“Retirement adequacy received the most feedback”

We refer to the article “Retirement adequacy tops feedback received by REACH” (Channel NewsAsia, Nov 18).

39,000 responses in 10 months

It states that “The government feedback unit REACH has received close to 39,000 responses on its different platforms in the first 10 months of the year. It said Singaporeans were most concerned about retirement adequacy, with the topic receiving 2,500 responses.”

“Quite useless” feedback – after 49 years?

– Are our feedback mechanisms like REACH and the National Conversation, arguably quite useless, when after 49 years – we still …

… Have the most expensive public housing in the world (ratio of price to income). The Government does not spend a single cent on public housing and makes huge profits (with an estimated 60% of the price charged to land costs)

… Continue to have the “show”of calling for the re-employment age to be further extended to 67. Why not just simply extend the retiement age like in the past to 60 and 62, instead of having such a weak Re-employment Act that allows employers to offer any terms of -employment (“Make it a law for firms to lift re-employment age from 65 to 67: PAP Seniors Group“, Straits Times, Nov 18)

… Have the lowest public healthcare spending as a percentage of GDP in the world – at 1.4% for FY 2012. From a cashflow perspective, the Government does not spend a single cent on healthcare as annual Medisave contributions exceed total public healthcare spending and withdrawals from medisave

… Have the most liberal foreign labour policy in the world whereby foreigners can come on a tourist visa and apply for jobs immediately and then stay to work – an estimated 50% of the workforce are not “true blue” Singaporeans (foreigners, permanent residents (PRs) and new citizens)

… Have the highest percentage of non- Singaporean undergraduate and graduate non full-fee paying students in the public universities, in the world

… End up as the most expensive city in the world (The Economist magazine)

… Have the second lowest total fertility rate (TFR) in the world

… Have the second worse Gini in the world (income inequality)

… Have the lowest government spending as a percentage of GDP in the world (amongst developing and developed countries)

… Have the lowest welfare spending in the world (amongst developing and developed countries)

… Have the highest relative Budget surplus in the world – at $36.1 billion in FY2012, using IMF fiscal reporting guidelines

… Are the only country in the world that keeps the excess returns (like an implicit tax) estimated to be about 3% on our CPF funds – resulting in our having the lowest real rate of return of all national pension schemes in the world since 1999