Numbers show GCT & Lee Jnr messed up?

This chart shows all the economies that maintained 6% growth or faster over 30 years. S’pore’s run of 7ish% growthended in 1994, when GCT was PM and Lee Jnr was Deputy PM and in charge of the economy. Going by the things our PM is doing now, maybe GCT held him back? Or LHL has repented? And the changes he is initiating, is his way of saying, “Sorry”?. How about a claw-back of ministerial salaries? Esp of PM’sand DPM’s? If it happens to bankers, it can happen to ministers: after all ministers’ salaries pegged to bankers among others.

Why Muddy Waters’ attack on Olam failed

Olam is not listed in US and subject to SEC scrutiny.

“Muddy Waters Secret China Weapon Is on SEC Website”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-19/muddy-waters-secret-china-weapon-is-on-sec-website.html

The success of Muddy waters in destroying Sino-Forest (also not listed in US) made it guilty of hubris?

Xmen and others Temasek-haters: Ang moh not always tua kee if they bet, bitch against Temasek. They may juz be plain wrong, like Muddy Waters and Balding.

PAP must read these

For one LKY

One must always be wary of spurious correlation! http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2013/02/correlations

For PM, cabinet ministers and their civil service minions

“As nations become wealthier, it is harder for them to sustain high rates of growth. That doesn’t mean that the United States is in decline, or even stagnating. When a nation is as rich as ours, it can realize larger absolute gains than it did in the past and larger gains than other nations even if it has lower growth rates. That’s because a growth rate of, say, 2.5 percent represents a larger increase in absolute wealth the richer an economy becomes. In 1900, a 2.5 percent increase in gross domestic product (GDP) per capita would have translated into about $150 in today’s dollars for every man, woman, and child in the United States. In 2010, it would have been roughly $1,200, reflecting the fact that in the aggregate, we are about eight times wealthier than we were 110 years ago.3 By focusing too much on growth rates and too little on absolute increases in wealth, we have failed to appreciate the magnitude of economic gains in recent decades.”

http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2013/02/growth

Population White Paper: 2030 will resemble 1959?

Why I see the White Paper no ak

A Citigroup report noted that the White Paper projects the dilution of Singapore-born citizens from 62% of the population to just 55% in 2030 based on number of new FT citizens that the govt plans to bring in projects to come in naturally: 15,000 – 25,000 annually.

In 1959, according to Singapore Correspondent. Political Dispatches from Singapore (1958-1962) only 270,00 out of the 600,000 voters were born here i.e. there only 45% of the voters were born here. The rest were the FT “new” citizens of the day.

Interestingly the author reported that when one LKY revealed the above fact in 1959, LKY also said,”we must go about our task (of building up a nation) with urgency … of integrating our people now and quickly”.

Maybe he repented of nation-building? And his son and the PAP is carrying out a policy of “return to the future”?

This isn’t the only example of back-to-the-future thinking. The ST managing editor “orders” us to trust the govt, saying that because we trusted it in the past, we “must” (his word) trust the govt on the issue of population. Great rebuttal by TRE. My critique of the piece by Lex Luthor’s double.

Problem is the White Paper as first published contains a simple, careless and stupid mistake that allows reasonable people to doubt its professionalism*.

———————————————————————————————————————————————————–

We apologise for the misrepresentation in the Population White Paper that nursing is a “low-skilled” job. We firmly believe and agree that nursing is a noble and caring profession that requires a high level of clinical skill, dedication and passion. The White Paper has been amended accordingly through a corrigendum issued by the Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean in Parliament today.

Pauline Tan (Dr) RN, FAAN, Chief Nursing Officer, 8 Feb 2013

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I was taught when I started work that a single careless mistake or typo in any document undermines the credibility of the document: if there was one mistake, what other mistakes were there, is a reasonable assumption the critical reader could make?

Then there was the issue of whether the author cared about the quality of the work done, if he didn’t bother to be careful. This was another reason not to trust it. (Yes I trained as a lawyer, and for my transgressions, worked in a PR firm for a year.)

Seems poetic justice and appropriate for the Population White Paper to contain such a howler that DPM Teo had publicly to correct the howler and PM to apologise for it. If they didn’t, they and their loved ones would be safer in using M’sian hospitals? Juz joking.

Because one can reasonably wonder if the assumptions in said paper were thought thru, or juz “cut and paste” from conventional wisdom macroeconomics. We know that macroeconomics conventional wisdom was found wanting in the recent financial crisis, so it is reasonable if standard macroeconomics assumptions on the importance of demographics on growth will be found wanting.

(And if four leading true-blue (they all did NS) S’porean economists are correct, the economic assumptions behind the White Paper are myths: http://www.tremeritus.com/2013/02/09/economics-myths-in-the-great-population-debate/. BTW, all four are scholars, so all those TRE-reading scholar haters, “Sit down and shut up!”. Scholars are S’poreans too.)

What puzzles me is that  neither Mrs Chiam (she’s a British-trained nurse) the WP, nor NMPs, nor the “talk cock sing song” PAP MPs like Inderjit (see this earlier post)  who criticised the paper butwho  were whipped into voting for it, or who went AWOL on voting day) didn’t ask for this insult to nurses to be amended.

Now that would have hurt the White Paper’s and govt’s credibility more than their “sounding brass, or … tinkling cymbal”.

And before I forget, TOC has these two excellent pieces on more cock-ups in the WPW

– http://www.theonlinecitizen.com/2013/02/dubious-footnotes-population-white-paper/ (“Yet, the misrepresentation is not limited to just footnote 12. Here is a selection of other misleading footnotes in the contentious White Paper.”)

– http://www.theonlinecitizen.com/2013/02/statistics-population-white-paper-debate/(More FTS coming than they did in the past? Are it’s a reduction?)

Unlike S’pore Auntie, TOC is using the online equivalents of botox and other rejuvenating aids to refresh itself. But then S’pore Auntie needs more than botox or surgery to become S’pore Gal once more. She needs a time machine. But that and the rejuvenation of TOC are two more tales for another day.

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*Donald Low, a senior fellow at the LKY School of Public Policy and a former senior civil servant, has criticised the white paper, “wasn’t even a References section to show what research the writers of the paper had done, what social science theories they relied on, what competing theories/frameworks they looked at … There was also a surprising lack of rigorous comparison with other countries that have gone through, or are going through, a similar demographic transition.”

$100 chicken if food tracked house prices?

Reading the u/m, got me doing some very simplistic calculations on the back of an envelope, and using some very simplistic assumptions, it would be plausible and reasonable to argue that  a chicken here would cost at least $100 if its price kept pace with the rise of the cost of a three-room HDB flat since the early 1970s.Maybe Coyote Chee’s economists could do a study? No point asking s/o JBJ. He now trying to be half-past six lawyer like dad, wanting to argue in person that the govt breached the constitution in funding the IMF.

If the price of food had risen as quickly as the price of houses over the last 40 years, we would now be paying more than £50 for a single chicken, according to the housing charity Shelter.

The charity says that since the early 1970s, house prices have risen far faster than grocery bills.

In 1971 an average home in Britain cost less than £6,000.

Forty years on, it had shot up to £245,000. BBC article

 

When 55% of voters were FTs

(Update on 29 January 2012 http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-21/singapore-turns-against-itself-as-pressure-for-babies-irks-women.html

http://www.tremeritus.com/2013/01/29/population-white-paper-projecting-6-9m-u-turn-on-influx-of-foreigners/)

TRE readers are forever screaming that the PAP govt wants to swamp S’pore with citizens born overseas. They might like to know that  in 1959, according to the u/m book, only 270,00 out of the 600,000 voters were born here. If TRE readers are correct, the PAP is only restoring things to as they were when the PAP came into power. Is that so wrong? LOL.

Interestingly the author reported that when one LKY revealed the above fact in 1959, LKY also said,”we must go about our task (of building up a nation) with urgency … of integrating our people now and quickly”. Maybe he repented building up a nation?

Singapore Correspondent. Political Dispatches from Singapore (1958-1962)

(http://artsonline.monash.edu.au/mai/new-book-singapore-correspondent/)

by Leon Comber*

Publisher:  Marshall Cavendish International Asia

“Singapore Correspondent” covers five years of Singapore’s colourful political past – a period of living turbulently and sometimes dangerously. It is a collection of eye-witness dispatches, sent from Singapore to London, spanning a time when Singapore was emerging from British colonial rule and moving forward to self-government and independence. Many of the early struggles of the People’s Action Party (PAP) are described as the focus is on the political struggle taking place in which the PAP played a major part. Many important events which have long been forgotten are brought to life. These dispatches prove that political history need not be dull, and indeed can sometimes be entertaining and lively.

* MAI Adjunct Research Fellow

 

.

For 007 fans: Holiday treat

How the various Bonds stack up against one another on booze, violence, gals

Great piece: warning only those who know something the main UK political figures will appreciate the jokes.

How S’pore can win Nobel Prizes, and pushy parents’ kids ace exams cheaply

(Or “Uniquely S’porean: Correlation = Hard Truth)

Forget about spending money on R&D or attracting FT researches. Or spending money on tuition.

The govt should juz give S’poreans lots of free chocolates, and parents top up the govt’s supplies to their kids.

I kid you not. Look at this chart: The Swiss who eat lots of chocs are runaway winners when it comes to winning Nobel Prizes. So do the Danes, Austrians, Norwegians and Brits.

“When you correlate the two – the chocolate consumption with the number of Nobel prize laureates per capita – there is an incredibly close relationship,” Franz Messerli of Columbia University says.

“This correlation has a ‘P value’ of 0.0001.” This means there is a less than one-in-10,000 probability of getting results like these if no correlation exists.

Link here and here.

My serious point is that juz because there seems to be a correlation (like 48% of druggies are Malays) doesn’t mean that we should get worked up. This is something that the Malay MP who highlighted the issue and ST who headlined it should appreciate. And so should the ladies who bitched about the ST report, who I criticised. Article

There may be cause and effect somewhere in a correlation, but there may be not. This is a genuine Hard Truth of Science.

Maybe the PAP and the ST should send its MPs and journalists (including the Deputy Editor who tried, but failed, to talk sense on the issue of Malay druggies) to a course in stats and causation. And the PAP should include one LKY in the course.

Have kids, live longer

Not having a child “may increase likelihood of early death”. This is not government propaganda or a LKY Hard Truth.

Dr Helen Nightingale, a clinical psychologist, said: “Being childless without a doubt reduces your fight for life.

“If you draw on cancer as an example – the support of a family, the focus on your children – your grandchildren and the desire to watch how they will turn out drives your psychological resistance to survive. 

God’s a Jew, and polls aggregators face same bitch as fund indexers

Because he’s not a Christian, Catholic or Mormon. And Muslims don’t matter in US elections. In fact Pakis voted for Romney.

Aggregators got it right. And the bitching sounds familiar. Could be an “active” fund mgr speaking: “If we don’t do the polling these aggregators have nothing to put into their model, [but] they sit back and take the benefit of our hard work and our toil.

Already the number of state polls conducted this year was lower than last time. If everybody decides they’re just going to aggregate in the 2016 presidential election they’ll have no polls left to aggregate.”

Finally: “So I think as an industry we really have a little issue here about the virtues of doing original polling versus just sitting back and taking other peoples’ polls and putting them in models.”

Horrible possibility: if the geeks are right about Ohio, might they also be right about climate?

 Daily Beast writer David Frum (@DavidFrum) examines the consequences of the 2012 election. Namely, if the statistical analysis so accurately predicted the winner of a tough swing state, might statistical analysis be correct on climate change predictions? (via BBC)

MFA is not as productive as its US, UK counterparts?

I came across the above table in a Special Report on India in the Economist. Tharoor was using this data to show that India was shortchanging itself diplomatically because it had about the same number of diplomats as S’pore. From my perspective, it is not productive that S’pore, a little red speck, has one diplomat for 6,000 S’poreans. Even the hegemon makes do with only one diplomat for every 16,000. people. It isn’t only SMEs that contribute to the productivity gap.  And the British, supposedly overstaffed, have one fat toff per 10,000 people.

No wonder the photo in ST of one George Yeo shows a rather thin man. No more living off the fat like his diplomats?

Wonder what our Asean neighbours’ per capita numbers are? I’m sure that they have numbers  closer to that of China or India than to the US.

Yes, yes, I left out the fact that the population of S’pore is “peanuts” compared to the US etc, and that there is likely to be an absolute minimum number of diplomats needed for efficiency, but if ministers and the local media regularly boast about S’pore’s per capita numbers, I’m juz using the same stick: to beat the BSers.

Finally, I wonder if our NS men are given the same line I waz given yrs ago. When I waz doing NS in the mid 70s, I waz told that we, had to fight, to buy time for our diplomats, to get the UN, USA etc to intervene. In the early 80s, I attended a course with some senior diplomats. I told them what I was tot. They rolled their eyes and said if the SAF had to go to war, MFA had already failed. No point asking US, UN for help.

Given one LKY liked to annoy the neighbours regularly, maybe MFA was doing a good job?

Scandis, Dutch, Germans & Poles speak better English than us!

In the light of the ongoing PSLE debate, I tot I should draw readers attention to this chart.

It is no surprise that our constructive, nation-building, 30-pieces-of silver media did not reproduce this chart. But I’m surprised that our alternate media too did not, despite a very anti-PAP blog being given this (by me).

http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2012/10/language-skills