Dealing with this sense of entitlement amongst Singaporeans

Hi guys, I'm taking a short break from work to write a piece about this sense of entitlement displayed by some Singaporeans - I've already talked about why so many Singaporeans lack the killer instinct (well that's another way of saying why they have no balls) and if you are Singaporeans, well this next piece is not going to make for easy reading either. A fellow blogger shared this ST article about highly skilled workers losing their jobs in 2015. This triggered off an angry reaction from one of her Singaporean readers Jason Lee and I shall cut & paste what he said to kick us off:

Who should you fire first if you have to downsize?

Jason Lee Why are Singaporean in that category don't understand?! The first to lay off should be the so called foreigners not-so-talents follow by the PR and lastly the new citizen before thinking of any Singaporean in the layoff process!! Sigh

I tried to reason with him: "Jason - allow me to respond as a man who runs his own business. It is tough running a business - you hope that you will make a healthy profit margin, enough to cover your costs, enough to pay your staff, with enough left over to invest in your own business etc. Every month is different and every month we face different challenges. Let's say if my company ran into trouble and we had to retrench people: I won't be looking at their nationality. I would get rid of those that I don't need, those who contribute the least, who don't pull their weight and I'll be thinking whom I could do without - I'll be keeping those whom I need the most. You're assuming that the foreigners are not talented and that the PRs and Singaporeans have more skills and are worth more to the company? It does not work like that. I've worked in many countries around the world, with people from different nationalities and there's no correlation between one's nationality and one's productivity. You want to feel safe in your job, you jolly well work your ass off, prove your worth to your company - don't expect your pink IC to somehow save you when times get tough."

Jason Lee U saying all this in your boss perspective but i'm saying this at the govt towards the citizen perspective! This is Singapore and it citizen should be rightfully look after!  Just ask yourself, do u bring in a few other children into your house to snatch away toys and complete with your own children?! If u do, what kind of father are u?? Shouldn't u bring the very best to your own offspring!  I believed u are one of us, do us a favour... if u belittle your own kind (Singaporean) pls end your citizenship!

What do you think bosses care about most?

Oh he just doesn't get it, does he? That's why so many people have such disdain for this 'strawberry generation', who have this ridiculous sense of entitlement. And you wonder why Singaporeans are getting retrenched and ending up as taxi drivers whilst the good jobs are going to foreigners? Well, not only do Singaporeans lack the killer instinct, they expect preferential treatment on the basis of their nationality rather than having to earn their keep. Such is the problem with Singaporeans like Jason Lee, they make the most ludicrous assumptions about the foreigners who are working in Singapore and by the same token, they make the most ludicrous assumptions about Singaporeans as well. Allow me to take you way back to my primary one class, way back in 1983 in Sembawang Hills Estate School. 

I'm going to talk about two classmates: let's call them Ming and Pei. Ming was the girl who always came in first in class, she was clearly extremely intelligent and the last I heard, she became a brain surgeon. Pei on the other hand, was the girl who always came in last in class. She managed to fail all her subjects in primary one: I kid you not and the teachers were considering if she had some kind of special needs, if she was very lazy or plain stupid. And there's everything in between the two extremes between Ming and Pei in my primary one class: at primary one, there was no streaming, all the children who attended that primary one class were just those who lived in the local neighbourhood (around Sembawang Hills, just off Upper Thomson Road, near Lower Pierce Reservoir). By that token, the sample was pretty random and thus we had a mix of some very intelligent students like Ming and rather hopeless ones like Pei. 

My friend Ming was extraordinarily clever.

What does this tell you about the average Singaporean? Well, not much - apart from the fact that there's no correlation between one's nationality and one's intelligence or ability. You can't assume anything about a Singaporean's ability to do well in a job just because s/he holds a pink IC. Both Ming and Pei are Singaporean and hold pink ICs, but they couldn't be more different when it came to their ability and intelligence. So why should any government try to create a system to protect a certain group of people based on nationality, when really, companies should be free to hire or fire people based on ability, not nationality? It is what we call meritocracy and that is the very basis of the free market that our economy is built on. So if a company is forced to retrench someone in hard times, should they fire the Singaporean or the foreigner? Well, I would say, it depends on whether or not that Singaporean is more like Ming or Pei. I'll gladly keep Ming and fire Pei - it has nothing to do with their nationality, it has everything to do with their ability and what they bring to the company: what are you worth to your employer? 

Companies have to make money, they are driven by profit. You cannot assume that all companies will naturally just make loads of money and be able to provide all these jobs by hiring loads of people. Allow me to give you a case study of when the people foolishly killed the goose that laid the golden egg. Spain's economy was very strong in the 1990s and 2000s until the recession hit really hard from around 2008; by 2009, it was clear that the Spanish economy was in deep trouble and there was no recovery in sight. Companies were hit hard as demand fell for their goods and they were forced to cut back: they simply couldn't produce as many good as they did before as nobody had the money to buy their goods. However, that meant the company was no longer able to provide as many jobs, so they were forced retrench some workers. However, Spain has very strong unions and many of the workers had generous contracts that made it very hard to fire them when they had done nothing wrong: in order to let these workers go, the company had to give them generous redundancy packages. All this during a time when demand for the companies' goods and services were falling dramatically in Spain,. the companies simply couldn't afford to pay these generous compensations to the workers they were letting go. But on the other hand, they couldn't afford to pay all of their salaries either as demand had collapsed. This situation placed many Spanish companies in an impossible situation. 

What happened then? Instead of making 10% of the workforce unemployed, the company went bust under such 进退两难 circumstances - making 100% of the workforce unemployed. Cue my slow clap - which is worse? Making 10% of the workforce unemployed or making 100% unemployed? However, the Spanish government was just too ineffective to deal with the situation that was spiraling out of control - what they should have done of course, was to change the laws to allow distressed companies to lay workers off without having to pay them generous redundancy compensations, but that would have probably proven to be quite unpopular and the selfish Spanish politicians cared more about appearing popular than saving the economy. So they stood back and allowed so many Spanish companies to collapse, one after another with disastrous knock-on effects: say a construction company goes bust, this has severe knock-on effects on the supply chain. So the window maker which relies on the construction company to buy their windows suddenly loses a major customer, so they go bust. The glass company which relies on the window maker to buy their glass to make the windows loses a major customer, so they go bust too. You get the idea - that is why the Spanish company is suffering from massive unemployment at the moment: the greatest shame is that things didn't have to be this bad, but the government failed to step in and protect the goose that laid the golden egg. 

I am not a fan of the PAP, but at least they are a lot more intelligent than the fools in the Spanish government created the total catastrophe facing the Spanish economy today. If you have ridiculous laws that prevent companies from downsizing when they are fighting for their survival, then it is clear from the case study of Spain what the consequences are: you will only kill off the goose that lays the golden egg and what good would that do? Rather, in helping companies who are trying to downsize, you are at least keeping as many employers afloat as possible and this will make it a lot easier for those who have been redundant to find a new job. It is hardly an ideal situation for those who have been made redundant of course, but the alternative of facing a Spanish-style recession is far worse and the Singaporean government is choosing the lesser of two evils. My business background has been in sales (in the financial services sector). A saying by Deng Xiaoping comes to mind: "不管黑猫白猫，捉到老鼠就是好猫" ("No matter if it is a white cat or a black cat; as long as it can catch mice, it is a good cat.") That theory is especially true in the world of sales whereby each salesman is judged by how much his has sold. Your nationality, religion, skin colour, ethnicity, your education etc all count for nothing, your worth to the company is reduced to how much you have sold in the last month and in the year to date. There was no preferential treatment for anyone from any country - you were worth what you brought to the company in terms of your sales figures; that made it an exciting environment for me to work in. 

What are you worth to your employer?

A company actually has to invest quite a lot in a salesman: the company would have to cover their hard costs in terms of having an office space (internet, phone, electricity, bills, rent etc) and also cover the expenses of the salesman. Many in sales are also paid a basic salary as well of a few thousand dollars/pounds a month; so it is quite a huge investment on the part of the company in the salesman in the expectation that he would be a good return on their investment. A salesman who doesn't deliver would be a drain on the company's resources and you don't survive very long in this kind of environment if you do not prove your worth to your employer. This is quite simply, a question of profit and loss: any concept of patriotism has no part to play in the world of commerce where a company has to make enough money just to survive - such is the way the business world works. You can't force companies to act against their own interest to promote some misguided notion of patriotism - destroying your economy by killing off good companies is probably one of the most unpatriotic thing you can do actually. 

If the government wants to help those who are struggling to get a job, then that should be done through providing them opportunities to get the right kind of education and training in order to secure good jobs: could the Singapore government do more in this aspect? The answer is yes - and there have been several schemes in the last few years to address this issue, so things are slowly moving in the right direction (but arguably, not quickly enough). Can more be done? Of course. But there's also an element of "you can bring a horse to water but you can't make it drink". You can have the best training schemes in the world, but unless Singaporeans are willing to adopt the right mindset and prepare themselves for a competitive job market, then it would be no more than casting pearls at swines. Ultimately, the problem is really getting older Singaporeans to make sure they keep their skills relevant to a fast-changing, evolving economy: the solution is not to kick all the foreigners out of Singapore. Even if you did that, Singaporean companies are still faced with the problem that their workforce lacks the right kind of training and skills to deliver effectively in the workplace. Using foreigners as a scapegoat is a myopic way to deal with a very complex problem. 

Do you have the right kind of work experience to find a good job?

Ultimately, Jason Lee still believes in some kind of benevolent government who will be nice to its own people: I have a different attitude. I believe that we're pretty much on our own and whilst we can depend on our governments to keep us safe in terms of national defence and having a police presence in our streets, to keep crime down, when it comes to actually being able to find a job, hold on to a job and earn enough - that's not up to the government, that's really our personal responsibility. I am not quite sure why people like Jason Lee believe that the government actually cares about individual citizens: perhaps that's because MPs have to get elected, so they are involved in a popularity contest to show you just how much they care about you and your family. But I am highly cynical about politicians: in the example of Spain, the desire of the Spanish politicians to remain popular with the electorate has well and truly wrecked the Spanish economy and it would take more than a generation to repair the damage caused. So please be wary of politicians who claim that they care, because really, they don't give a shit about you. Wake up and smell the coffee.

As for Jason Lee comparing the Singapore government to a father and individual citizens like himself to the father's children, I can only laugh. How naive. Does he actually believe that the government would do that for their own people? Does the PAP actually give a shit about individuals like Jason Lee? Well, what do you think? Let's look at the evidence: yes there are some countries in the world where they do have protectionist measures to protect their local job markets, giving locals priority over foreigners. Whilst in other countries like Singapore, they have a track record of favouring foreigners over locals and they intend to grow the population further to 6.9 million. In short, you need to know what kind of government you are dealing with. Allow me to illustrate this point with a rather extreme example.

The Jews were very persecuted in Nazi Germany in the period 1933 to 1945. About six million Jews died in the Holocaust and genocide against Jews across Europe as a result. So if you were a Jewish person living in the Belgium in 1940 just as the Nazis are about to invade Belgium, what would you do?

1. Tell Hitler that he should not persecute the Jews, that in fact he should not be invading other countries at all. Like, of course Hitler is going to listen to you right, because you feel so strongly about this issue?
2. Look at the track record of the Nazi regime and realize that there's simply nothing you can do or say to change the way the Nazis are going to conduct themselves once they invade Belgium: the best thing to do is to flee for your life as quickly as possible before the Nazis arrive and take you away to Auschwitz to be killed like so many other Jews.

Who will listen to your opinion?

That is a rather extreme example of course, but it does illustrate a very simple point: that us individual citizens have no influence over what our government's policies are. You can scream all you want over social media, you can attack anyone who fails to agree with you, but at the end of the day, apart from venting his anger, has Jason Lee actually managed to change the PAP's stance when it comes to foreign talents working in Singapore? Nope, he hasn't achieved anything at all for one simple reason: the PAP are not interested in listening to him at all. They have such a strong mandate from the people in winning the last election by a massive landslide, so they really don't have to care about what people like Jason Lee think. It is quite a slap in the face for a young person like Jason Lee of course, to realize that his opinion doesn't matter - but I'm only being realistic.

I was at Oxford Circus the other day, now for those of you who are not familiar with London, Oxford Circus is actually at the heart of London's retail district. It is like being at the junction of Scotts Road and Orchard Road. There was a man preaching Christianity there - he had a loudspeaker in one hand and waving a bible in the other and he was shouting at the top of his voice. Was anyone actually listening to him or engaging with him? No. People were just pretty much ignoring him, getting on with their own business. This preacher seemed oblivious that no matter how loud he shouted, nobody was listening to a word he was saying. Moral of the story? Just because you can shout in a crowded place doesn't mean that anyone will actually listen to you. Jason chose to shout on the Facebook page of one of Singapore's most popular bloggers, but will anyone actually listen to him? No. Perhaps I should have done what I did at Oxford Circus, I ignored the preacher. I should have ignored Jason but at least he gave me something to blog about. 

Is anyone actually listening to you shout?

So that's it from me on this issue. What do you think? Should the Singapore government do more to protect jobs for Singaporean citizens? Or should it have a more hands-off approach and allow companies to hire and fire as they wish, so that they will always get to use the best talents for the jobs? Or is there a sensible compromise we can reach between the two extremes? Do you have a solution for us? Leave a comment below please, many thanks for reading!