LKY says we must have more babies or we shall eventually fold up. The latest TFR he has by race are Chinese 1.08, Indians 1.09 and Malays 1.64 (I think caused the Tiger year effect, but this shouldn't matter for the Indians and Malays). TFR may be declining.
He suggested umpteen times before that mindsets must change. I wonder what has happened in all these years of babies dearth that would cause mindset to change.
I wanted to know the pulse from social media. Here are some that caught my notice.
ToKilla Mockingbird I wanted more kids but I cant due to housing issue.
I wanted more kids but my job is been snatch by FT
I wanted more kids but I'm afraid my kids need to fight for position in school.
If only Hdb grant my purchase of flat, My job is stable, and my kids has priority in school. Yes, I give birth to 4.
Tina Wei 30 years ago not more than 2 kids or no priority in schools and then we could afford it ,now they are telling my kids to have more kids, wow, we can change and be forward thinking in work professionals but now the government is asking these children who have been use to a small family and snap mindset change or live with immigrants, pioneering nation building Singaporeans this is scary! Building a nation for others to enjoy! Gee!
The above in response to what ST put up at facebook.
Tina Wei has raised an important point about limiting to two kids and when you could afford. Those were the rapidly growing incomes years. What do families do with high incomes and few kids? They invest heavily on the children they have. Once you set this in motion it cannot be reversed.
Now if you have many kids, you want to provide for them like you have only two. This is simply not possible. To add insult to injury, if you have more kids and others have fewer, the kids from other families have a huge resource edge over yours. Why would you want to do that? In the past, poorly educated parents in lowly paid jobs and the homemaker wife rely on having many kids to help see to their welfare in old age. This is no longer the practice now.
LKY is wrong. The problem is harder to crack than a mindset change. We are stuck in a system where the furthest you can agree about having more babies exist only in the mind. In reality most people wouldn't entertain to do anything about it. In the end, we will just end up talking about it.
The people cannot offer a way out of this debacle when they are prisoners of the system inadvertently created by the government stop at two policy. The government must have the political courage to break the system. Thus far from GCT to LHL, they were stopped by the visible and who knows what invisible to the public sacred cows.
Singapore enemies do not need to do anything to defeat us. We may have the most powerful regional military but just by waiting for us to slowly die off, they can march in later. Pretty obvious what we are sticking with military defense is among the sacred cows. Today the same situation exist in Israel. The Arab and Palestinian populations are out birthing the Jews. Time will deliver victory to the disenfranchised on a platter!
Clearly superior training and equipment can only substitute for bodies and minds up to a certain point. We are not going to be able to create a "I Robot" future in time. Japan is even more eager and motivated than us to get there.
No, the failure to reproduce the next generation is the supreme act of selfishness or despair of the future. The selfish are kicking the can down the road because they do not want kids to bring an early end to their blissful lifestyles; the pessimists view life's pressures to exceed their ability to cope. They do not want to bring kids into an unpleasant world.
There are simply no solutions to this problem until we are committed to ranking it as our number one SHORT TERM problem. Yes, it is a long term problem, but our attention to all other short term problems is causing this problem never to go away.
Babies must rank ahead of the economy and defense. It must rank ahead of business performance and jobs until the promise of successfully solving it is clear. If we are willing to start solving the problem this way, many solutions are possible. When we have entrenched new habits, broken away from our one or two children mentality, we can return the economy to a higher priority. This is not an unreasonable idea. Just look at the medals tally of the London Olympics. It used to be when the Communist nations were strong, they performed admirably at the Games. The Soviets even made it to space before the Americans; they also routinely embarrassed the Free World in Chess. Their success was short lived. They imploded. Singapore will suffer the same fate if we are sustaining a level of economic performance which is paid for with declining birth rates.
Finally forget about the Nordic model. Work the numbers. In twenty years or so, we will learn that it is not sustainable nor affordable.
"Singapore enemies do not need to do anything to defeat us. We may have the most powerful regional military"
ReplyDeleteMay I ask LKY and bunch of YES-men, what is the point of having the greatest advanced military navy, air, earth weapons in the world when the foreigner enemies may already in Singapore in huge number due to your lax foreigner policies ? Is it hard for them to disable any military facilities in Singapore when they are already just outside the compound of these facilities ? so you think these foreigners are daft or PAP govt is daft ?
The obvious solution is to attract very grateful people like one Ms Joyce Hooi who write an amazing article on why Singapore is such a fantastic place,these are the true new citizens that Singapore needs,PAP should work hard to find hard new citizens from 6 billions on earth ,they are the government,whether Singapore will fold depends on them.
ReplyDeleteIt is simply not logical to have children just because of patriotism. The government is not going to guarantee me cheap housing/education for my children. with the current over the top education system, why do we want our kids to live a stressful life from young and get stereotyped. Do not get into slavery for al least 20-30 years of your life by having children. It is not feasible in Singapore and that is the hard truth.
ReplyDeleteLKY might have said what he did
ReplyDeleteas an exhortation to his dauter
Lee Wei Ling lah.
For a start, the old fart can put his money where his mouth is and donate his millions to start a fund to get people to produce more babies, after all it's his fault to begin with.
ReplyDelete