x9200 wrote:sundaymorningstaple wrote:
If the families where producing 3 or 4 children, there would be sufficient manpower to be able to reduce the dependency on foreign "labour" in particular.
Reduce, maybe, but doubt if significantly. Majority of jobs handled here by foreigners fall into two categories: unwanted by Singaporeans, and difficult to find qualified Singaporeans for it. 2nd category is in direct connection with the educational system.
On the face of it I would tend to agree, but if you look at the underbelly, it was the quest of LKY to rebuild the infrastructure here in a hurry that is partially responsible for the mentality of today.
Unfortunately, you couldn't take a bunch of coolies and retrain them that fast. So, it was more expedient to bring in foreign labour to do the job rather than trying to train the local workforce to do it. They needed it "now" and not a couple of month/years down the road when local were "trained". This thrust found them with rapid growth in Construction Companies manned primarily by foreigners. Also, at the same time they build Jurong out of a swamp and the manufacturing industry was born. This generated jobs for the Singaporeans. Again, as the rapid growth outstripped the production of working bodies, the government started bringing in foreign workers in the manufacturing industries, allowing for those Singaporeans already there with experience to gravitate toward middle level jobs and the same time, gearing up the educational system to produce middle-level workers. The same has happened for virtually every industry in Singapore over the past 40 years. As Singaporeans got wealthier and more educated, they tended to shy away from "dirty" work altogether. Same for the service industries. Dirty work and services industries, a lot will say, is a cultural aversion. And, while that may be true, It didn't stop wave after wave of Chinese immigrants from coming here to work as coolies for the British East India Company did it. So to me that doesn't hold water.
But, yeah, today, an increase of fertility rates would not appreciably reduce the foreign labour dependency. Not and allow Singapore to continue to have good rates of growth. It's production has always exceeded the manpower base due to the importation of foreign labour. Unfortunately the PAP knows this, but also has to play to the locals who readily enjoy the fruits of the foreign workforce's labours, but don't want to acknowledge that the contribution has a flip side to it. The other problem is the misplaced belief that somehow Singaporeans are superior to all others. The only one I know who could rightly claim that is LKY himself, and it was he, who dragged this country screaming and kicking into the 21st century 44 years ago with his unwavering vision. He didn't always get it right, and he didn't always play fair, but he did always do it for the well being of Singapore. The stop at one policy and the other, the drive to train the workforce myopically into fixed channels to the exclusion of obtaining a well rounded education and a questioning nature were probably two of the worst mistakes he made. Although the second, an argument could be made that, had he not done it that way, the rapid growth could not have taken place. Again, from my point of view, it still could have, but it would have just meant more foreign workers sooner, if the same results were to be obtained.
It's a shame we don't have a crystal ball or some way of seeing a parallel universe where the initial parameters were set differently to see what might have been.