On the way to school in a cab, I heard over the radio that "'we need to bring in more immigrants to compensate for falling birth rates." Win already. Isn't that implying if Singaporeans don't want to have so many foreign workers (FWs) here, we should all go forth and multiply?

Either way, the ruling elites win already what. Ok, let's say Singaporeans are really not horny these days and are not reproducing enough, then the solution would be to just bring in more FWs. With that, the macro outlook of our economy and our competitiveness rankings will remain oh so rosy.

On the other hand, maybe after hearing what I heard on the radio, Singaporeans realise that, "oh no! It's because WE are not having enough babies that WE are facing this crazy influx of foreign workers. Ok dear, I've had enough of overcrowded public transport and overpriced housing, let's have a baby, or five." If that happens, then our economy would also remain all positive and rosy, albeit not immediately, but it should.

Right.

Playing SimCity ar? Just implement something and some computer algorithm will sort things out on the ground? Shouldn't we ask WHY people are not reproducing enough? It doesn't help if we just accept the problem as it is, seemingly finding the solution to that through liberal immigration policies, and then failing to foresee and prepare for the social consequences of such policies. I mean, whatever happened to the foresight that the government is so renowned for?

I think the problem of falling birthrates is endemic to capitalist and materialistic societies with educated people making up a significant proportion of the population. That is, in some ways, a highly educated population is it's own downfall when located in the current workings of economics and it's associated set of social values. This effect is especially acute in Singapore simply because we are very small and have no other natural resources of our own.

Economics assume that the individual is rational, and by that it means an individual acts for his or her own benefit. In many aspects, that assumption is very true. Of course there are exceptions but can one really proclaim without batting an eyelid that people in contemporary societies are not, for want of a better term, selfish? Also, if the assumption of the rational individual was not true to a large extent, then the study of economics wouldn't have had such a great success at predicting and explaining economic behaviour of consumers and producers.

So combining rationality i.e. selfishness and high levels of education, we get people who

1) know very well how difficult and expensive starting a family can be,

2) have spent inordinate amounts of time and money on their education, which translates into

3) not wanting to just 'settle' for any job because they have been studying so much and because of the amount of money spent and owed throughout the process of education that needs to be repaid. Add to that that the job is now also the person's livelihood in an ever more expensive society, not just something to repay debts owed even before starting work, the person is actually unable to settle for any job lest he or she goes into further debt.

I know some people would say, "haiya why must stay in big house and drive big car? Must learn to live modestly mah." To that I say, "haiya if you don't want people to want these nice things, don't educate them la." I say this because we must realise that education is a middle class institution, regardless of whatever 'stream', hence anyone in the institution would be exposed to and inculcated with middle class values such as the desire to continually do better to improve oneself. It's the common saying we all tell our children, regardless whether you're rich or poor (except maybe the ultra rich, but that's besides the point), that is study hard = good paper qualifications = good job. All that coupled with the rampant materialism everywhere these days and we get people who keep wanting nicer and nicer things. The point is, to bring up and socialise someone with these values and then tell him or her to live life modestly creates a disjuncture in his psyche, a disjuncture between his aspirations he was essentially socialized with and the current lived reality.

Now, it must be made clear that the argument I'm making here is not for or against bringing in FWs, but a critique against the statement made by the government which I mentioned at the beginning of this post. That the justification for bringing in FWs is due to falling birth rates. This statement is but a thinly veiled attempt to shift the blame away from the government to the citizenry. It's subtly telling people that, "look, you don't want to reproduce right? So you leave us no choice but to bring in FWs to help support the economy lo." What this statement fails to address are the reasons behind the phenomenon of falling birth rates, which are actually structural issues like cost of living, affordability and the whole notion of educational inflation i.e. a bachelors degree today is worth less than it was 20 years ago, which is why people tend to want to pursue higher and higher qualifications, essentially extending school life and delaying marriage. And the reason why governments tend to avoid addressing structural issues is because it is a gigantic headache; socially and economically speaking.

Now, after all this lengthy intellectual diatribe, one might ask, "so what's the solution?"

Well for a start, the government might want to stop blaming the populace for everything, in this case, for falling birth rates and start to look at structural issues that led to this problem in the first place. Exactly how that is to be done, I don't really know. What. Don't look at me like that. I'm not one of the highest paid ministers in the world you know. Ask them instead, they should know better. :)


- Posted from my iPhone via BlogPress.




5:10 PM