Hear Ye! Hear Ye!

The recent annoucement by transport minister Raymond Lim regarding public bus reforms is certainly welcome, and it’s long overdue. I won’t discuss about the reforms because I believe that most of it are in the right direction in making public transport an effective alternative to private cars.

However, there’s a wildcard in the proposed reforms, and that is the Public Transportation Council (PTC). Sure, the LTA can do centralised planning of bus routes and service frequency can be increased but the question is, at what cost?

Currently, route planning and service frequency are done by the two bus companies and their planning is based on commercial considerations more than anything else. With centralised planning and higher frequency standards to meet, the bottomline of bus companies will definitely be affected. And, they will definitely apply for fare increases to cover the shortfall. After all, these are profit seeking companies, not charities. Will the cost of public transport increase as a result of these radical reforms?

While the proposed changes in bus services are certainly commendable, Singaporeans will not benefit much if the cost of taking a public bus goes up significantly as a result. While some may argue that having more bus operators entering the market will drive costs down by increasing competition, this scenario is unlikely to play out unless two or more companies are serving every bus route. What are the chances of this scenario occuring under a centralised planning model?

Ultimately, whether Singaporeans get bus services that are a viable alternative to private cars is still dependent on the PTC. This doesn’t mean that the PTC should freeze fare increases. It just means that the PTC has to figure out what exactly is the optimum cost-benefit ratio such that Singaporeans will be willing to trade their cars for public transport. And, I don’t envy this job.

Lui Tuck Yew has come out to defend the principal who advised her Secondary 5 class to transfer to ITE since they are ‘unlikely do well in the O levels’.

According to Lui, 40 per cent of Sec 5 students will not do well enough at the O levels to enter polytechnic. The principal in question apparently considers a 60% chance of entering polytechnic as being ‘unlikely to do well in the O levels’. I think that principal operates with really cranky logic. I would like to ask that principal a hypothetical question: if you have a terminal illness and the doctor says you have a 60% chance of recovery if you undergo surgery, will you do it? I wonder what her response will be.

Anyway, I digress. I don’t disagree with Lui’s point that certain tough messages need to be delivered. However, please draw a clear distinction between who should and should not be given tough messages. We are talking about N level students who worked hard enough to gain promotion to Secondary 5. Are these students lazy bums who need the wake-up call? Probably not. The lazy bums would not have made it in the first place.

So, is the ‘wake-up’ call necessary for these students? I don’t think so. I am of the opinion that these students should be further encouraged to better their good performance in the N levels. I can’t think of any reasonable justification to tell these students that they should seek a transfer to ITE as soon as possible.

There is no excuse for the behaviour of this principal, and Lui Tuck Yew just made things worse defending the principal. And, in defending that principal, Lui also said that educators should not be deprived of tools to manage student performance. Honestly, no one is saying that we should ban educators from delivering tough messages. The issue here is that the wrong tool was used. You don’t use a hammer on a screw, and neither do you use a spanner to saw a piece of wood.

Know who to give the wake-up call to, please. To demoralise hardworking students with such insensitive remarks is not the right thing to do for an educator.

First, it was GIC that spent billions of dollars buying into UBS. Then, Temasek spent billions of dollars buying into Merrill Lynch. Now, GIC has just spent a few more billions on Citigroup. It seems to me that the Great Singapore Sale has started extra early.

I am not sure if the Citigroup deal would be the last one on the shopping list of GIC and Temasek. With so many major financial institutions hungry for cash as a result of the subprime crisis, it’s bargain hunting time for cash-rich institutions/individuals.

Of course, the problem with GIC and Temasek spending billions is that they are sovereign wealth funds. Spending such huge sums of money without parliamentary accountability is clearly disturbing to some people. I do feel some discomfort at how so much money is spent in a matter of weeks but at the same time, it’s not a wise idea to leave too much spare cash lying around because of opportunity cost.

There are bound to be Singaporeans claiming that the monies held by GIC and Temasek are “their” monies and therefore, how can such huge sums be spent in an “any-o-how” fashion. Well, if we want high levels of public scrutiny, it will take months, if not years before such investments can be approved and by then, the opportunity would be gone. It’s a tough choice.

I can only hope that these investments are wise investments but it’ll take quite a while before the results are known. In anycase, even if these investments fail, the losses are probably “peanuts”. According to Wikipedia, GIC alone apparently has $330 billion dollars and we are worth $100,000 each! Hmm… I don’t even have $10,000 in my bank account.

I’m now waiting for the Straits Times to print letters from individuals hailing the wisdom of our great leaders.

Comments from my last entry on means testing have prompted me to think about what criteria would be a fair (or at least, less unfair) way to determine whether a person should be given more subsidy.

The basic yardsticks are usually income and housing type. Generally, if you have a high income and live in private property/high end public housing, you are quite likely to be able to afford higher medical bills. However, these two criteria, in my opinion, can lead to a misleading picture of whether a person is able to afford expensive medical bills.

Consider a hypothetical scenario of person A who is earning $8,000 a month and living in an executive condominium. Consider another hypothetical scenario of Person B who is earning $4,000 a month and living in a 4 room HDB flat. If we were to merely use the two yardsticks mentioned earlier to evaluate the two situations, the logical conclusion is that Person A should be subsidised less than person B should he/she be hospitalised.

However, what if Person A has to support three children of schooling age, two aged and sickly parents and a homemaker spouse who is not working to take care of the family, while Person B has to support a homemaker spouse and one child who’s of schooling age? Can we still say that Person A is still able to afford higher medical bills relative to Person B?

The point I’m trying to make is that while income and salary are useful basic indicators for means test, unfortunately, sometimes, they don’t give a complete assessment of a person’s ability to pay medical bills. I believe that a fairer means test should also factor in the number of dependents in the family. The greater the number of dependents, the greater the amount of subsidy the person should be entitled to. Of course, there are other criteria that would make for an even fairer means test but I believe that incorporating the number of dependents as part of the first level of assessment would help greatly reduce the number of legitimate cases who are unfairly excluded from receiving greater subsidies.

Of course, my discussion is based on a hypothetical scenario. If you want a real example, read this comment from a reader who posted her plight in my earlier entry.

Li Xueying opined in the Straits Times today about whether Singapore is ready to look beyond race when it comes to selecting her leader. I was thinking about the same thing when Barack Obama won the Iowa caucus.

A recent poll has shown that majority of Singaporeans are receptive towards a non-Chinese prime minister. Personally, I don’t really care about the race or gender of the PM. The best person should be given the job, period. Unfortunately, even if Singaporeans are ready for a non-Chinese PM, as long as SOME people are not ready, Singapore will never have a non-Chinese PM.

Perhaps the following paragraph from Li Xueying’s column will demonstrate more clearly what I mean in the preceding paragraph:

In 1988, when revealing how his successor was selected, then-Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew said that then-National Development Minister S. Dhanabalan could have been considered if not for his race. Singapore was not ready for an Indian PM, said Mr Lee then.

Singapore’s system of governance is not the same as the USA. Our prime minister is not elected through a popular vote. The prime minister is picked from the party that wins the most number of seats in the legislature. Even if a non-Chinese person has overwhelming public support, as long as the party doesn’t think that person is suitable for the job (be it due to race, gender or capabilities), that person will never become PM. Public opinion does not matter.

If Singapore is to have its own Obama, it can only happen if either 1) The Prime Minister is elected through a popular vote or 2) SOME people change their opinion. Else, the glass ceiling will always remain.

It appears that few are disagreeing with the means testing proposal by MOH to determine the level of subsidy Singaporeans should receive in the event of hospitalisation. The main concern, as usual, is whether the middle-class folks will be heavily burdened as a result.

Actually, I think the middle-class folks are unduly worried. Sure, hospitalisation can be expensive business but it need not be if one takes up private medical insurance. And, comprehensive private medical insurance for hospitalisation isn’t unaffordable for middle-class folks in Singapore, at least not yet.

We already have Medishield for basic hospitalisation coverage. Middle-class folks should ‘upgrade’ their Medishield through the Private Medical Insurance Scheme (PMIS) and take up an additional private plan to complement Medishield. The market is quite competitive (see this PDF document that compares the various products on the market) so premiums are affordable for middle class folks.

Personally, I’ve signed myself on PruShield Premier plus PruShield Extra. It currently costs me about $450 a year, with about one-third of it coming out of my Medisave account. It’s a small price to pay for a peace of mind. PruShield Premier allows me to go to a private hospital and the benefits are as charged, meaning there’s no cap. With Prushield Premier alone, I’ll have to co-pay a small portion of the expenses (deductibles and co-insurance) so I added PruShield Extra which takes care of that. So, in the event that I’m hospitalised (which I have not experienced and I hope not to experience), my insurance takes care of every single cent of my hospital bill.

There are many other similar products out there on the market (see this link for a list of insurers) and it’s perhaps a good time for middle-class folks who are not yet covered to start reviewing their coverage. Means testing will not be a problem for middle-class folks if they know how to cover themselves with private medical insurance. Since Medisave can be used to pay for private medical insurance, it makes even greater sense to get one.

Means testing simply means that we have to be more proactive in ensuring adequate personal medical coverage. I heard over the radio today that the Life Insurance Association is going to engage the health ministry in talks to discuss the impact of means testing on insurers, as well as to explore ways to encourage Singaporeans to take up private medical insurance. Since means testing have grabbed the attention of Singaporeans, I think now is the best time to broadcast the importance of private medical insurance.

I almost fell out of my chair reading the latest record price for a HDB flat. It went for a whopping $890,000. I guess the next record price will be a million dollars.

Rising HDB flat prices in the resale market is a bad thing for many Singaporeans, especially for first time buyers. Of course, there’s always the option of buying a brand new flat from HDB. However, don’t expect a brand new HDB flat to be much cheaper because of the pricing policy practised by HDB.

As an example, I bought my current flat at Jurong West St 93 for $249,000. The blocks have already been completed when I applied for a unit. After talking to my neighbours who got their units 3 months before mine (they were relocated due to SERS), I found out that they paid $30,000 less than what I paid.

Since the flats were already completed, there is technically no change in cost of building. The only reason is probably because the housing market started to heat up in the second half of 2007. My neighbours got their units in the first half of 2007, before the housing market fever started. Of course, compared to buying a resale flat now, it’s still cheaper by $30,000 - $40,000 so I’m not complaining.

However, if anyone is going to buy a new flat now, especially for the build-to-order (BTO) scheme, you might want to think a little harder whether you want to buy it now. Under this scheme, your flats will only be ready in 4-6 years time, and if the market is down in the dumps by then, you are stuck with paying the installments for that high price you agreed to 4-6 years ago. Of course, there’s also the mental anguish of watching the value of your home drop before you even move into it!

Having said all these, it doesn’t mean one shouldn’t buy a flat now. Just know what you are getting yourself into if you intend to buy a flat now.

The Straits Times recently published a news story saying that three-quarters of Singaporean teachers now have degrees. It’s a good development to read about but I have a problem with the story. The story, at least from my perspective, conflates teaching qualification with teaching quality.

I quote the following paragraph from the news story:

NIE director Lee Sing Kong said Singapore should aim to have a high-quality teaching force where teachers have a university or even higher degrees.

He said that Finland, which is touted to have one of the best education systems in the world, requires all its new teachers to have at least a masters degree.

Prof Lee cited a recent report by consultancy firm McKinsey on the world’s best-performing school systems, which showed that ‘the quality of teachers affects student performance more than anything else’.

Studies done in the United States have shown that if you take pupils of average ability and give them to teachers deemed to be in the top fifth percentile of the profession, they end up in the top 10 per cent of student performers.

The reverse is also true - if you give them to teachers from the bottom fifth, they end up at the bottom.

While I do think that university education does help further one’s intellectual development, which in turn can help assist in one’s ability to teach, I do not think that quality teaching is necessarily positively correlated with the level of education. Even if you have a PhD, it doesn’t mean you can teach.

I remember that the best teachers I had in primary school were teachers without a degree. They did not have a degree, but they were dedicated teachers who were able to spark my interest in learning. They built a solid foundation and that helped me advance academically.

During my undergraduate days, I came across professors who couldn’t teach for nuts. I totally switched off during such lectures. They just droned on and on with powerpoint slides that are chock full of text in small font sizes. I don’t think one needs a PhD to know that such teaching makes students completely uninterested to learn.

I think at the end of the day, what is most important for a teacher is whether he/she is able to communicate with students in an engaging fashion. Of course, in the first place, the teacher should have a certain level of expertise in the subject area but beyond that, it is really about pedagogy and communication.

I apologise for the lack of an update for 3 weeks. I’ve been busy with so many things that I’ve not been able to sit down properly to type a blog entry. I’m not done with my busy schedule, though. However, I read an op-ed piece on New York Times that I simply couldn’t resist posting on this blog.

The title of the piece is “The Dictatorship of Talent” by David Brooks. For those who can’t be bothered to read the entire article, basically, the article talks from the point of view of a Chinese national about the “corporacy” in China and how the Chinese system is producing elites for the corporacy. And, Brooks’ description of the system sounds uncannily close to the Singaporean system.

Here’s the part of the article that describes the Chinese system.

As you rise in school, you see that to get into an elite university, you need to ace the exams given at the end of your senior year. Chinese students have been taking exams like this for more than 1,000 years.

The exams don’t reward all mental skills. They reward the ability to work hard and memorize things. Your adolescence is oriented around those exams — the cram seminars, the hours of preparation.

Roughly nine million students take the tests each year. The top 1 percent will go to the elite universities. Some of the others will go to second-tier schools, at best. These unfortunates will find that, while their career prospects aren’t permanently foreclosed, the odds of great success are diminished. Suicide rates at these schools are high, as students come to feel they have failed their parents.

But you succeed. You ace the exams and get into Peking University. You treat your professors like gods and know that if you earn good grades you can join the Communist Party.

Singapore has been called a nanny state, and it seems that China is becoming a nanny state too. Another paragraph from the article reads:

This is a government of talents, you tell your American friends. It rules society the way a wise father rules the family. There is some consultation with citizens, but mostly members of the guardian class decide for themselves what will serve the greater good.

You should be chuckling to yourself by now at the phrases “wise father rules the family” and “consultation with citizens”.

And finally, the article concludes with something I wonder from time to time (the bolded parts) about Singapore Inc:

You feel pride in what the corpocracy has achieved and now expect it to lead China’s next stage of modernization — the transition from a manufacturing economy to a service economy. But in the back of your mind you wonder: Perhaps it’s simply impossible for a top-down memorization-based elite to organize a flexible, innovative information economy, no matter how brilliant its members are.

It looks like China is pretty good at copying almost anything.

Ms Josephine Teo is encouraging young couples to have kids earlier. Read this article from the Straits Times.

Her advice is for women to put their careers on hold to have children first. The reason? It’s because life expectancy for women are longer. The Straits Times article quoted her as saying

‘If we think of…85 and beyond being a likelihood, what is the hurry to do the things that can be done later?’

I doubt that young couples not having kids is because they are ‘rushing’ to establish their careers. Those who are interested in being established in their careers first would not choose to marry early. Those who choose to marry early usually believe in the importance of family over work.

However, while these people might believe in family over work, the inclusion of kids in the picture usually takes a back seat until a later date. From my own perspective as a young, married man, I think there are a few major reasons for this.

Marrying early means that the couple can enjoy a few years with each other before the arrival of the baby. While I do think that babies add joy to a family, at the same time, babies will disrupt the relationship. I want to enjoy a few years of quality couple time before I think about babies so I don’t think I’m going to be a young parent.

Besides, cost of living is escalating rapidly. Keeping myself alive with some savings for emergencies is already a challenging task. Even with the monetary incentives from the government for having babies, it’s still a huge financial cost. Of course, I probably shouldn’t be so calculating when it comes to having kids but it’s not that I mind the high cost of having kids in Singapore. I don’t want to happily produce a football team only to tell them years down the road that I cannot afford to send them for tertiary education.

And, I wouldn’t want my wife to give up a career now to raise kids. She’ll be substantially disadvantaged later on when she goes job hunting. Ms Teo makes it sound so easy to have kids first and go back to work later. How many employers would be willing to hire?

There are many disadvantages to having kids early, or even having kids at all. This is probably not what the government wants to hear, but it’s reality for young couples. Is there a solution? I don’t know. I only know that the number of kids I am willing to have is the number that I feel I can afford to give a decent level of comfort to in their growing up years.