25 reasons why productivity remains low in Singapore

We refer to the article “Singapore’s productivity push a national effort, says PM Lee who meets flying robot waiter” (Straits Times, Oct 7).

This consistent rhetoric on the focus to improve productivity in order for real wages to increase, has been going on for years.

Productivity continues to languish in the doldrums.

How can we expect Singaporeans to be productive when we -

… Constantly fear that our jobs may be replaced by foreign workers – we created more than 300,000 jobs for locals, more than 700,000 jobs for foreigners, but granted more than 400,000 new citizens and PRs, in the last 7 and a half years or so

… Have our wages depressed by foreign workers who may be willing to work for lower pay – foreign workers are paid as little as $18 a day

… Have the longest work hour week in the world

… Have had hardly any real increase in median basic pay in the last 14 years or so – 5 out of the 8 major job categories had negative wage growth and 3 of 8 had near zero growth – very low relative private consumption expenditure

… Are found in survey after survey, to be one of the most unhappy people in the world

… Are subject to the relentless rise in the cost of living – recent increases include childcare fees, university tuition, Service and Conservancy Charges (S & C C), public transport fares, healthcare fees, etc

… Have a Government that continues to from a cash flow perspective – not spend a single cent on healthcare, CPF or HDB

… Continue to accumulate relatively, the largest Budget surpluses in the world – $36.1 billion in FY2012 according to IMF fiscal reporting guidelines

… Have the lowest government spending as a percentage of GDP (14%), amongst the developed and developing countries

… Have probably the lowest public spending on healthcare as a percentage of GDP (1.4%) in the world – more than 500,000 successful applications for Medifund in a year from Singaporeans who couldn’t pay for healthcare fees in Class C and B in public healthcare institutions – one of the lowest ratio of public (about a third) to private healthcare spending in the world

… Have the second highest Gini (worse income inequality) in the world

… Have one of the lowest retirement adequacy as a percentage of last drawn income in the world, despite having the highest pension contribution rate of 37% in the world

… Have the most expensive public housing in the world, measured by price over income

… From a total cash flow perspective – pay the highest taxes, indirect taxes, social security contributions, etc – but get the lowest relative social benefits in the world

… Spend an estimated $500 million on foreign students at all levels of education, at the expense of more education spending on Singaporeans

… Have the second lowest fertility rate (TFR) in the world

… Have probably the highest percentage of foreign students (estimated 35%) in public universities in the world – mostly funded by Singaporean taxpayers’ money – only an estimated 3% of scholarships went to Singaporeans

… Have on a relative basis – the highest percentage of low income workers (more than 10% earn below $1,000; about 20% earn below $1,500)

… Have one of the highest poverty rates in the world as measured by the percentage of workers earning less than half the median income – about a fifth of the total Singaporean workforce

… Have PRs who on the average earn about 48% more than Singaporeans

… Have the bottom 20% of households spending more than what they earn, and a real decrease in increase in income over increase in expenditure, for all households, according to the recent Department of Statistics’ Household Expenditure Survey – very high relative household debt in the world

… Have more than 70,000 needy families who successfully applied for financial assistance under ComCare (not counting the unsuccessful applications) – we also have probably the lowest relative welfare spending in the world

… Are ranked as the most unemotional people in the world