The good doctor nails it: there is a lack of public trust. People are emotional about it and as usual feel that the government is out of touch. You do need to be rational and also emotional. Rational to get this right and emotional to successfully connect and sell. As usual the PAP government consistently get F for connecting.
I am unemotional about my CPF because even as a young fellow I had assumed it is my money and also not my my money. Birds in hand are my money, but CPF is birds in the bush and the most tangible way it became birds in my hand is when it was unlocked to buy a house. At least that was how wifey and I saw it. Also as graduates we were earning good incomes, we could create a Plan B. It was unrealistic for most workers to view the CPF the way we did.
Over the years as I read especially in the Economist how pension systems in other countries ran into trouble, my doubts about CPF grew. Sure, I think we have a much better system than elsewhere because we were latecomers and learned from their mistakes but better is not the same as good enough. Today CPF members are pressing the government to make it good enough. I don't think that is possible. Why own a problem that cannot be solved. In this sense Dr. Toh Chin Chye was right to insist that the money must be returned upon members reaching 55 years old. It has always been smarter to figure out how to train and get them jobs then to deny them their CPF withdrawal. These folks don't know they wouldn't have enough to retire on yet, cannot be sold that many will still need an income, it is the burden and privilege of world class government to prepare for that day which citizens don't see coming. Alas, we actually only have a best government who is actually just the top boy in a class of failures when Singapore need an A grade government, which we actually had in our early days when we did the impossible.
The trouble with the PAP government is that it wants to continue to have the means to have sufficient control over our lives so that it can continue to win votes at each general elections persuading us how they cleverly made life better for us using our money. I avoided explaining in an earlier post about this government refusing to tell us how CPF money is invested. A more educated generation will not accept that they are invested in special government securities, which is true but not the complete story. They want to know where the cash went after they are sold to the government for bonds, and will it be there when we want to redeem those bonds.
This is how they have and hope to continue to use our money to buy our votes. It is quite simple. They simply set aside the 2.5% owed to us and a portion above that is used to fund government programs, which they are transparent about at least at the high level. True they spend money on us but now it is sold to us as government money. They earned it but conveniently forget that we funded them and if more of that could be assigned to CPF accounts, we will be less short of retirement funds (most of us will still be short, it is just impossible for most to save enough to retire here)
A less educated and informed generation before just trusted the government especially when it had delivered. But this one failed us in many ways, which it was able to fix quite quickly except public transport and immigration. Trust had been damaged and not completely repaired. Before trust returns to the relationship voters demand transparency, which is euphemism for, "I don't believe you".
In place of missing trust, a government must have the ability to communicate and connect. Here they fail big time and keep failing with astonishing regularity. The PM just failed again in parliament today.
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