Is Singapore degenerating?

Some has written that Singapore is getting from first-world to third-world with the MRT power outage, flooding, ministerial scandals.

The government says this is normal in other countries. We face a huge percentage of migrant workers, because Singapore is unable to support itself. And the citizens are blamed for the falling birth rate.

On birth rate: The government was the one who introduced the stop-at-two campaign. It was overwhelmingly successful, because of many reasons. The three-or-more campaign started did not work because:
1. not enough effort is put into it - in publicity, incentives, etc
2. the primary incentive of having a child is gone - mothers have to work and take care of the child, worry about his/her grades, send him/her to tuition and a range of whatnot classes, from ballet to arithmetic
3. it's too stressful to live in Singapore, so why create a human to suffer with you?
4. (most important) It's too costly to support a child while having to support a house, (car), bills (utilities, phone/internet), parents (father and mother). It's actually more dystopic than this, because one cannot afford to be ill because healthcare is so expensive it wipes out all your savings. And if one is on long-term healthcare support, then... Who's even thinking about getting married, which costs?

It all boils down to money. And society.

If conditions favour having children, why not have them? It's precisely because the structural support isn't there. Very strangely, it's far more favourable to have children in India (esp boys), because all one has to think of is to send the child to a public school, and ensure that the child gets married, work, and support his parents. And not be a wife-beater. There aren't so many considerations - if the child fails in school, then too bad; he's not cut out for it, God has a way for him.

In Singapore, everywhere you go, it shouts, "If you've no certificate, you're dead." No, you aren't. You just have to find out what you're good at. But wait a minute, everyone else has a certificate, whether it's a good or lousy one. There comes the big problem. You're not ahead of others if you have a cert, you're behind everyone else if you don't (C.Seow, 9/2/2012).

Is Singapore degenerating?

What about the poor people in Singapore? Arguably, the poorest of poor isn't the foreign labourers. It's fellow Singaporeans, those who are at the bottom of the Gini coefficient. And it's quite apparent that these Singaporeans are either old, or do not have a good qualification, or for some reason are unable to give as much manual labour (arthritis, deformed backbone, or anything else). Such Singaporeans have to compete with the much cheaper foreign labour. There aren't any incentives to hire Singaporeans in this case, unless the person is willing to be paid as much as the foreign labour. The pay difference, if I'm not wrong, is around $21 (foreign) vs $50 (local) per day in a construction site. It's about the same in factories.

So what now? The progress which was much celebrated around the world has created a vicious cycle, and only the government can help, by either giving more incentives to employers for hiring locals (eg in tax-relief), or disincentives (not preferable, but quite a Singaporean method). This is important because this affects how we see our leaders of the country. This is exceptionally important because from 1965 to 2007, Singapore has been progressing linearly, save for the 1998 Asian financial crisis, and it's a consensus amongst the public that life is unhappier as compared to yester-years.

The government says we shouldn't compare ourselves with US president, or even other Asian ministers, regarding pay. Should we compare ourselves against ourselves, and strive to be the utopia of the world again, for a greater Singaporean population?

And every sound politician knows this: you can't afford to do worse; you can only do better. Better than other countries, or preserve status quo in the country's standing against the world. And even Machiavelli knows this: you keep the people happy, well-clothed and well-fed, and you as the leader won't be questioned.

That was why Lee Kuan Yew was such a great man. He gave the poor a real chance, and real help, to stay in HDB, have a toilet of their own, schooling opportunities for everyone, and made sure the entire island had affordable and comfortable transport, when there was nothing except debris and riots to begin with (post-WWII). Hell-yeah, there was no free press, no free-and-fair election, high ministerial pay. But few made noise.

We're losing our transparency, efficiency, accountability, and social security for the poor. We're slowly losing our friendliness as well. The world looks and feels treacherous, we can't get married, we don't want children, and we want to migrate to a less stressful place, after years spent on this island. Unless something can be done asap, politics is going downhill from now on.