Oh dear, Mr Mahbubani is talking again in the Sunday Times

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An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:

Mr Mahbubani bemoans citizens’ growing tired of success narratives and begrudges them focusing only on huge population increase, crowded trains, long wait for flats, highway jams and soaring COE.

• He should accept that as long as success narratives don’t gel with figures from international agencies and don’t gel with everyday experiences, people won’t buy them.

• He forgets that it was through sound public provision that PAP won over Singaporean hearts so why should it come as a surprise that when the goods dry up, so will the good will?

Mr Mahbubani uses his own example of going from a three-figure monthly salary in 1971 to a five-figure salary now to show how exceptional Singapore’s first 50 years track record has been by historical standards. He forgets that Singapore is winner-takes-all so that when one person takes all, others cannot.

Mr Mahbubani claims that every Singaporean can enjoy cash and credit. But given our high GINI inequality how much cash or credit can low income families enjoy?

Mr Mahbubani boasts of our car ownership being the highest for a city. But Singapore already had the highest car ownership in Asia back in the mid-1950s.

• Prosperity had spread, so that Singapore was almost certainly the only place in Asia where there is a really substantial middle class. In the mid-1950s the island had 30 people per private car and British Malaya 70. No other country in Asia had fewer than 120.
[The Economic Growth of Singapore: Trade and Development in the Twentieth Century, W. G. Huff, pages 31-33]

Mr Mahbubani boasts of us being the first to open up to global MNCs. We were just one of four East Asian dragon economies that were the first to benefit from globalization and MNCs. Furthermore, our pursuit of the FDI strategy was courtesy of Dr Albert Winsemius, our economic advisor from UN.

Mr Mahbubani boasts of Singapore being one of few developed countries where good meals can be had for less than $5 per head. He quoted Mr Steve LaNasa, ex-president of Donnelly College in Kansas praising the amazingly good quality hawker centre food at astonishingly low prices. Mr Mahbubani, please tell Mr LaNasa that Singapore hawkers have existed long before PAP was born so stop trying to sneak this in as another PAP achievement.

More talk cock and chicken shit here by the man....

http://www.tremeritus.com/2014/07/15...omes-for-sg50/


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