The plan has three central 'pillars', namely 'Maintaining a strong Singaporean core', 'Creating good opportunities for Singaporeans', and a 'High quality living environment'.
Having read the Executive Summary so far, I would like to take a 'deconstructionist' approach and point out some of the issues I see with the plan.
With regard to the first pillar, we see this:
First, Singaporeans form the core of our society and the heart of our nation. To be a strong and cohesive society, we must have a strong Singaporean core. Strong families are the bedrock of our society, ..
The problem with this is that I have been hearing rhetoric about 'strong families' since I was a child, and what I see before my eyes is the progressive decay of our families which, given wider cultural trends, shows no signs of abatement. Apart from talking about enhancements that have already been made to the marriage and parenthood packages, I see nothing new in terms of dealing with the non-economic (cultural, religious, ethical) aspects of the decline in family life. As a student of economics, I would say that if the government cannot move beyond looking at this issue from only an economics perspective, the Singaporean core that we will have by 2030 will be a very rotten one.
As for the second pillar, I find the following passage loaded with irony:
Second, our population and workforce must support a dynamic economy that can steadily create good jobs and opportunities to meet Singaporeans’ hopes and aspirations.
The word 'hopes' was highlighted in the original document. The irony in the aforementioned is that it is precisely because Singaporeans have, as a people, lost hope in the future that we have stopped reproducing ourselves. A plan that aims to persuade us of the need for more people to be allowed to live on our very over-crowded island will do everything else but give us more hope in the future.
Besides this, given the government's economic track record for the past 10 years, where we have had to bring in more and more cheap labour to support our economy, where productivity has been in decline, where there had been a series of asset bubbles (which still persist), and where we've been asked to set aside our moral values to allow for casinos, I believe it is not unreasonable to ask about the extent to which we can be confident that the same set of ideas and paradigms will enable us to create a dynamic economy when the record has been so poor (especially with regard to income inequality).
The third pillar isn't too promising either. We see the following aspirations:
We must meet the infrastructure needs of a changing population and economy in a timely and efficient way, while preserving and enhancing a green environment, so that Singapore can be a unique, bustling ‘City in a Garden’.
Given the infrastructure troubles that we've had in recent years, it has been clear to some of us for some time now that we have a systemic issue with regard to the management of our infrastructure. To me, the problems we have experienced and will continue to experience stems from a government/GLC culture of rewarding 'thinking work' disproportionately more than 'operational work', resulting in 'keep the lights on' type of jobs being shunned and lowly regarded, often outsourced to cheaper foreigners.
Until we see a change in the work culture, not only will the aforementioned aspiration be a pipe dream, we won't even be able to keep things running properly with our current population size.
Based on the foregoing, my initial impression of the White Paper is that the plans contained therein will not be achieved unless we see radically different ideas put forth in the governance of our country.
More on this topic later after I have read more of the document.
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