Government determined to increase population to 7 mil in 2030.

[d.o.g.]

If we totally exclude foreigners from those jobs that cannot be outsourced, we may experience
- large rises in cost of living (biz have no choice but to pass the cost of wages to us),
- wage inflation for all workers including PMET (all of us will want higher wages when cost of living increases.)
- possibly loss of competiveness (if you are a boss looking to open a factory, wage costs are always a consideration)
- more crowded trains and buses than now (definitely our children will not aspire to be bus or train captains, so no local bus/train captains = no train)

If we look at the actual cost of living, excluding childraisng there are a few key components:

housing
food
transport

The cost of housing has very little to do with wages and a lot to do with the cost of land. This is something the government can fix. HDB can sell at cost/cost-plus, that would bring down the cost of new flats. HDB can also sell a new category of flats that cannot be resold, only returned to the government for a pro-rated refund. This would create a category of housing that has no speculative element, and should be popular with those who only want a roof over their heads.

Food is actually a very small expense for most of us. The median wage in Singapore is just over $3k per month. But most of us can get by on $10-15 of food spending per day. This is 10-15% of income. Even if your food costs go up 30% the impact is 3-5% of income, it is definitely bearable.

Transport cost is large or small depending on whether you have a car or not. Without a car most people will spend less than $5 a day on public transport. For 20 working days, that's $100 a month or 3% of income. Even if fares went up 50% the impact is less than 2% of income, still bearable. With a car the cost is much higher, often $1,500 or more per month. This is mainly due to changes in the COE supply which is within the government's control.

So you see, increasing the wages of our hawkers and bus drivers by 50% will cumulatively impact the higher-earning group by less than 10% total. The lower-income, who will feel the impact more, are precisely the group who will have the higher incomes. So net-net I think Singapore wins, a small cost for the well-off is a large benefit for the poor.

As for the unattractiveness of driving buses, SBS admitted previously in the Straits Times that their problem with hiring locals was the poor base pay. When they changed the package so that the base pay was increased to $1,000 they had more applicants for the job.

We do not need to reach the extremes of the UK where schoolteachers quit to drive the Tube trains because the hours are shorter and the pay is better. But we can do a lot more for the bus and train drivers - they have dozens and even hundreds of lives in their hands, their pay does not reflect their responsibility at all.

And likewise our street sweepers and garbage collectors are not being paid fairly for their labour. How can people in these jobs, who are struggling to survive, be proud to be Singaporean? For a country to survive it cannot just be the elites who are proud to be citizens, even the poor and downtrodden must feel that it is "their" country.

If the general population feels that their country has become a "rich man's land" how can they be expected to support the government or do National Service? The first thing they will try to do is leave - and that is what many have done over the years. If you look at the CIA Factbook:

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications...2rank.html

Singapore has the 6th highest net migration rate in the world. On a per-capita basis, only Qatar, Zimbabwe, the British Virgin Islands, the Turks and Caicos Islands, and the United Arab Emirates had higher net migration rates. Singapore's net migration rate in 2012 was 15.62 per 1,000 persons. In other words, 1.5% of the population left last year.

If Singapore is truly "My Home" why is everyone trying to leave? And no prizes for guessing who leaves - it's the educated, the highly-skilled and highly-paid. Precisely the people that Singapore can ill afford to lose.

For reference, the net migration rankings (actual number per 1,000) of other nations/regions often compared to Singapore:

Australia #17 (5.93)
Hong Kong #25 (3.90)
USA #26 (3.62)
UK #29 (2.59)
Malaysia #135 (-0.37)
Indonesia #153 (-1.08)

Negative numbers represent net immigration.

As usual, YMMV.