Length of loan is not the issue: Mah Bow Tan

[thefarside]

Businesses operate to make money. They don't operate for charity, to give citizens well-paid jobs. This is the economic system. Unless we go back to communism, this is the reality we face. So how, how, how?

I know of companies that hire a couple (=2) Singaporean workers (1 receptionist and 1 finance admin) and have an office of 20 people who are all foreigners from Europe, China and India (majority). They operate in the engineering services sector, don't make much money, are here only for the low tax rate, and pay about 3-5k for most of the jobs they employ (supposedly design engineers). They have special exemptions from MOM on employment quota on the basis that the skillsets required cannot be found here in Singapore, and they have supposedly based their "regional HQ" here in Singapore. Of course they hire the token locals, to maintain a resemblance of representation. Question : please tell me why (or how how how) are these companies allowed to operate here in Singapore to start with? Is Singapore a charity, to allow such setups to be based here?

The capitalist economic system is not the end all be all - Adam Smith in himself in his work the Wealth of Nations warned of the dangers of relying completely on the invisible hand to drive end results. Yet people choose most of the time to highlight only the slogans of how having profit motive is a force for good.

To understand the predicament that Singapore has found itself in today, you have to trace back 20 years to the fundamental underpinnings of the Singapore society; its education system (small elite vs wider higher education), labour force management (gross input vs productivity growth) and political management (head in the ass vs enlightenment).

But though the interest of the labourer is strictly connected with that of the society, he is incapable either of comprehending that interest, or of understanding its connexion with his own. His condition leaves him no time to receive the necessary information, and his education and habits are commonly such as to render him unfit to judge even though he was fully informed. In the public deliberations, therefore, his voice is little heard and less regarded, except upon some particular occasions, when his clamour is animated, set on, and supported by his employers, not for his, but for their own particular purposes. (Smith, Wealth of Nations, page 218)