Is local talent better than foreign talent?

• SingaporeTyrannosaur

  28 Apr 07, 03:40

  Originally posted by Gazelle:

  What I am trying to tell you is that, the future for singaporeans is not about compete with cheap labour because we are worth and deserve more than that.
  with the education we have, do we need to put ourselve to that kind of level to compete with cheap unskilled foreign labour?

  I understand, however that's easy for people like us who know how to hit the books to say. We can go anywhere- but what about a rather sizeable chunk of the population who do not fare as well in the Singaporean yardstick of sucess?
  
  They will be the ones who will have to compete with the cheap and unskilled labour, and of course, they are already at a serious disadvantage and at the end of the day they are the ones who are hit the hardest by our economic policies. Being a middle class family in a 5-room flat I think we can tank the damage, but I doubt the couple who each draws less then 2k a month having two mouths to feed will see it the same way.
  
  And of course, their will see their own source of income becoming cheaper and harder to earn at. And of course this is a significant number of Singaporeans, the heartlander, the have-just-enough-to-get by.
  
  Am I suggesting they stay where they are and bemoan the state of things? No, what I am saying is that as a nation we ought to be sensible and aim not only for the economic bottom line, throwing those who can't ride the change to the wolves and saying to them "hey look, there was a time where people such as you were useful but now that's over and if you can't change well then it's just too bad."
  
  Is the future of Singapore to compete with cheap labour? I don't think so, we can win that fight. There is no question Singaporeans in general much arm themselves for the proper fight.
  
  The question I believe is... what are we doing with those left behind? Are they irrelevant because they are now out of sync with the state of things? Have we pushed the FT thing at their expense?
  
  There are other questions as well- why can't they compete? Are they incompetent or did the nature of Singapore as it is now deal them such a bad hand that they simply don't have any cards to play while giving the FT all the aces?
• SingaporeTyrannosaur

  28 Apr 07, 03:47

  And of course it does not help that currently our national policies seem to be at total odds with one another.
  
  They want us to have more children, but yet do little to reduce the cost (in proportion to the average spending power of the Singaporean) of raising a child. The prospect of raising more then two children will certainly be a very daunting task for the three-room HBD heartlander, and of course the better off nowadays aren't too keen on kids as they are more likely to have the "make it rich" mentality and kids don't figure too much into that plan.
  
  So are they importing FTs to make up for this coming lack of locals, ending up at the expense of the locals? I don't know.
  
  Prehaps people like you and me can compete with FTs on a more even footing, but I wonder how the grad from ITE will view it, when he sees the market for his skillset cheapen, and yet little real way out of it.
  
  Is every country perfect? I don't think so, but I think the main gripe here is the inability to affect any change on the ground level, the populace having being so disconnected from the way the country is run that they are simply reacting to the changes with little recourse otherwise.
  
  Do sensible Singaporeans see the value of FTs? I think so. But I think they are not quite as silly to realize that not all ways of implementing the FT policies end up being equal or beneficia to all.