I haven't had time to read Tharman's speech. Perhaps this afternoon, but this chart through flipping the paper quickly caught my eye this morning. What hit me immediately is that when we compare ourselves against Japan, it is going to be really hard to grow wages. On balance the SGD must weaken quite a bit more. I don't expect Japan to pull ahead giving us room to chase them. Such is the sad situation they are in today.
A lot of problems come, and you feel yourselves hitting the glass ceiling when the economy cannot grow faster. People here underestimate how important it is to grow the pie. You cannot just assume that growth comes naturally.
Another statistical trick ? Why always pegged index to doggy years agao? How about last 5 to 10 years wage growth ?
ReplyDeletepeople become "tricked" by stats only when they don't understand its purpose or worse still choose not to believe it. if tharman is trying to track 50 years of growth, nothing wrong with him using a 50 year stat.
Deletebut anyway if even if he uses stats based on the recent years, he can also prove his point becoz he is making a cross country comparison. while true that income growth in Singapore has slowed, other countries like Taiwan, Japan, Hong kong have it much worse. that's why I think peng you likes to use the term " class of failing govt around the world").
Lastly, I agree with peng you that growing the pie isn't something which comes naturally. in fact, its the most difficult thing to do.
if you had listened to Tharman's budget wrap-up speech yesterday about the economy, you can tell that he is trying to do some important macro-economic planning, Kudos to them if they succeed. Even zorro lim who usually talk nonsense made some important points yesterday. But usual, some people wont listen to these bits. instead they would focus on those irrelevant parts and nit-pick on them, as if all these irrelevant parts are all those that matters.