We should be very proud

[Even]

Singapore's idea is that by paying a high salary to public officials you reduce their propensity (or need) for corruption.

This idea has merits (as indeed do its counter arguments).  I am pretty sure that most Third World countries' leaders' real earnings are much higher than the Singaporean ones, except that they collect their by embezzlement and corruption and do a lot of damage to the country as a whole. 

We only need to highlight what was noted at the bottom by OP:


Notes:

1.   The above pay does not include MP allowances, pensions and other sources of income such as Directorship, Chairmnship,

      Advisory, Consultancy, etc to Gov-linked and gov-related organisations or foreign MNCs such as Citigroup, etc.



It is wrong to call it corruption because being on several *** and consultancies is legal and transparent, but after that the differences end. The end result is the same, one road is paved in tarmac but the other in gravel.

[Private Sector]

Why are figureheads like the President, MM and SM paid around the same as the PM? Are they're running the day-to-day decisions instead of him? Don't tell me LHL is really just a puppet?

A hypothetical example. Lets say you have a private company with 4.2 million shares. Lets say that in 1959 each share was worth $400. In 2010 the value of the same share was $49,000. During that time the company was run by one CEO for 31 years who then took up the role of Chairman where he has sat ever since.

Wouldnt one argue that a decent executive salary for the chairman of $3m would be justified in this case?  

Multiply the value of each share by the number of shareholders and there is a huge amount of wealth creation on that guys watch. WOrth every penny in my opinion.

[pensions]

Wouldnt one argue that a decent executive salary for the chairman of $3m would be justified in this case?  

Multiply the value of each share by the number of shareholders and there is a huge amount of wealth creation on that guys watch. WOrth every penny in my opinion.

So this guy is entitled to an unlimited pension? How about the rest of us? Don't we get pensions too? After all, each of us contributes in our own way to the economy and should be rewarded proportionally.

Or is the government line on no handouts applicable to everyone else except to the select top dogs in their organisation?

[Bootleg]

Absolute power corrupts

so you have to pay someone $2.6m so that they won't be corrupt. Whatever happened to doing the right thing.

so,if you pay me $2.6m to be a minister I will say yes and clap my hands whenever you want me to. Of course I won't accept corruption from other parties for this amount of money, I would be exclusive

[scorn]

"Who is Sarah Palin? A comdedian?"

Just a governor who balanced a state budget and negotiated the US's biggest ever infrastructure project while enjoying very high approval ratings among voters. And that's after taking on and defeating the corrupt establishment in her own state GOP.

Balancing a budget puts her in about the top 5 percentile of successful Western politicians alone.

She's not presidential or vice presidential material (are Obama and Biden?) but seriously, this weird obsession with Palin as if she is an exceptionally bad leader is surely a sign of post-modern psychosis, where ridiculous notions about style formulated by watching Saturday night Live always trump the gray facts of one's record.

As for the high salaries in Singapore, unseemly perhaps, but corruption is endemic to Asia and this was considered one way of not letting it get out of hand. Singapore has done better than most in this respect.

[Duck Houses for all]

Politicians here are the creme de la creme. Obscenely well educated and supremely qualified for the job, unlike the rag tag rabble polluting the houses of parliament in Used-to-be-Great Britain.

[Double scorn]

Sarah Palin- the woman who spent $150K of the campaign funds on  designer clothes? Including stuff for her husband and baby?

Wasn't she also the one who abused her power as Governor and got the estranged husband of her sister fired from his government job?

We're in the right thread. What a corrupt politician this woman is.

[triple scorn]

Politicians here are the creme de la creme. Obscenely well educated and supremely qualified for the job, unlike the rag tag rabble polluting the houses of parliament in Used-to-be-Great Britain.

Riight. How well you did in 4 years of university will determine how well you'd perform in a job for the next 30 years. If only the real world were as simple as the textbooks you read.

[ApplesOranges]

As for the high salaries in Singapore, unseemly perhaps, but corruption is endemic to Asia and this was considered one way of not letting it get out of hand. Singapore has done better than most in this respect.

True enough. In fact according to Transperancy International Singapore comes out well on not just an Asian but a global scale- it normally ranks as the 5th or 6th least corrupt country in the world.

The country that always wins is New Zealand, where a cabinet minister resigned last week (and saw his salary cut in half) after being caught using his ministerial credit card to buy two bottles of wine worth just $100. Now THAT is accountability.

[$Pripps]

I just can imagine having a high salary could also have an opposite effect as well - a person with high salary would of course like to keep it that way and thus hang on to power (even if corruption was necessary to hang on - but of course another word would be used then).

[Mr Singers]

Politicians here are the creme de la creme. Obscenely well educated and supremely qualified for the job, unlike the rag tag rabble polluting the houses of parliament in Used-to-be-Great Britain.

Which is why this creme de la creme were all educated in the Uk and send all send their children to the UK for their education instead of the creme de man singapore universities 

[scorn]

"Sarah Palin- the woman who spent $150K of the campaign funds on  designer clothes? Including stuff for her husband and baby?"

Well, the campaign bought some clothes for her. You know, like campaigns buy ad time, lease airplanes and otherwise try to burnish the image of their candidate. (What was I saying about an obsession with style over substance?)

"Wasn't she also the one who abused her power as Governor and got the estranged husband of her sister fired from his government job?"

And cleared by two investigations of any legal wrongdoing while found to be in breach of some minor ethics guidelines.

This is just the kind of nonsense I was talking about. Palin's $150,000 wardrobe budget is a major issue but the fact that Obama broke his promise on receiving tens of millions of dollars of private campaign financing is not.

Palin was involved in the firing of a certifiable nutcase from the police force, but the fact that Biden opposed credit card reforms while his son is a lobbyist for the credit card companies is not. And let's not forget Chris Dodd receiving sweetheart mortgages from banks he was overseeing as chair of the finance committee in the Senate, Rangel cheating on taxes while chair of the House committee overseeing taxes etc etc infinitum

Each time, a silly issue with zero impact on governance trumps a serious issue involving serious governance issues. Only because it involves an apparent bete noir of unserious people.

Anyway, it's a pointless exercise arguing this matter. Palin obsession is like religion. People have faith and logic has no influence.

[Scared]

To PP

Whilst I'm sure that she has achieved something in her life, you have to admit that she's said some really dumb things during the campaign.  Also her lack of international affairs is quite shocking.  To be honest, I think the fact that there are people in the supposedly most powerful nation in the world considering voting her as a presidential candidate is really scary.  A successful middle management does not necessarily make a good CEO.

[marriedguy]

I lost faith in politicians here when a female MP lobbied in parliament for bicycles to be ridden on the footpath so as her Mercedes would not get scratched. They are so out of touch.

[Finding staff]

The problem we have had in running a business is finding Singaporeans who are willing to work and that is a sentiment shared by other employers.  I am talking F & B industry here.  It is incredibly frustrating.  Unlike their equivalent in other countries, MOM does not assist employers identify people looking for jobs.  So you scour anything to find Sngapreans but in the end you end up hiring Malaysians and in return get stung by the govt on levies which are designed, we are told, to encourage you to hire Singaporens.  We would love to employ more Singaporeans but cannot.  And the government says it is also going to cut foreign workers?  How will this assist people running businesses in Singapore I would like to know.