NO GOVERNMENT is capable of legislating higher wages, without reducing the number of jobs ('Minimum wage, maximum attention'; Thursday).
Typically, low-skilled jobs are the first to disappear. Anyone who has lived in certain Western countries with minimum wage laws and generous unemployment benefits for a while would have noticed the absence of fuel-pump attendants and the lack of cheap food hawkers.
Many households choose the do-it-yourself route to fix their cars or repair their plumbing simply because of the high cost of labour.
So, it is not minimum wage but the real purchasing power of the Singapore dollar that really matters.
Nominal incomes of low-wage earners have hardly grown in the past 10 years even as inflation has spiked significantly.
Other governments are printing money in response to America's monetisation of its debt to keep their own currency exchange rate stable.
Such competitive devaluation by government fiat has allowed the large-scale exportation of US dollar inflation to Asia, which means that Asian nations are subsidising the excess consumption of developed countries such as the United States.
Fixed-income and low-wage earners, and cash savers are the worst hit when governments resort to printing money to solve economic problems en masse.
As interest rates plunge to near-zero, the well-off with better access to credit can borrow cheaply and invest or speculate for profit - and wealth transfers from the poor to the rich.
Despite the Monetary Authority of Singapore's attempt to let the Singapore dollar appreciate gradually over other currencies, the same Sing dollar buys only a fraction of sugar, cotton, rice, HDB flats, gold and silver compared to 10 years ago.
In reality, the Sing dollar has lost real purchasing power.
Instead of over-protecting our export sector industries through favourable exchange rates, let them readjust their cost structure by exploiting the lower import cost of factors of production, and then translate that to lower selling prices for overseas markets.
After all, Singapore imports almost everything for our industries' inputs.
Allowing a dramatically stronger Singapore dollar exchange rate will benefit the majority, especially those in the lower and middle classes.
Yong Jianjun
the writer is a fool of a clown............
it's not the buying power of a currency that's important ................
reason why things are more expensive is becoz all the big commercial banks are driving up the commodities market !!!
BLAME JP MORGAN AND GOLDMAN SACHS.............
there's no such thing as law of supply and demand..................along with currency weakness ............all these are excuses of the banks.............
before the 1st Gulf War..........oil was around USD10 a barrel..............it went up to a record of USD147...............it's pure speculation !!!............JP MORGAN was holding majority of the oil contracts !!!
demand didn't go up 14 times.............and USD didn't weakened 14.7 times too !