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Sunday, Aug 25, 2013 - 18:46 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

Our Hamster Conversation


Let us engage in civilized, productive and predetermined discourse!
[Mr. Robo on left, Herr Ahm on right]
(Original sources: flickr.com)


In order to preserve the balance on this blog, Herr Ahm proposed that we hold an Our Hamster Conversation (with hefty appearance fee) in parallel with the extant national initiative, which he has promised will have no less an impact on actual policy decision-making, if the National Day Rally was anything to go by. Mr. "Silent Majority" Robo (who is moreover of the appropriate colour) will take a stand for the status quo, and I will act as impartial moderator, directing the flow while protecting the blog from libel lawsuits.


Mr. Robo: Herr Ahm, on your critique of the Rally speech, don't you think that was a tad too biting? I'm sure that you would agree that the government has had an admirable track record. Should they not be given more time?

Herr Ahm: Professional responsibility compels me to be honest in my analysis. If there is no effective change detected, I will say that there is no effective change.

On to the second part of your assertion, it may be best explained by two newsbites. The first, made yesterday by one of your Deputy Prime Ministers in the unimpeachable local news media:

"Inequality does not mean economic policies are failing... It has been accompanied by a significant increase in standards of living for most of the population over the years, with the income of the bottom 20 per cent of households increasing by 60 per cent over the last 20 years."

- TODAY, 24 August 2013


Mr. Robo: Isn't that very reassuring?

Herr Ahm: And now, on to the second bit, revealed by the Ministry of Manpower two years ago, back in 2011:

"The bottom 20 per cent of working Singaporeans saw their pay stagnate over the last 10 years... real income only rose by 0.3 per cent over the decade."

- Yahoo News, 12 October 2011


What does this tell you, Mr. Robo?

Mr. Robo: Erm... the period between 1993 and 2000 was incredible?

Herr Ahm: True that, but more importantly, what have the successful economic policies been doing from 2001 on? Well, to give the incumbents some credit, they didn't go back even further to claim that the real income rose by maybe 200% in the last forty years. It can be noted that the increase in population from three million to four million between 1990 and 2000 might have been benign, but the increase of almost exactly the same magnitude between 2000 and 2010 has been far less kind, even assuming fair computation of real income.

We might also consider what the other three Asian Tigers achieved, with their comparatively far lower relative population growth. *claps paws, chart appears*

Tiger1970 pop'n2010 pop'n% Increase
Singapore2.1M5.1M143%
Hong Kong4.0M7.1M78%
Taiwan14.8M23.2M57%
South Korea32.2M49.4M53%

[Source: Wikipedia]


Mr. Robo: Hey, correlation is not causation, or something.

Herr Ahm: That may be, but you won't hear the incumbents admitting that a large part of Singapore's early economic miracle was down to having a huge proportion of workers and comparatively few dependants. The fertility rate here, recall, was about five kids per woman in the early 1960s, while most developed nations were at three or below by then, running contrary to your DPM's brazen assertion that those lousy Western welfare states squandered their boom years.

This translated to a unnaturally large pool of workers from the late 1970s through early 1990s. While, to be fair to the incumbents, it was not the only factor in Singapore's rapid development, it's a lot easier to cope when you got over 13 employees supporting each retiree, as it was back in 1970.

Mr. Robo: Even if so, so what?

Herr Ahm: It might then be a sign that the incumbents' self-vaunted far-sightedness is less prophetic than held to be, and that the magic formula of stuffing in an additional million people like clockwork every decade, by hook or by crook - 5 million in 2010, 6 million in 2020 and 6.9 million in 2030 - not a target, my ass, by the way - might have run its course.

What it tells me is that the incumbents are wholly unwilling and probably unable to manage a country with a normal demographic profile, and are banking on maintaining an artificially high support ratio, to infinity and beyond.


If we wanna be Dubai, we should at least have tigers in cars!
(Source: azadnegar.com)


Mr. Robo: But aren't you the pragmatic one?

Herr Ahm: *produces cigar* I am pragmatic where it is sustainable. This is not. Which goes into your earlier question about "giving more time" - the last thirty years has seen the panacea to all our challenges consistently being "pump in another extra million people this decade!", which has already been preemptively extended for the next twenty years. You will forgive me for not expecting any change in this fundamental direction under the current administration.

Which goes into your government consistently pointing out that they are not in debt - more accurately, instead of borrowing financially, they are simply borrowing demographically, which could be the more dangerous.

Me: Why do you say that?

Herr Ahm: *starts puffing* When having a monetary debt, there are at least constant reminders from many sources. Agencies will cut your credit rating, the red ink will come up on official balance sheets for opposition parties and the electorate to rail about, etc. Building up and depending on a demographic debt is, on the other hand, largely invisible. It can well roll along unabated, not helped by your compliant press, until either domestic tensions or eventual infrastructural limitations kick up the equivalent of a margin call.

Me: So what do you think will happen?

Herr Ahm: Eight million people? 60% of the population being foreigners? Who knows what the spark to the tinder will be?

Mr. Robo: But if this is that obvious, won't all the very smart people in the government have realised it?

Herr Ahm: They have.

Mr. Robo: But if so...

Herr Ahm: Nothing will be done about it. That was the entire point I was trying to make, in my critique of the National Day Rally speech. There is no change. If left to their own devices, I expect every successive incumbent administration basically to import 500000 people during their five years of office to spur growth, while praying that the decades-long game of musical chairs won't stop on their watch, and never quite bring up this basic equation. Why bother, when all that those who come after them can do is to point fingers ineffectually?

Mr. Robo: Still, we should maintain discipline and not succumb to short-sighted populist measures...

Herr Ahm: Yes, another thing. The incumbents have been extremely successful in persuading the world that they aren't populist. However, by definition, every democratically-elected government must be largely populist. It is just then when they doled out tough love in the past, they delivered handsomely.

Past electorates didn't masochistically vote the incumbents in because they were un-populist, they voted them in because they got a spacious flat for S$15000 - instead of having the need waved off as a "lifestyle choice" - and continued voting them in because the value of their flats kept rising, for better or worse, among other factors. It is only now that the consequences of directing citizens' pensions to the property market, and depending on asset appreciation to deliver returns, have become starkly evident - either depreciation, or an unthinkable housing debt burden for future generations.

Mr. Robo: But the local media reported that the Hong Kong news promised that HK$6000 (S$1000) can buy a house...

Herr Ahm: Correction, S$1000 maybe can lease two rooms. If you go far enough down this road, you'll begin to believe that S$3000 dishwashing jobs, S$7000 taxi driving lobangs and S$8 heart bypasses are the norm.

That is, I think, why your incumbents are so up in arms about the media - they are trying to promote a narrative, which while possibly sound in specific cases, might not be especially robust, and is perhaps best not deeply examined. However, that part's fortunately probably gone out of their control, and just as well too.


It's like that 'cause... 'cause I say so!
(Source: deviantart.com)


Me: Okay, I think that's enough for population and housing. About education, even The State's Times had to publish multiple letters painstakingly describing why there would very predictably be no change, with the expected odd innocent promotion of character and physical education marks.

Herr Ahm: Gee, colour me surprised.

Mr. Robo: Ah, but if you read the speech more closely, what was proposed was a subject banding system, similar to the O-level L1R5 system, instead of an overall T-score banding. What do you say to that?

Herr Ahm: It makes no difference in the final analysis, and I say that in much the same way that I can dismiss a perpetual motion machine out of hand. As long as one is trying to allocate a fixed number of places in the most desirable schools among a much larger cohort, and these places are highly correlated with a university spot and supposedly a ticket to the good life, all any system can do is to shuffle the importance of objective and subjective measures in the selection process.

Not only that, twiddling away from objective to subjective measures may not even reduce competition, since all it effectively does is to squeeze the number of places obtainable through a recognized metric, and leave more to uncertainty. No matter what numbers you plug in, this remains true. They can say that primary schools are not measured by the number of top performers, but as long as the connection to an eventual degree is so strong, not helped by the number of local graduates being capped while foreign degree holders are freely welcomed, why should parents agree?

Some of them are already nitpicking over whether the additional places go to Phase 2B or 2C applicants, which was probably unnecessary given that the extra places would likely follow the existing order, i.e. Phase 2B first, anyway, but which does rub how pointless the exercise is in. I expect the new PSLE grading proposal to develop as such:

  • Late 2013: Committee set up to study the issue
  • Mid 2014: Report released. Propose to use the existing letter grade, converted to a numerical band value (i.e. A*=1, A=2, B=3 and so on), as befits our beloved conservative bureaucracy
  • Immediately: Hordes of anxious parents write in on how their kids' weak command of mother tongue could kill their hopes of getting into a top school
  • Early 2015: Another committee compromises by declaring that the better band of the two languages will be used, with the result for the other language used as a tie-breaker if needed. Mollified parents don't realise that this makes next to no difference in actuality
  • Nov 2018: First batch under the new banding system. 2000 of the 50000-strong cohort get the best possible score (4A*=3 points, plus tiebreaker immunity). Vast bulk put the traditional topmost tier schools (NYGH,RI,RGS,HCI) as their first choice. However, these schools have maybe 800 places between them after an expanded direct admissions programme
  • Dec 2018: These schools assign their teachers to conduct hundreds of interviews. Enterprising shucksters peddling grooming classes make a killing. Teachers can't read much into strung-out kids who thought they had done everything perfectly, only to be faced with a 40% acceptance rate on something they had never trained for. Some schools administer their own direct admissions-type exams, others end up basically throwing darts to select students behind the scenes.
  • 2019: New committee recommends a new A+ grade to lie between A* and A, to achieve finer discrimination. While A* officially remains at 91% and above, the percentile cut-off is silently shifted so that only about 800 students per cohort get four A*s, so as to eliminate the selectivity problem for top schools
  • Dec 2020: Parents realise that getting four of the new A* grades is actually more painful than scoring 263+, because while it was possible to get a high enough T-score by excelling on three strong subjects and relaxing a little on the weaker (and probably least favourite) one, now their kid has to pour the most effort into what he dislikes most
  • 2021: When pointed out in The State's Times, one helpful commentator states that it is the parents' mindset that has to change, the government has done what it could, and this builds character anyway. Meanwhile, university graduate salaries stay largely stagnant. The government promises to re-review the banding criteria to reduce stress...


Me: Well, I certainly didn't kick up a fuss about failing in the ballot to get into Rulang - widely held to be near the top - despite my grandmother being an alumni, which doesn't count. Oh, I'm sorry, time's running short and we will have to wrap up this segment. So, what do you think can be done, on the citizens' end?

Herr Ahm: *sighs* Thing is, the incumbents know. However, one suspects that they have effectively become beholden to business and legacy interests. As mentioned, the speech, the frequent apologies and every national rag all openly emphasized big change. They didn't try to sell "more good years" as they did in the 1990s, as that would have been obviously disingenuous. In fact, to me, the lack of change is not even as troubling as the not even acknowledging the actual roots of the problems. How, then, to change?

With the stance from up there so often being "don't expect us to do this", it would not be so unexpected for people to finally take them at their word; if the absolute limit of the incumbents' imagination is to collect more money, manage expectations, reserve a few places for primary school kids and clear land for an additional one million people each decade, how can citizens be blamed for realising that if that's it, perhaps they can get others in to do it cheaper, better and faster, the way the incumbents have been promoting?



Citizens must take initiative, top level said.
So, how about a community bonding football event?
(Original source: therealsingapore.com)


Me: Some very strong words, Herr Ahm.

Herr Ahm: Oh, it's not up to me. I'm not a voter. Tell me, what would it take for you to vote incumbent?

Me: Well, there is no denying that they have done quite a bit for the country previously. They pledged real change. Therefore, some real change would be a good start. But for some reason, I think it very unlikely indeed.

Herr Ahm: *nods* If they recognize the situation and go balls to the wall - dick to the brick - it is not unsalvageable. But even that would be too much, and I expect the incumbents to ignore all the cries, as long as they project support of around 55% come 2016, even if Tanjong Pagar winds up looking like an octopus. Less might even do it, as Malaysia's Barisan Nasional demonstrated by winning 60% of the seats with only 47.4% of the popular vote. What happens, happens, then.



Getai favourite that was playing downstairs
问你何时曾看见，这世界为了人们改变?




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