Still smoking

PMI’s reputation is bedevilling its efforts to diversify into health products.

Welfarism is OK, OK?

Sounds like Singapore under LKY, Xi’s “bias against ‘welfarism’”

 [China] must not “fall into the trap of ‘welfarism’ that encourages laziness”.

FT article

Under his beloved son, there’s been a swing towards social protection especially for the elderly (self included). But the official ideology was still against ‘welfarism’ whatever this Hard Truth meant.  

But the constructive, nation-building ST is now rewriting history?

Our kay poh living in Tokyo has this good rant:

You can say Chua Mui Hoong and the ST have amnesia. You can also say this is making a big deal out of something not big at all. But you can also say slippery slope, what slippery slope? The only thing you can say that is closest to the truth is that, the social safety net has indeed expanded but this expansion is merely catching up from the nasty old days and there is still more catching up to do. There was no slippery slope in the past becos we are such a long distance from it that saying there is one is just scare mongering bs. And ofcos Hard Truths die hard but has to die sooner or later becos Hard Truths were for a different time that is long past.

S’poreans like this?

The Economist has a lot of stuff on S’pore in its latest issue out tomorrow.

But it never made this point:

“Chileans were upset because the elite was keeping them out of the promised land,” … “Boric said, ‘I’m going to build you a new bridge to a different promised land.’ But they didn’t want that. They just wanted access to the old one.”

Patricio Navia, a political scientist and professor at New York University quoted in article headlined Chile’s leftist president forced to curb radical transformation