How to eradicate poverty in Singapore

[specuvestor]

There's a lot of people who think that it is good to have a poverty line but my question is, would the drawing of this line encourages people to simply seek assistance from the government instead of working hard? Since government is paying for my well-being, I don't mind just staying at home and laze around. Is it good to encourage such a behaviour especially when he is able-body? He can work hard but simply too lazy to do so.

I am not talking about myself. I do contribute back to society and we should contribute back to the society. What I am saying is the simple solution of drawing a poverty line and eradicate poverty by helping those below this line. What behaviour are we encouraging?

Some people are complaining that our government is too fixated on GDP growth and so, we have poverty. Are they wrong? I really don't think so. We import most of our things from overseas and in order to keep things cheap, we need to keep Singapore dollars strong. In order to do so, we have to encourage foreign companies to invest in our country, buying as much SGD as possible. These companies have to find good reasons to invest in Singapore.

Perhaps our government did not find a good balance between welfare and economic growth but I find that a lot of times, the accusation that our government is not doing a good job is a tad too exaggerated. For a small country to survive, it is not as simple as some people have portrayed.

IMHO your assumption that "helping" will lead to complacency is as misled as the communist utopian idea that everyone will help everyone (just in theory no offence meant), it depends on the structure and incentive

I think generally we have seen that given right environment and incentive, people want to pursue a better life. The society degrades just as bad if everything is taken care by the state with no incentives, vs everyone for themselves with escalating wealth gap as the factors of production moves towards a group that are BORN of priviledged heritage. History has shown both cases very well. IMHO we have been brainwashed that welfare is always bad, when the real meaning has been clouded.

China has been focusing on GDP growth and in the next CPC we are likely to see a gradual focus on quality rather than quantity of growth. Similarly Singapore have to tone down their rhetoric on "growth by perspiration" and focus on slower growth by productivity (which has been declining for 5 quarters IIRC) and value add. That should be the strategy going forward to attract MNCs rather than make it a rich man's playground. For example our unique exposure to multiculture and multi language is a HUGE advantage for us that should be cultivated and preserved. If we only speak good English like the Ang Mos, what is the value add of going through us to go to the region?

Policy making is very important and not easy like you say but we have to constantly remind ourselves to look at the long term big picture rather than short term growth. It is not paranoid to say a wrong policy mistake can have devastating consequences. Phillippines, Burma and Ceylon are very different on a relative competitiveness 50 years ago vs now. Even China was the largest economy in the world just more than 100 years ago. LKY has cause to fret about Singapore in 50 years.