Beware of Prof Ng Yew Kwang ideas

Prof Ng Yew Kwang views are like those I have heard on and off from our government ministers. To me where he had gone off is to think that economics have primacy over everything else. It is difficult to grasp the dictum that money is not everything but everything is money. You are likely to lead on one side than to take in both sides because that requires wisdom.

There are many misses in Prof Ng article but I would just focus on the most egregious. Quoting him,

As unskilled workers tend to have low incomes, the greater gains of richer people in monetary terms need not be enough to offset the loss in welfare terms. True. However, it is better to help the poor through the general tax/transfer policy rather than by violating the principle of efficiency. By focusing only on efficiency (a dollar is a dollar) for specific issues, including immigration, we can achieve the same degree of equality at a lower cost. Thus, instead of limiting immigration, we will be better off having stronger measures to lift the incomes of the poor. Singapore is in a good economic and financial position to pursue this front further.

Helping the poor with transfers? That is a terrible idea. To be practical we cannot avoid such transfers but they must be kept to an absolute minimum. Such transfers are often soul destroying. Only a pure economist who lacks the wisdom that life is much larger than economic life would suggest something like this. This goes back to Einstein wise words that not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted. Narrow minded economists certainly spend a lot of time counting and fashioning mathematical models that Sim City also couldn't use.