What We Need To Do Right in This Election

Ideas from a friend.....

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What We Need To Do Right in This Election

by David Foo on Monday, May 2, 2011 at 10:22am

• We should implement a levy on foreigners buying property or even cars (COE) in Singapore and this will help fund the reserve (than the profit on land from HDB oweners) and GST reduction.  Foreigners should not be allowed to profit from very limited resources in Singapore.
• Singapore is a very small country and the land is very limited.  We are not like China or Malaysia with lots of land.  Even in China, foreigners are not allowed to buy houses if they do not work there.  In Malaysia, there is a foreign levy for foreigners when buying property there. 
• This is not discrimination but making sure that those whose interests are speculation and do not generate real GDP here do not upset those who do generate real GDP and have long term interest here.  If foreigners are buying property here for long term investment, the levy shouldn't be substantial over the long term.  Why should we let oursiders and foreigners speculate the cost up here.  The situation today is different from when our forefathers  were here generations ago.
• I do not object to foreigners coming to Singapore and the foreign workers.  What I do like to see change is to have more Singaporean be given more education / training / opportunities at the higher end of the structure.  If we can only have x number of uni grads but if we need to have more uni grads in the workforce today foreigners get employed.  It is difficult for our children with poly degree to compete with the foreigners who have uni degrees.  Going to JC and from poly to uni is not easy as we limit the seats.  Why don't we get more Singaporean educated with uni degrees or progessively higher end of the spectram like poly and ITE and virtually no one here below ITE.
• This again is not discrimination.  Discrimination is about asking a foreigner to give up his seat when we get into the MRT cabin and bump them away while they are queing to give way to Singaporean.
• We should have more talents by giving our children higher education and export them if we have excess (let them go tough it out overseas and they migh come back on the top end) and importing talents only necessary.  Has it occurred to us that our government failed to educate enough that we need to import degrees and failed to provie opportunities to develop and we need to import talents - after all these years - and we need to continue to do so?
• Has it occured to us why the latest unemployment figure is still at 1.9% (latest on May 1, 2011) - even after importing so many foreign workforce?  Can we do something more effective?  What is the ratio of foreign workers / talents to local workforce /talents to bring the unemployment down to 0%?  How do we measure the effectiveness of this foreign labor policy?  Do we continue to grow when unemployment rate hits 0% or below 1%? 
• Like it or not, we just don't like Singapore to be so crowded especially at the current rate of influx - lots of contention for resources - housing, transportatin, education, health care, and so on.   Do you like to have 5 other stranges to live in your home all of a sudden?
• Can we have the civil servant's bonus be tied to more than just growth?  Growth cannot be the only factor determining the bonus payout.  Other factors / targets like inflation, quality of living index (of Singapore citizen and not all which include foreigners), disposable income, and even savings (money set aside for retirement) should also be evaluated.
• Growth is easily achieved especially when property prices, COE, and all prices are up.
• The government has to balance growth with cost of living and owning more than 80% of the housing market, HDB monopolizes the housing market here and has great significance in getting cost down as lower property prices equals to lower prices for everything else.  Tokyo, London, and Hong Kong are good examples where high property prices lead to higher costs of everything else.  Malaysia is a good example where lower property prices has lower cost of living.
• Our fertility rate is so low that we keep bringing in foreigners in as our immigration policy and this adds more stress to our native population and the fertilty rate is going to be even lower and then more immigrants and foreign workers.  We are in for a viscious cycle on this.
• We need MPs to run Singapore as a country and not as a company.
• Every year's Qingming 清明 we pray to our grandparents.  If we keep having low fertility rate and it keeps dropping and population growth is substained by more immigrants, native Singaporeans are going to be extinct.  No one is going to pray for us and our parents and grandparents.  The columbarium will be deserted.  The new immigrants will ask that the columibarium to be demolished to erect new condominium. 
• The older generation of Singapore citizens need to understand this big picture.  PAP and the government also need to understand, we, continue to have an interest here even after we die.
• Singaporeans should grow as Singapore grows.  We have not - more so the middle and the lower classes.  Even our neighbour Malaysia protects their people where foreginers are not allowed to buy houses below RM 500,000, single store house, land, and 2-storey shop lots.  In Singapore, it is almost free for all with PRs and silbings buying up HDB flats (and able to rent out after MOP) and more and more foreigners have been given approvals to buy landed home.
• Between 2006 and 2009, to spur growth our immigration issued many social visit passes with virtually no limit to the Chinese and the Vietnamese girls (I personally have nothing against them) who were prowling the streets around Arab Street, Jalan Besar, Geylang, Balestier, Joo Chiat, People's Park, and many other areas. The vice has gone on for years and these girls were squarding in packed rooms around the same areas. It took years for the anti-vice and the police to clean up. It seems that they have done a good work. Guess what - immigration, anti-vice, and police are all under MHA.  We need to put a check on them.
• We should constitionalize the electrol constituency definition and redefinition process.  If PAP were to run China, Hokkien will become Catenoese in one election and become Hainanese in another election.  Even the Hokkien can become Shanghainese to suit the election results of PAP.  Also we could have 10- and 20- member GRC and then a single CRC (first C stands for country) with 87-seats in there and no opposition can contest