26th of November 2011. Lim Swee Say brought the message of hope for the hopeful at the YSA (Young Sikh Association) Ministerial dialogue session held at Suntec City. Singapore will be resilient and shall grow at 3% – 5% per year for the next ten years growing to a whopping size of S$0.5T by the mid-2020s. By his account, Singapore has done better than the rest of the OECD countries. We are not plagued by the same issues of structural unemployment or high unemployment rates. However, going forward our challenges are two fold – an ageing population and widening income gap. The income disparity was a forgone conclusion, as long as it didn’t affect the crowd gathered to listen to him, it was a non-issue.
No, we are not going to have cheaper and better housing. He was referring to our economic philosophy, that Singapore will attain sustained growth through high skill, high innovation and high productivity; something that I can relate to. However, my e-thesaurus showed a different list of synonyms for the words skill, innovation and productivity. As to how he translated skill-innovation-productivity to cheaper-better-faster is a wonder. Thesaurus malfunctions perhaps!
I hung around long enough to hear his spiel about globalisation and localisation. I learned two new words from Swee Say and they are ‘glocalization’ and ‘corecalization.’ The audience seemed to be awe struck by how he could fuse two opposing forces of globalization and localization into a single force of glocalization to bring unprecedented growth for Singapore. In essence, it was down to the number of jobs created for locals versus foreigners. Corecalization was even more aggressive, it was about whether the core Singaporean team managed to gain essential skills; it didn’t matter even if the rest of the workforce was made up of foreigners. Swee Say asked the crowd that were gathered as to how many Singaporeans were experienced aircraft engineers with the talent and ability to manufacture aircraft engine blades. There was no retort.
We can expect a headline like, ‘Singapore enters a phase of high tech manufacturing’ in the local newspapers soon. They have exclusive bragging rights for this one, that’s for sure.
Like a good salesman he didn’t fuss over the disclaimer clause or what’s written in fine print. It was an important clause nonetheless, that many PMETs may become structurally unemployed in the future, the price we need to pay for induced economic growth. No worries for now though, for we can kick that can down the road or cross that bridge when we get to the river.
I am glad that they are as predictable as ever. One thing for sure, the existing growth policies will remain for a long time to come. We will continue to record stellar economic performances in the years ahead, which is a good thing. The current economic malaise is just a speed bump. There is hope, or is there?
Either, I worry too much, or they don’t see it coming. The question that was unanswered was how we are going to deal with the people in the fringes of the economy, the people who are going to lose their jobs and those who are left behind. Is there really any hope for the under-privileged and the marginalized, or should they just wallow in their hopelessness?
