I tot the above when I read
[I]dea of unemployment insurance to help retrenched older workers has ‘serious downsides’: Josephine Teo
Constructive, nation-building media
The report goes on:
Mrs Teo said that the Government will “keep an open mind” on unemployment insurance, but pointed out that there are serious downsides to having such a provision. These include reducing workers’ motivation to find work as well as decreasing the willingness of employers to pay retrenchment benefits.
I’ll let Chris Kuan and Yeoh Lam Keong explain why Jos’ mouth is full of cock as usual.
Chris Kuan
Contrary to what the Minister said, there are plenty of countries with unemployment insurance and yet low unemployment rates. In my view, there is no universal evidence that it reduces a worker’s incentive to find re-employment, So the whole establishment narrative that unemployment insurance (and jobless benefits) leads to high unemployment is not a universal fact. It is just another moral panic button. However she might be right that unemployment insurance may prove unworkable in Singapore. Why? Because as long as there is easy access to foreign labour, such a scheme may not make it any easier to find re-employment or more importantly provide for better job matches to skills, experience and qualifications which is what it is meant to do. That’s what the establishment failed to mention – that employment protection / stabilization schemes run against the principal policy of growing the economy through access to cheaper labour. It is far easier to say to the plebs that unemployment insurance leads to high unemployment and not say why a labour market with such a hugh foreign worker content, makes it so.
https://www.facebook.com/chris.kuan.94/posts/1282587465264672
Yeoh Lam Keong
Unfortunately, Manpower Minister Josephine Teo does not seem to have a sufficient understanding of labour market economics required to see the important need for unemployment insurance ( UI ) in Singapore for at least three reasons.
First, Minister Teo’s portrayal that countries with UI “usually have persistently high unemployment “ is inaccurate at best and misleading at worst.
Of the 27 member OECD developed countries, 25 operated an unemployment insurance systems including many countries with low unemployment eg Germany, Japan, Switzerland, Korea and Taiwan including some much more competitive export economies with lower unemployment than Singapore ( Germany and Japan ).
Second, there is little evidence of an inefficient reduction in incentive to work in properly designed UI systems as Minister Teo claims . In fact, the labour market evidence shows that UI for about 3 months enables optimum job search that prevents workers from jumping at the first job that may not be such a good match for their skills or experience.
Third, Minister Teo seems oblivious to the trend that artificial intelligence is already increasingly replacing both unskilled and skilled workers and consigning them to a gig economy of much more frequent job shifts, often with lesser paying work.
There are currently an estimated 25-30,000 households who fall into absolute poverty at any one time because of such involuntary unemployment. Without an automatic unemployment protection system , many fall through the cracks of our Commcare and skills retraining systems.
Not putting in place an intelligent unemployment protection system is thus short sighted, inhumane and just poor manpower policy, imho.
More at https://www.facebook.com/lamkeong.yeoh/posts/3512139472194428
But not having unemployment insurance is a Hard Truth and PAP ministers die die must hold onto. It’s not a matter of economic pragmatism.
The Hardest Truth: I’ve blogged before that the PAP doesn’t need that many smart people as it follows most of the Economist’s prescriptions (except on hanging, drug legalisation, free media and a liberal democracy): PAP’s bible challenges “market-based solution”)
Hard Truths
How PAP can make S’poreans happier but won’t
Welfarism the PAP way/ The last word on GST
The PAP way is the American corporate way
We have to move on: Moving on from Hard Truths To Hard Choices.
The problems are
Thoughts of a Cynical Investor 
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