrializing countries” was first applied. But what about the large countries? What about Japan and China?

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