Monday, November 5, 2012

Shanmugam: Singaporeans yet to grasp 'new reality'

















Shanmugam is probably right on this one but the alternative is worse. Business people are very unhappy but they only think about their narrow interest. Benefiting the community is just convenient and helpful for legitimacy. Similarly in the US, business are unhappy with Obama whom they see as anti them.

I have lost count how many times my daughter had asked, "how can we keep growing by adding people?" The land isn't growing any more. In fact we are going under ground albeit quietly. By forcing the government to throttle the inflow of outsiders, we are forcing them to exercise foresight. The old growth formula is just dirty acts of kicking the can down the road. The young girl is already thinking ahead.

In the end, faster growth with a big squeeze or slower growth with limited opportunities the government will discover the people would be unhappy with them. It isn't that the government is bad. Their mistake was to invite too much confidence in them. They had over promised and under delivered. Had they been a business this would have been a fatal mistake.

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