There's a huge hulabaloo on the internet about PM Lee's national day rally speech and the measures he has announced and why they are crappy and inadequate. I agree generally that it was quite a crappy speech and some of the measures announced were silly and reveal that even right now with all the clanging on the internet and the growing resentment on the ground, the PAP still has no clue.
But instead of criticising PM Lee and joining in the chorus of why the PAP is fucked up, I shall instead propose SOLUTIONS to the problems facing our society today.
Showing posts with label HDB. Show all posts
Showing posts with label HDB. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Monday, July 26, 2010
Mah Bow Tan is Either Disingenuous, or Stupid (Maybe Both)
Dufus Statement No. 1:
"If you're a first-time buyer, there's more than enough flats for you."
Mr Mah claims that HDB is rolling out thousands of BTO flats this year. But how on earth can there be 'more than enough flats' when the flats are only going to be built in 3-4 years? A couple that is going to be married within the next 12 months needs the flats NOW, not in 3-4 years!
This is precisely what is happening to my sister-in-law. She is getting married early next year. But her BTO flat will only be completed around 2014/2015. In the mean time, she and her husband have to share a room with her relatives.
This is a ridiculous state of affairs and it is fundamentally disingenuous for Mah to state that there is adequate housing, when it is precisely the case that there IS NOT ENOUGH HOUSING to meet demand NOW, when it is needed the most. Mr Mah Bow Tan's statement is both insensitive and insulting to the many young Singaporeans trying to start a family in Singapore.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
HDB Unaffordability Exposes Economic Policy Failures - Housing Bubble to Grow and Pop
HDB’s Resale Price Index (RPI) rose by 4.1% in 2nd Quarter 2010 over the previous quarter, as compared to the increase of 2.8% in 1st Quarter 2010 and 3.9% in 4th Quarter 2009.
The median Cash-Over-Valuation (COV) amount amongst all resale transactions increased to $30,000 in 2nd Quarter 2010 (see Annex D (PDF 37KB)). The proportion of resale cases transacting above valuation also increased to 96%.
Singapore's HDB resale market is now out of reach of average Singaporeans. The median COV of $30,000 is now more than the annual take-home salary of an average Singaporean. Assuming that a person earning $3150 a month (gross) takes home $2500 a month (after CPF), this person would take 6 years to save up the median COV if he saved 20% of his income every month.
This means young, newly-wed Singaporeans who have been working for less than 5 years, and who are looking for housing when they are married, are effectively priced out of the resale market. The only way they would be able to afford the housing is if they were to borrow money from their parents to afford the COV to buy a resale flat.
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
Building an Inclusive Society in Singapore
Indranee Rajah brought up several good points about groups of Singaporeans "not feeling included."
1. Those who drop of school at a young age and find it difficult to integrate into society because they cannot get into skills upgrading courses e.g. courses which require 'O'-levels are not accessible to those without the academic qualification - someone with relevant work skills and experience cannot attend a course which he/she is skilled or experienced in.
Her proposal was to remove this 'O'-level barrier for such courses, and to take into account relevant work experience.
2. Singaporeans (mostly males) with foreign spouses who cannot purchase a flat because the spouse is a foreigner - because policy makes it difficult for them to get a secure roof over their heads. So these Singaporeans find it difficult to settle down and have a family and... make babies.
Solution: Don't disallow them to rent the hdb flats altogether
3. Single unwed mothers who are not allowed to rent HDB flats - an outdated policy. MND does not want to encourage them to have babies out of wedlock.
Solution: Get the mother and child in a stable environment where the child can be educated and where the mother does not have to worry about extraneous circumstances
4. Can only rent if 2 singles above 35 - elderly's friends pass away and they cannot rent flat.
Solution: find rental housing for the elderly - integrate the elderly into the rest of society where there are young people etc.
All solutions proposed by Indranee are good ones, but there are deeper underlying structural problems with society and government that need to be addressed:
A. The first issue brought up about the O-level barrier is symptomatic of a society that has a myopic definition of talent and skills and only recognises academic performance, not practical life skills and other talents which are just as crucial to the functioning of a balanced society as are academic skills. In fact, given that the education system mostly focuses on dumb memorisation and rote learning, I would argue that those who have dropped out of school and have acquired real work experience and skills e.g. mechanics, cooks etc. have made better use of their time outside the education system than within it.
The focus on academic skills is simply too narrow minded and fails to take into take account multiple intelligences (musical, artistic, athletic, technical etc.) that make up a diverse humanity and that can contribute to the building of a richer society than a unidimensional one that is absurdly skewed towards 'scholars.'
It is this mindset that permeates the Singaporean psyche that needs to be purged and destroyed - and it is this mindset that is the real problem.
B. Issues 2,3, and 4 are HDB problems, and Indranee's proposed solutions are good, but they are only short term problems that, once again, attack the symptoms, not the underlying problems.
These problems arise because the government has this 'daddy knows best' attitude that is downright condescending, and often, completely wrong. It comes from misguided attitude that the government can socially engineer Singapore society into a utopia without single mothers and where the elderly find friends easily and where singaporeans only marry singaporeans.
What needs to be fixed is this arrogant attitude of the ministers who think they know everything, when in fact they only create more problems in the social fabric of singapore with their dysfunctional policies. Somebody needs to teach these people that the forces of nature are larger and more powerful than them and their arrogant 'philosopher king' attitude should be trashed. Lee Kuan Yew is one person in particular who harbours this attitude and the fastest way to see change in parliament is to kick the bugger out.
A longer term solution is to just abolish these stupid social engineering policies and just let nature take its course. The private sector and a free market can do fine to accomodate single mothers, foreign spouses, and the elderly. It does not need egotistical bureaucrats to mess things up - many of the problems Singapore faces could have been avoided if not for the meddling hand of the government.
All in all the government needs to be weakened and the private sector needs to get stronger. It is time for change to get under way.
And as can clearly be seen, the PAP's vision of a society where 'nobody is left behind' is so flawed, it's almost delusional. these groups of people are just a small number of the numerous groups are being left behind and Lee Hsien Loong had better get cracking on these problems in order to justify his cabinet's multi-million dollar salaries.
1. Those who drop of school at a young age and find it difficult to integrate into society because they cannot get into skills upgrading courses e.g. courses which require 'O'-levels are not accessible to those without the academic qualification - someone with relevant work skills and experience cannot attend a course which he/she is skilled or experienced in.
Her proposal was to remove this 'O'-level barrier for such courses, and to take into account relevant work experience.
2. Singaporeans (mostly males) with foreign spouses who cannot purchase a flat because the spouse is a foreigner - because policy makes it difficult for them to get a secure roof over their heads. So these Singaporeans find it difficult to settle down and have a family and... make babies.
Solution: Don't disallow them to rent the hdb flats altogether
3. Single unwed mothers who are not allowed to rent HDB flats - an outdated policy. MND does not want to encourage them to have babies out of wedlock.
Solution: Get the mother and child in a stable environment where the child can be educated and where the mother does not have to worry about extraneous circumstances
4. Can only rent if 2 singles above 35 - elderly's friends pass away and they cannot rent flat.
Solution: find rental housing for the elderly - integrate the elderly into the rest of society where there are young people etc.
All solutions proposed by Indranee are good ones, but there are deeper underlying structural problems with society and government that need to be addressed:
A. The first issue brought up about the O-level barrier is symptomatic of a society that has a myopic definition of talent and skills and only recognises academic performance, not practical life skills and other talents which are just as crucial to the functioning of a balanced society as are academic skills. In fact, given that the education system mostly focuses on dumb memorisation and rote learning, I would argue that those who have dropped out of school and have acquired real work experience and skills e.g. mechanics, cooks etc. have made better use of their time outside the education system than within it.
The focus on academic skills is simply too narrow minded and fails to take into take account multiple intelligences (musical, artistic, athletic, technical etc.) that make up a diverse humanity and that can contribute to the building of a richer society than a unidimensional one that is absurdly skewed towards 'scholars.'
It is this mindset that permeates the Singaporean psyche that needs to be purged and destroyed - and it is this mindset that is the real problem.
B. Issues 2,3, and 4 are HDB problems, and Indranee's proposed solutions are good, but they are only short term problems that, once again, attack the symptoms, not the underlying problems.
These problems arise because the government has this 'daddy knows best' attitude that is downright condescending, and often, completely wrong. It comes from misguided attitude that the government can socially engineer Singapore society into a utopia without single mothers and where the elderly find friends easily and where singaporeans only marry singaporeans.
What needs to be fixed is this arrogant attitude of the ministers who think they know everything, when in fact they only create more problems in the social fabric of singapore with their dysfunctional policies. Somebody needs to teach these people that the forces of nature are larger and more powerful than them and their arrogant 'philosopher king' attitude should be trashed. Lee Kuan Yew is one person in particular who harbours this attitude and the fastest way to see change in parliament is to kick the bugger out.
A longer term solution is to just abolish these stupid social engineering policies and just let nature take its course. The private sector and a free market can do fine to accomodate single mothers, foreign spouses, and the elderly. It does not need egotistical bureaucrats to mess things up - many of the problems Singapore faces could have been avoided if not for the meddling hand of the government.
All in all the government needs to be weakened and the private sector needs to get stronger. It is time for change to get under way.
And as can clearly be seen, the PAP's vision of a society where 'nobody is left behind' is so flawed, it's almost delusional. these groups of people are just a small number of the numerous groups are being left behind and Lee Hsien Loong had better get cracking on these problems in order to justify his cabinet's multi-million dollar salaries.
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