Are we a First World Country with Third World People?

The ugly Singaporean kept coming up for discussion. Now, the society’s heavyweights are joining in the chorus of disapproval. 

It started with Tommy Koh, who coined the phrase - “We are a First World Country with Third World people.” 

Today, the papers cited Professor Kishore Mahbubani as someone who agrees with Prof Koh. 

He recounted a recent occasion “when his maid asked for time off to go to the airport. “Why?” he asked. Her friend has broken her arm, the maid explained, and her employer had decided to pack her off. She wanted to say goodbye to her friend who was flying home.””

Mm...isn’t that inverse Kantian humanitarian logic? That is, instead of treating people as an end in itself, we treat them as a means to an end. And in the sending-off-of-the-maid’s case, the end is a clean and tidy house so as to present to others how neat and organised the employer is? 

Prof Mahbubani remarked: “Singaporeans should celebrate the fact their country has gone from Third World to the First World. But they should deeply reflect on what this means in terms of their moral responsibilities.”

Another professor Paulin Straughan concurred: “We can’t really have a First World country with Third World behaviour. It’s the community that defines the country.”

So the social sage Tommy Koh has undeniably started a movement, erm...the kindness movement? Aka William Wan? 

But kindness movement or otherwise, Prof Koh is not going to mince his words. He said: “Many of our people don’t give a damn for the environment when they should. Many of our people are selfish and unkind.” 

For a moment, those words felt like a rather jaded Greta Thunberg who has come of age and is decidedly pissed off with how we want change but are changing the wrong things - very much like the streetlight effect. Here is what that means. 

“A policeman sees a drunk man searching for something under a streetlight and asks what the drunk has lost. He says he lost his keys and they both look under the streetlight together. After a few minutes the policeman asks if he is sure he lost them here, and the drunk replies, no, that he lost them in the park. The policeman asks why he is searching here, and the drunk replies, “this is where the light is.”"

When it comes to kindness, developing our moral responsibilities, becoming unselfish, or “giving a damn”, we are looking to become or evolve into one at the wrong place, (so to speak), or to put it another way, we are looking for those virtues (or to embody them) in the economic/material light. 

This is spelt out by Tommy Koh. “Today, we are not a classless society. We are divided by wealth, by income, by profession, by place of residence, and even by the school we attend.” He is referring to the seemingly unbridgeable gap between the have and the have-not.

And on the question, “Why do Singaporeans display such ugly behaviour in the first place?”, NUS sociologist Tan Ern Ser said: “I believe it’s because we have been socialised to be more focused on “I, me and myself”, and our own family, rather than the larger community and society.”"

This ugliness is displayed by the way some of us treat our maid and foreign workers, by the way we leave trays and plates on the table without clearing them, by the way we discard shared bikes into the drain, and by the way we drive. 

Tommy Koh gave examples of how drivers just refuse to give way by speeding up. Or how some drivers cut in at the last minute without the courtesy of signalling. 

And William Wan, the founder of the Kindness Movement, elaborated it further: “When we are other-centred, we become thoughtful, and start to think of others before ourselves. In turn, this will impact the way we treat others and public property positively.”

But how do we bridge the gap then - from being essentially me-centred to others-centred? 

Honestly, I would have thought that the conscientious publicity of the ST’s Singaporeans of the Year (I think in its 4th year now) and the recent Generation Grit stories would have nudged our First World society in the right direction of being First World People”, thereby closing the gap to some extent. But it seems like we still have a social chasm to bridge. Why is that so? 

Well, if you study the Singapore Kindness Movement (SKM) survey 2018, one particular trend or inverse correlation they picked up was materialism and kindness. “When cross-referencing with their behaviours, SKM found that those who rated material success as not important are also more likely to have done an act of kindness. This could be attributed to the desire to make a social impact within their own capacity.”

But alas, how "not important" is material successes to our young, especially when they are constantly exposed on social media (and by way of social comparison with peers) to what a good life they can enjoy when they keep on heaping up more money, fame and power for themselves? 

What's more, there is always the pursuit of not just material success, but the bragging rights that come with it. Like the egotistical spread of the peacock‘s feathers, the way our society is engineered is to be the ”First” in the economy, in efficiency and in out-competing others. In that blind pursuit, we have unfortunately forgotten to strive for the other “First“, namely, in humanity, humility and in a others-centred mindset. 

If you want a wake up call on that, here is Prof Mahbubani to sound the alarm for you. “if you don’t inject an ethical dimension into it, it really is an empty society. It’s not just about material goods.”

This reminds me of the tale of a village guide and a modern day tourist. The latter was all psyched up to reach the top of the mountain climb. He wanted to achieve it in the fastest time possible. He had prepared everything needed to make it up. He was clearly efficient, all geared up. His goal was to boast to others his achievements when he reached the top, standing taller than all others. 

So, half way through the journey, the village guide suddenly stopped, sat down and started to rest, meditate and enjoy the view. The flustered tourist was clearly nonplussed and asked him why he had stopped. He reminded him that there is a deadline to meet.

The village guide then turned to him, smiled and said: “I am waiting for my soul to catch up.”

In parrallel to Prof Mahbubani’s empty society, we risk rushing through life and career and family, driven by an acquisitive mindset, that we leave behind our soul, or what it means to be a fellow human being, to be a spouse, a father/mother, a others-centred giver, a life-influencer.

From the flip side of the same coin, Tommy calls it the “obscene race to see who can pay the CEO more.” He compared the average bus worker earning a monthly wage of $3,600 and a chief executive of the bus companies earning in excess of $1 million a year, “with one paid between $1.75 million and $2 million a year.” And he asked, “Is this fair? Is running a bus company rocket science?”

Let me end with the astute observation of former National Environmenr Agency chairman Liak Teng Lit. He noted that “agrarian societies tended to focus on communalism and cooperation. This is not so in cities.”

He explained: “In a city, you begin to professionalise and monetise almost every role. Cleaning is a cleaner’s job. I make a mess, somebody cleans it. I pay the guy to do it.” As a result, financial planner Devan Tay added: “This is how self-entitlement starts - when people feel that whoever pays more should have the right of way or be the first in line, at the expense of all others.”

And the price we pay for such a society is a divided one, as Tommy Koh puts it, “we are divided by wealth, by income, by profession, by place of residence, and even by the school we attend.” 

This division only gets worse and society gets more stratified when we remain predominantly single-focused to rush up the summit of being the First World Nation, thereby deepening the wedge of an entitlement mindset. Mind you, the piped pier’s tune in such a soulless society is this: “I pay, you do; you are the means to my ends. And when you can no longer do what I pay, you are of no use to me.”

The all-important question here, as Tommy Koh had posed, is not about an alternative to capitalism. But what kind of capitalism we want? 

“Moral capitalism is where companies consider themselves accountable to not only shareholders but to wider society, where they care for the environment and employees, and champion gender equality and diversity.”

Although the Ambassador-at-Large has a point about moral capitalism, my thought is that the foundational stones we lay for the building of our society is indispensable to the enduring changes we seek. And like the frantic climbing of the social ladder to reach the top just to find out it was leaning on the wrong wall, building our society on the foundational stones of capitalism may just be the equivalent of leaning the social ladder on the wrong wall because the prosperity of capitalism depends mainly on seeking to be first for all the wrong reasons. Food for thought?

Chan Chun Sing's rally call for more growth.

I thought quite a lot about what Chan Chun Sing (CCS) said on growth, and his "Don't Get Into "Average Is Sufficient" Mode" speech in his recent address to 900 people at the Public Sector Transformation Awards ceremony. 

At the Awards ceremony, one of the prize-winning innovations was a public service app launched last week that performs various functions like "birth registrations, applying to the Baby Bonus scheme, searching for pre-schools and viewing child's immunisation records."

CCS said that he was encouraged by the innovation, and "it showed public servants putting themselves "in the shoes of the people we serve.""

Here comes the extract of his speech which mentioned about how depressing it would be if we are satisfied with 2 to 3 percent economic growth:-

"Many people say that we have reached a certain level of growth, that going forward, it will be 2 to 3 per cent growth on average. That sounds rather depressing. If it's 2 to 3 per cent growth on average, what does it mean for the economy, what does it mean for opportunities for our people? But the truth of it is that even if the average is 2 to 3 per cent, it does not mean that every sector, every industry is 2 to 3 per cent. What it means is that it's 2 to 3 per cent on average, but there is a plus 5 per cent for various sectors and there's a minus 5 per cent for other sectors."

CCS then said that settling for the average is not sufficient for Singaporeans. He warned about harbouring low expectations and embedding ourselves in comfort zones. He's advocating for higher growth. 

Here is the aspirational goals he had set for the public/civil service:-

"Our job is to make sure that we keep creating the conditions for the 2 to 3 per cent (and higher). Our job is to make sure that those sectors that are minus 5 continue to be helped to adjust to get out of the minus 5. That is our job in the civil service. If each of us continues to aspire in our respective sectors to work on the plus 5 per cent, then actually there is no reason to believe that we will be always 2 to 3 per cent. I say this with a heavy heart because we should not get into a mode whereby we think that the average is sufficient."

Personally, I know where CCS is coming from. His heart is heavy because he is concerned that Singaporeans might just settle for mediocrity. That, to him, is depressing. 

So, whichever way you look at it (that is, the spirit of what CCS is saying in the above extract), it is all about growth, measurable growth, higher growth.

Against the background of the Awards ceremony, it is growth in digital skills. Growth in learning and applying system thinking, "which is the practice of drawing up processes based on the end-users" experience". And growth in working with Singaporeans by "gathering ideas from the whole nation to tackle Singapore's problems."

These are all noble, worthwhile pursuits and I can relate to them in general.

But, and there is always a but here, if the sole yardstick is economic growth, that is, measurable economic growth, what does it translate into for the average working household? What can the average Singaporean expect since our technocratic and efficient government has been pursuing growth since Independence?

Can we expect a fairer distribution of the fruits of our collective labour as Singaporeans working together? Can we expect the social/income inequality gap to narrow within acceptable range over time and not widen even more? 

Can we hope to see a discernible reduction in the stress and anxiety levels? Will we be able to enjoy the fruits of our labour and not work into the twilight years worrying about medical and daily living costs outpacing income and savings? Will the right moral values be pursued and nurtured? In other words, will we be happier, less materialistic, less consumerist-centered, and more contented with what we have?

More pointedly, will the majority of us have enough for our retirement and a home not in danger of losing its value? Will our children and their children be able to catch up with the high, or by then, even higher cost of living, with prices of basic necessities increasing as I write this and income not growing to match?

By focusing on growth that CCS insists we chase after, whether it is 5 per cent or even more, will he and his ministry be able to pause at some point to consider going beyond the GDP numbers towards a more people-centric, moral based direction? Because not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted, right?

And this direction is well captured in the words of MP Seah in his recent speech about the controversial teachers' parking.

"...But economic reasoning is empty without a moral foundation. Such foundations cannot and do not exist without a conversation about values. Not just what is cheap, but what is right. Not just about generating income, but about giving meaning."

Let's stop here for a bit and talk about value(s). 

What conversation can we have with the government about value? Will such conversation be centered on maximizing shareholder value, which includes influential large multinational corporations invested here? Or, will it be values MP Seah refers to above, that is, moving from not just "generating income" to "giving meaning", from a strictly metric approach to growth to a more human-approach to growth? 

Now, returning to what MP Seah said:-

"For too long we’ve made decisions that is more on an economic compass, as if the use of one dollar is the moral equivalence of the loss of another...it is time we recognize that money is merely a proxy for value. And at times, a very bad one. We need regulations on responsible use of funds and fiscal prudence, good procurement but equally, we ought to be having a conversation about reciprocity, trust and relationships."

To me, CCS seems to have place too much emphasis on the growth mandate. I gather this from the way he rallied the civil service to work together to encourage more innovations in the face of intense global competition with this warning: "If we keep doing things the same way, we will do injustice to ourselves and our country. If we are not careful, we will be left behind in the dustbin of history." In other words, he doesn't want Singapore to be left behind in this all-defining growth race.

But this is where I get mixed signals from the government. 

At one point, they are bent on building "reciprocity, trust and relationships" by attempting to close the income gap and encouraging mixing of different status groups with more organised outings and activities - its effectiveness notwithstanding. And at other times, I get the feeling that growing the economy in a tangible, GDP-ish way is their main preoccupation or their raison d’état.

At the risk of oversimplifying, one creates meaning and the other generates income. 

But don't get me wrong, those two activities are not mutually exclusive. To some extent, they are complementary. They can run in parallel. 

However, at some point, I believe the pursuit of growth risks outstripping or overshadowing the creation of meaning, or at least subordinating the latter (meaning) in favour of the former (growth) with less-than-satisfactory results.

In other words, at some point, I believe such pursuit tends to measure everything in dollar terms as MP Seah forewarned against. It also enriches some disproportionately at the expense of many. It further relegates, or even neutralises, values and meaning that bring more lasting satisfaction to the community.

And all that inevitably brings about the widening of the income and social gaps that is the root cause of most of our social ills today. 

So, what is truly depressing may not be the 2 or 3 per cent growth that CCS cautioned us to work against (that is, not to rest on our laurels), but the very thing that he is advocating, that is, gunning for even higher growth (almost by way of a reflex response). 

While I am not against measurable growth, I am however wary about growth that over-represents, misrepresents, or even exaggerates our economic and social well being giving us a false sense of existential contentment.

It is undeniable that we are a first world economy but if you ask around, just take a sample poll in the street, I believe many would not say that they feel that way. That is, they don't feel "first world" or "first class" but a groping class of people herded in a trance by the Pipe Piper's tune for exponential growth.

Somehow, something is just not registering in the hearts of Singaporeans when they look at what the government is telling them about growth and the economic and social struggles they are confronting at home and in the workplace.

This dissonance or disconnect is best captured in the words of the founder of the United States' first industrial union, Bill Haywood:-

"The barbarous gold barons - they did not find the gold, they did not mine the gold, they did not mill the gold, but by some weird alchemy all the gold belonged to them."

Likewise, I guess many of us are wondering why the rich amongst us are riding on the growth wave the government is promoting to become the direct beneficaries of largely unearned income (that is, economic rent), while the majority of us are working with no end in sight and yet still struggling to make ends meet. 

Is this the result of unfair distribution? Is this the result of greater exploitation from the top? Is this the effect of government policies favouring the haves to have even more? Is this the hoarding power of the moneyed class in society? And are all these the symptoms of an aggressive growth policy that put money before meaning, profit before purpose and enriching the top at the expense of the community?

After all said, I think that CCS's rally call for more growth may require a deeper rethink when he challenged his 900-strong to "not get into a mode whereby we think that average is sufficient."

Maybe the true challenge should be one that is thrown back to our government to return to the drawing board to reevaluate and re-prioritise the values that are truly important and enduring for Singaporeans as a whole and in the long run. 

That is, not just to pursue economic growth in higher percentage brackets, but to be able to admit to or acknowledge the dissonance/disconnect the people are feeling and give pause to consider these concluding words by MP Seah about the parking issue, which is also relevant here:-

"But some things still sits uncomfortably on this matter for me.

And I want to address this squarely. Not all government policy has a complete recourse to dollars and cents. We need within our current structures to make more room for the lexicon of morality, duty, relationships and trust.

This is not an appeal to populism, rather it is an appeal to the ideas of justice and community that have informed Singapore public policy making at the start of our journey 53 years ago."

Now, that is a speech that CCS ought to consider exploring in his next address, that is, not just about more growth, but more meaning in growth - even if it means freeing more resources to pursue activities that do not factor into our GDP metric. Cheerz. 

The Unbridgeable Gap?

When Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and owner of The Washington Post, tipped over the $100 billion mark this week to top even Bill Gates as the world's richest man, I don't know whether to congratulate him or to shake my head in resignation. 

Honestly, and I know it's not all liquid cash, what do you do with that much money in one limited lifetime? 

At some point, don't you think the extra dollar added to your millions or billions adds nothing to deepen the existential meaning of your life, your personal fulfilment, and most importantly, the length of your mortal life? 

Of course, Jeff Bezos can't really stop his astronomical wealth growth because he had started a technological revolution decades back with no plans to become this mega-monstrously rich like he is today. 

Same applies to the Zuckerbergs of our flatten world of transformative technology and "winner-takes-all" economy.

But like it or hate it, he is reaping it all in now with a vindictive giant harvesting sickle. 

I guess somewhere in the above paragraphs, my readers can discern the congratulatory and resignatory part - not to mention a quiet pout of disgruntled envy thrown into the cauldron of mixed emotions for good measure.

Yet, I guess if you have a choice of being rich and happy, and being poor and happy, maybe being rich and happy is happier? 

Or is it oxymoronic to put "poverty" and "happiness" together in the first place, that is, a non-starter?

Today's article entitled "Left behind in land of equal opportunity" is about the poor, the very poor, and also the extremely unhappy. 

Nirmal Ghosh, the author, started off the article with a drug user who did jail time and has been living 15 years on the street. 

41-yr-old Kaels Raybon (an American) has already accepted his fate, and resigned to the fact that he will never get out of the poverty trap. 

His wife and four kids have left him, his other family members have died, and with a criminal record, no one will employ him. 

Kaels recalled that his kids once came to visit him, but he was torn. "I wanted them to stay, but at the same time I didn't, because I have nothing to offer them. Emotionally, I'm a wreck most of the time. I see kids and dads, and I want that too. But it's just not in my cards."

Mind you, in the land of the American Dream and also Abundance (of millionaires and billionaires), there are 41 million Americans living in poverty (that is, below $16k in annual income). Some even much lower than $16k. That's about 12.7% of the total American population, and some 46% of them live in "deep poverty".

In fact, US has the highest child poverty rates - 25% in the developed world - as reported in the article. 

Now, according to Ghosh, two factors have made poverty even worse for people like Kaels - that is, Trump's recent drastic tax reduction and the culture of the rich.

Just before Christmas, Trump passed the tax reform bill that literally handed over US$1.5 trillion (it's a "T" and not "B") to the super rich.

Although he claims that the middle class will be assisted, analysts are however saying that the benefit will disproportionately end up with the top echelon of the society. 

And guess who is paying for that disproportionate handover of US$1.5 trillion? 

Yes, the poor are paying for it in welfare cuts...so, the poor is getting even poorer. So much for safety nets for the poor. It's now the bottomless pits that welcome them. 

Then, there is culture. Ghosh wrote about "caricatured narratives" when he said this about the American culture:-

"The rich are seen as "industrious, entrepreneurial, patriotic, and the drivers of economic success". The poor are "wasters, losers and scammers". As long as you have the mindset that we're all on our own, it becomes possible that when my own brother falls off the cliff, I'm able to say, 'Well, he had the same opportunities as me. He's failed, he has to cope with it,' instead of saying, 'I can't let that happen. I've got to do something.""

Lesson? Just one. 

When Jesus said that the poor you will always have with you, the same can be said about the rich. They just exist in much fewer numbers. 

But between the poor and the rich, it is "hope" that bridges the gap. And this hope comes in the form of the middle class. 

In my view, everything flourishes if you have (or maintain) a robust, fluid and transitioning middle class. 

A society that has such a robust middle class is unlike a Dead-Sea society where all the resources flow in one direction and stagnate at the top, leaving the other regions dry, parched and starving (for hope). 

The middle class also breathes life into democracies by empowering the masses to fight for change for the betterment of all. 

But if you hollow-out the middle class, then you also strangulate hope, and burn the bridges that allow the poor to move up one day to become well off for themselves and their children. 

When the rich gets richer and the poor poorer, what you end up is a society with an anemic middle class, and a hollowing-out of the middle class means that you are left with two nefarious developments - abandonment and tokenism. 

The abandonment comes with its own self-preserving and self-justifying culture (or narrative) for the rich who views the poor with seething indignation as deserving of their lot in life because they are generally "wasters, losers and scammers". 

And tokenism is the superficial (self-driven) act of charity or generosity without the accompanying transformation that Jesus talked about when he hinted to a passage in the Old Testament to his listeners:- 

"For the poor you will always have with you in the land. Therefore I command you, ‘You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land.’ (Deuteronomy 15:7-11)."

I believe there are two ways to do charity. One is to offer what crumbs you have left on the banquet table after the feasting is over. And the other is to invite all to feast with you at the banquet table - it's free, equal and fair seating for all. 

One is therefore about a change of heart that Jesus talks about, and the other is just a show of a change of status. 

Alas, my concern is that this may be happening in Singapore since when it comes to income and social inequality and the insidious social divide, we are up there in the charts or trend. 

I am also concern that our leaders in engaging in the politics to draw the rich into our land, and in turn, prospering in their own ways in such engagement, may have duly acknowledged that "the poor we will always have with us" without the accompanying deutronomist conviction that one should always open wide one's hand to his brother and sister, to the needy and to the poor, in his land.

Are we then washing our hands over the poor as an acceptable collateral casualty on the one-track road to economic prosperity while hiding behind the parliamentary rostrum to preach about the many token attempts to close the rich-poor gap?

In other words, should our middle class be thinned out due to the rapidly widening income and social divide, will our leaders take our country to a stage where the rich only shares the crumbs on their banquet table to satisfy their pricked conscience while leaving the poor to fend for themselves out in the cold?

Food for thought? Or food for mass feasting? Cheerz.