Will minimum wage laws work here?

[Merg91]

The average hourly pay for a cleaner in Australia is AU$21.50.(S$20.30).

Would rich mummy567 willing to contribute much higher fee, starting with her condo cleaners /security first ?

 

[Mecisteus]

Don't need to wait for government to help the lower income.

Every citizens can do their part into improving the lives of the lower income.

Sadly, it is all about minimizing costs for services like cleaning, security, delivery, etc in Singapore.

 

[Mecisteus]

It's also tougher to govern a country that is subject to several more natural disasters (earthquakes, hurricanes/typhoons/tornadoes, avalanches, blizzards, tsunami, etc.), hazards that Singapore does not face.

What can the head of states do about natural disasters? They cannot stop them from happening.

When a crisis comes, what they need to do are to mobilize all the relief organizations and show face in front of TV sympathetically.

If a country has tons of natural resources, the government can deal less with humans to drive the economy. It is much easier to manage non-humans than to manage humans.

 

[d5dude]

No, there's no logic in that. I pointed out that there are at least outliers in terms of top executive compensation: managers who are merely well compensated (not ridiculously compensated) who generate excellent results. So "always" is not correct. But we could still be talking about outliers in today's world, and that could be a big problem.


Government is already involved, a lot. Corporations are legal constructions, not at all natural.


I disagree. Institutional shareholders routinely complain about their relative lack of oversight power, too. For example, in many jurisdictions it's legal for managers to ignore the expressed wishes of shareholders (big and small) unless they muster a majority of votable shares, not just voted shares. And even then government often allows managers to ignore shareholder votes.


There are lots of reasons why service in the public sector is different than working in the private sector, including the important fact that government isn't supposed to be maximizing profits. Government is supposed to be in the business of maximizing other outcomes, and one would certainly think that the talents required to maximize other outcomes, such as social welfare, are quite different. Yet the Singapore government benchmarks the compensation of ministers against the private sector. I'm arguing that it would be much better to benchmark the compensation of ministers against their peers in small, developed, low corruption countries. Possibly in addition to benchmarking against the private sector, but the private sector is an obviously imperfect comparison given that the KPIs are quite different.

There is no perfect comparison available, no clone of Singapore to benchmark against. All comparisons are imperfect. But, if you're going to benchmark, benchmarking against other small, developed, low corruption countries is a most reasonable choice.

But how do you know that those are just outliers? I pointed out that top management compensation is already mostly linked to the company's stock performance because a major component of their pay is in the form of stock options, this means that CEO performs -> stock price go up -> shareholders benefit -> CEO gets a big pay check, the system works. Shareholders want the best person to run the company and they have to right to pay however much they choose to pay, I don't see why government should interfere, its a legal construct sure but its not a government entity, the government should not have a say in this.

I don't get what you mean why say shareholders must muster a majority of votable shares? Majority wins is like a truism in a democracy man... and of course you should no say if you own shares with no voting rights like snapchat class A shares. I don't know what jurisdictions don't allow shareholders to kick out the management but I'm pretty sure I don't care because I'd never invest in these companies.

While I think its a problem when the government pays itself fat paychecks and I said that much earlier, I feel that benchmarking against other countries, which have their own unique set of circumstances is going to create other problems, but I don't really want to talk about this anymore, I mean if the people felt that this was a big enough problem to vote them out they would have already done so by now...

 

[limster]

Don't need to wait for government to help the lower income.

Every citizens can do their part into improving the lives of the lower income.

Sadly, it is all about minimizing costs for services like cleaning, security, delivery, etc in Singapore.

yes, up to each person to do their part. a good starting point is charity. I support higher taxes along with increased tax credit/rebate for charitable giving. i see a lot of bloggers rushing to accumulate wealth in order to FIRE but give zero or close to zero to charity.

there are also small things each person can do, like i mentioned before, i go to local barber under HDB block, because of all those chain stores, he has not be able to increase what he charges for haircut so he might not be keeping up with inflation. So i can do my part by giving him a little more each time.

 

[BBCWatcher]

What can the head of states do about natural disasters? They cannot stop them from happening.

No, but they can prepare for them at least adequately and respond to them at lease competently. Or not.

Again, Mike, an expert compensation board can take country-specific differences into account. Right now, metaphorically speaking, ministers' compensation is benchmarked to the private sector, which is like benchmarking apples to squirrels. They both can be food, but they're really not all that similar. (The private sector largely attempts to optimize for profit, and governments don't or at least shouldn't.) How about benchmarking apples to bananas at least? At least they're both fruit. And it's not clear to me that Singapore is particularly easier or harder to govern overall than some other small, developed, low corruption countries. Regardless, an expert, elected compensation board can weigh your and others' arguments.

I can think of small countries that are dealing with a hostile, powerful neighbor that has repeatedly violated territorial sovereignty, and another small country (less than half the size of Singapore as it happens) that's trying to cope with waves of migrants and refugees. Don't you think it's possible, even likely, that Singapore's ministers don't have the world's #1 toughest ministerial jobs? Let an elected compensation board figure it out, including via cross-country comparisons.

 

[ftpofmpo]

While it is commonly argued that there is a distribution of wealth to the lower income, it can be argued that seen from other perspective, there is a transfer of wealth in the other direction instead

effective income for those at the bottom has dropped when inflation and purchasing power parity is taken into consideration

a contributing factor for this is the large foreign labour is persistently depressing the wages of this sector, and where the rest of the population, including the wealthy is benefiting from this arrangement at their expense.

The real foreign labour population including PRs, as a ratio of total population has increased over the decades.

Reducing the size would have increased their income considerably and perhaps negated the need for any "monetary redistributions" to them, but that would result in much negatives to the rest of the population in terms of higher costs, lower profits and unsustainability of business. Current redistributions are therefore not an entitlement as some thinks, but an obligation and duty from the original policy decisions to accept large pools of foreign labour, as well as to maintain social compact and reduce the costs of inequality

 

[mummy1234]

Come on. You're full of excuses..there're many ways to help them if u want to.
Practise what u preached.

I know your kind,
The somebody (except me) should do something kind of people...

I do donation too. To causes I believe in. But I don't publicise my donations cause it is not right to do so. We should always donate a portion of what we earn. An important principle in life.

I earn very little now infact in deficit ie spending more than what I earn cause I am having burnout and patient phobia .... keep thinking that one complaint and I can get fined up to S$20-100k scares me from working.

Thank God my hubby has a job, for now at least....but we r struggling and definitely not elites....just ordinary Sgpn citizens, struggling under the system to get by daily...

 

[mummy1234]

The average hourly pay for a cleaner in Australia is AU$21.50.(S$20.30).

Would rich mummy567 willing to contribute much higher fee, starting with her condo cleaners /security first ?

I am not rich, I earn peanuts according to some elites...

 

[mummy1234]

yes, up to each person to do their part. a good starting point is charity. I support higher taxes along with increased tax credit/rebate for charitable giving. i see a lot of bloggers rushing to accumulate wealth in order to FIRE but give zero or close to zero to charity.

there are also small things each person can do, like i mentioned before, i go to local barber under HDB block, because of all those chain stores, he has not be able to increase what he charges for haircut so he might not be keeping up with inflation. So i can do my part by giving him a little more each time.

Yes, I support what u say.

Tommy Koh I believe also is for minimum living wage for the low income..correct me if I am wrong...his heart is in the right place...just saw on TV that he said hawkers save Sg something to that effect.

 

[mummy1234]

While it is commonly argued that there is a distribution of wealth to the lower income, it can be argued that seen from other perspective, there is a transfer of wealth in the other direction instead

effective income for those at the bottom has dropped when inflation and purchasing power parity is taken into consideration

a contributing factor for this is the large foreign labour is persistently depressing the wages of this sector, and where the rest of the population, including the wealthy is benefiting from this arrangement at their expense.

The real foreign labour population including PRs, as a ratio of total population has increased over the decades.

Reducing the size would have increased their income considerably and perhaps negated the need for any "monetary redistributions", but that would result in much negatives to the rest of the population. these redistributions are therefore not an entitlement, but an obligation and duty

Agree with most of what u said but the latter part too cheem for me to understand.

 

[BBCWatcher]

The real foreign labour population including PRs, as a ratio of total population has increased over the decades.

I just want to push back on this sentence a bit. PR statistics are available here from Singstat. The percentage of PRs within the total population peaked in 2009. The 2018 percentage (most recent data available) of PRs is about 1.4 percentage points off the 2009 peak.

Moreover, the government has explained that the composition of PRs is shifting more toward Family Ties applicants particularly as Singaporeans increasingly marry non-Singaporeans. I recall seeing that breakout data somewhere previously, but it's not at my fingertips at the moment.

Anyway, my point is that PRs haven't fueled any such foreign labor increase for the past decade. It's the opposite, actually.

 

[Mecisteus]

While it is commonly argued that there is a distribution of wealth to the lower income, it can be argued that seen from other perspective, there is a transfer of wealth in the other direction instead

effective income for those at the bottom has dropped when inflation and purchasing power parity is taken into consideration

a contributing factor for this is the large foreign labour is persistently depressing the wages of this sector, and where the rest of the population, including the wealthy is benefiting from this arrangement at their expense.

The real foreign labour population including PRs, as a ratio of total population has increased over the decades.

Reducing the size would have increased their income considerably and perhaps negated the need for any "monetary redistributions" to them, but that would result in much negatives to the rest of the population in terms of higher costs, lower profits and unsustainability of business. Current redistributions are therefore not an entitlement as some thinks, but an obligation and duty from the original policy decisions to accept large pools of foreign labour, as well as to maintain social compact and reduce the costs of inequality

When you make such statements, you must back up with data.

 

[Aion99]

The average hourly pay for a cleaner in Australia is AU$21.50.(S$20.30).

Would rich mummy567 willing to contribute much higher fee, starting with her condo cleaners /security first ?

I think people who oppose min wage usually think that labor cost will increase but they forget, purchasing power from these group of low wage people will increase too. Business will benefits from the increased Sales and Revenue, this can offset the increased labor cost.Who knows, your bonus will be bigger as your company profits improved, more than enough to offset the cleaner fees. What you paid and what you get are all connected!

 

[ftpofmpo]

I just want to push back on this sentence a bit. PR statistics are available here from Singstat. The percentage of PRs within the total population peaked in 2009. The 2018 percentage (most recent data available) of PRs is about 1.4 percentage points off the 2009 peak.

Moreover, the government has explained that the composition of PRs is shifting more toward Family Ties applicants particularly as Singaporeans increasingly marry non-Singaporeans. I recall seeing that breakout data somewhere previously, but it's not at my fingertips at the moment.

Anyway, my point is that PRs haven't fueled any such foreign labor increase for the past decade. It's the opposite, actually.

The statement is made relative to the 80s, and consists of total foreign labour rather than prs alone

 

[ftpofmpo]

When you make such statements, you must back up with data.

Many of them are reported in mainstream media, but as this is not an official report, won't be referencing from stats, you can help to do so though

 

[Mecisteus]

Many of them are reported in mainstream media, but as this is not an official report, won't be referencing from stats, you can help to do so though

You were the one making statements then you must back it up.

I am interested to know also.

 

[Mecisteus]

I think people who oppose min wage usually think that labor cost will increase but they forget, purchasing power from these group of low wage people will increase too. Business will benefits from the increased Sales and Revenue, this can offset the increased labor cost.Who knows, your bonus will be bigger as your company profits improved, more than enough to offset the cleaner fees. What you paid and what you get are all connected!

Singaporeans are all money conscious and calculative.

Simple proofs you can read people complaining about small sized $2.50 chicken rice serving and 20 cents for plastic bags.

Businesses here are not ready to pay higher wages to the lower ranked jobs.

Fortunately, these jobs are taken by the foreigners. The lower income workers can opt to upgrade themselves with some workfare improvement schemes.

 

[alamakazim]

Useless.... There should be a maximum wage

 

[Merg91]

I have never say the cleaners can't collect $2k a month.
But mummy567 only wants to tax super rich (she is not in that category ) to support minimum pay. Raising her income tax /GST hurt her pocket is a no no.

Why do many sinkies complain the moment various
authorities announce price hikes like train /bus/water /hdb conservancy fee?
LTA /bus operators hdb /are get more staff /pay more train technical staff /bus drivers /more hdb cleaners.

Simply that hurt their pockets DIRECTLY.
Best is that most of these complain kings are also receiving public transport /u-save vouchers & others.

I think people who oppose min wage usually think that labor cost will increase but they forget, purchasing power from these group of low wage people will increase too. Business will benefits from the increased Sales and Revenue, this can offset the increased labor cost.Who knows, your bonus will be bigger as your company profits improved, more than enough to offset the cleaner fees. What you paid and what you get are all connected!