"I cannot solve the problem, and I have given up..."
He can't solve it, the younger generation of leaders could? Even if they are more creative, which I doubt, who is going to carry this politically?
The problem would not be solved. Therefore if you agree with the man, where Japan goes, so goes Singapore. This is a huge vote of pessimism.
The problem can certainly be solved if it is a global problem. Trouble is it might not be. Some emerging economies have very young population e.g., Indonesia. At the upper end, America would succeed at importing the world's best talent, i.e., they have no incentive to solve the problem of an ageing population because they won't have one. Look around us, how many science, engineering and business systems solutions came out of the labs in America. If they are not producing solutions they will not have anything to sell to the rest of the world with graying populations to deal with. Perhaps Japan can fill that void, which is a huge business opportunity but at such a late hour the Japanese haven't shown any promise of delivering on that.
I wrote more than once in this blog that all our enemies need to do is to let us grow so old that they can just march in and take over. Fortunately history show they are too impatient and stupid to wait. We need them to make us feel insecure to make us strong. There is no solution to the demographic bust until it is even higher priority than the economy. This agenda is not and cannot be set by the government. We the people must want it. Afterward we can revisit and revise the PWP.
On reading the book, two things come to my mind. First, it was perhaps good that the great man himself stepped down from the cabinet, and perhaps parliament, as his views are perhaps already past it and we need the next generation to chart our own path.
ReplyDeleteSecond, while I don't agree with all his opinions on ministerial salaries, childbirth, etc, he at least is forthright enough to point out that "this is a problem, no question, and this is what I think is the only way to solve it." There is less of the listening but not listening and insisting that everything is still rosy kind of rhetoric you see from some ministers these days.