Foreign managers hire their own

First thing which caught my eye as I brought in the papers. Truly My Paper indeed eh? Since the minister admitted so, it is now safe to shout from the roof the obvious. The very words of Tan Chuan Jin,

 "I would suggest that this is not just perception, but it is something that does happen."

What took you all so long? Gan Kim Yong should have dealt with it years back. I guess until your government face the ire of the people at the ballot box, you will never listen.

So what's next? Can you solve the problem? Your smartest in the world government naively allowed this to happen while even the dumbest ones elsewhere knew how to protect their own citizens. At least they were smart enough to know which side their bread is buttered.

Who believes moral-suasion would work except MOM? I can't find people to bet with. It is money loser. You need to have leverage and be prepared to use it. How about talking softly (moral-suasion) but also carry a visible big stick? It should work and work well! We tried it on you, but not speaking that softly and we saw results. That was two years ago and every few years we get another chance.

Update: 12:50pm

I have to add this background as my kids might not see the bigger picture especially the younger one.

The easiest way to understand our situation is to to study Singapore Airlines, but for now I don't want to use them as the example.

We need investors and we have been selling ourselves cheap or else they might go elsewhere. The government hope we would understand but there must be limits and they were stupid to keep pushing it. That's why today's graduates which both of you are likely to be someday are getting third world wages while investors enjoy first world facilities. In other words Singapore is fighting a price war and we are losing by cutting prices - SQ under the same pressure. If SQ do not survive, that's the canary in the coal mine has died. Currently they are making it easy for cadet pilots to leave.

Therefore the government is caught in a vise grip with investors as one jaw and we the other. The only way out is to stop the game and find new games, which they have limited success. They had about ten to twenty years to come up with new tricks but they failed. Making their job difficult isn't going to solve the problem but at least we tell them to work harder than they thought they could. Boys in NS will understand what this means.

At the end of the day our problems aren't solved and we are only buying time. We are indeed in a conundrum. Temporary relief could come from a supportive external environment than what we do internally. E.g., When I was in the oil refining business, often problems with other refineries are opportunities for Singapore to supply the shortages. Unfortunate perhaps, but Singapore is pretty good at living off other people's bad luck or stupidity. While we wish them well and hope that they would succeed but truth is if they become really good, we end up having a tough time competing with them.

That's life for us. We are just trying to get the government leaders to suffer along with us. This will surely help them to get creative.