The Minimum Wage is a Terrible Idea

Singapore needs people with skills warranting a higher wage, not politicians legislating a minimum wage. Our national education system is the problem. It has produced an entire generation of people who copy and replicate, instead of creating and innovating. If our people are highly skilled or creative, they will naturally command a good wage, or even own flourishing businesses. Value creation must come before the rewards. Legislating a minimum wage won't solve the problem because inflation and illegal activity will negate the well-intended minimum wage. 

Businesses will do three things when faced with a minimum wage law: 

1. Stop hiring any position below the minimum wage

If there is little value in the position, and it is expensive to maintain, a business will simply cut its losses and terminate the position. Worse still, the business may decide to relocate those functions completely to other cheaper countries.

2. Make those paid above the minimum wage do more work

Businesses would prefer to give an employee a raise and add more tasks to the employees job scope than pay a minimum wage and be faced with arbitrary pay increases each time the government changes the law.

3. Pass the cost increase on to the consumers, which includes low income workers

Inflation is the worst tax of all. It erodes the power of savers to break the chains of poverty and rewards the rich who have the power to take huge risks to beat inflation. The poor will suffer the most when businesses pass on increases costs to the consumer. This is how income disparity begins: the government causes inflation, the poor are unable to save, and the rich keep investing to stay ahead of inflation.

Net effect:

1. Higher cost of existing goods and services

Businesses will transfer the increased costs to the consumers. Employees higher up the food chain will demand pay increments to ensure parity and use the minimum wage as a benchmark. All these translate to inflation.

2. Higher unemployment

The ones with low wages tend to be school leavers, vacation workers, and the elderly. They will be the first to be fired. Next will be the staff in low value positions. Businesses would not take as many chances on new people because a minimum wage would be involved, so a minimum standard of experience would be demanded too.

3. More foreign talent imports that meet the minimum wage

By making local labor as expensive as foreign imports (talents, not low wage workers since the minimum wage would eliminate low wage), businesses would look further away from Singapore when hiring and it would be tougher to get a job here for local school leavers.

4. More illegal foreign workers to circumvent the minimum wage

Some businesses would look at hiring illegal foreign workers to keep wages low. It will become a big problem in the construction industry, and you will soon see more locals displaced by illegal foreign labor.

Please think carefully before asking for a minimum wage. It looks very good and noble on paper, but the real world is a very dynamic (or corrupt) place and it is not going to work out the way you think.

Claim your land Singaporeans, or someone else will

We were born free men and women of Singapore. We were educated, in a largely civilized society, and built a great land for ourselves and our children. Now the very things we have invested in are being taken away from us, cut into pieces and sold to the highest bidder, very often from foreign lands.

I firmly believe in the right to private property, but not when the acquisition of that property was made using state subsidies and statutes based on eminent domain. This is our land, our birth right, and we must send a clear message, that while we want to play ball with the world, we will not let our team be kicked around, bent over and spanked.

This is our land and we must fight for it, against all attackers, both foreign and domestic.

Singaporeans need to understand that while we need to be a part of a global economy, the foreigners must also learn how to be a part of us, especially when they are on our soil. A partnership is a two-way relationship. The proper name for a one-way relationship is slavery.

I would rather die on my feet than live on my knees.

Securing our future together after many good years

We must not develop a crutch mentality. Remember our track record. This is a footloose generation who need a good dose of bad government. Then your mother, sister and daughters will become maids in a third world country, and you will repent. Vote carefully. Securing our future together. Many more good years!

1. The crutch mentality

$130 a month vs $3,000,000 a year (250,000 a month)?

• Who is using the crutch?
• Who is really eating in the hotel, restaurant or food court?

2. Remember our track record. This is a footloose generation who need a good dose of bad government:

• Mas Selamat - it has happened, what to do?
• Flooding - twice in 50 years (adjusting for daylight savings, we arrive at two in one week in real time)
• Youth Olympic Games - three times over budget, but unable to cater proper food for volunteers
• Lehman Mini-Bonds - these are investor grade
• Overcrowded trains - we have sufficient resources to accommodate new arrivals
• Sovereign fund losses of 40 billion - a long term dis-investment
• Medical costs skyrocket - give us a strong mandate and we will keep medical costs low
• Public Housing skyrocket - housing is affordable
• More jobs for Singaporeans - 36% of population is now foreign

3. Then your mother, sister and daughters will become maids in a third world country, and you will repent:

• Shall we wait till we get to this point?

4. Vote carefully. Securing our future together. Many more good years!