by Thomas L Friedman
Jun 14, 2011
IF you want to understand why the unemployment rate in the United States has been stubbornly lodged at around 9 per cent, a good place to start is with the eye-popping mortgage statistics released last week by the economic analysis firm CoreLogic: 38 per cent of homeowners with second mortgages are underwater.
They borrowed against the value of their homes and they now owe more than their houses are worth. The total number of underwater homeowners in America, with first and second mortgages, is a stunning 22.7 per cent. In Nevada alone, 63 per cent of all mortgaged properties are worth less than the owners paid; in Arizona 50 per cent, Florida 46 per cent, Michigan 36 per cent and California 31 per cent.
When people are so underwater, they find it hard to move to take new jobs, they find it hard to borrow or raise cash for education or start-ups and banks become even more cautious about lending. Until we as a country figure out how to divvy up these losses on housing, and let these markets clear and move on, they will be a serious drag on employment.
Indeed, this mortgage mess just feeds the three other big problems undermining United States job growth today: Weak aggregate demand, structural impediments and an epidemic of uncertainty about what the future holds for everything from health care to the rate of taxation to Social Security and Medicare spending to the availability of credit to the general direction of the economy - the sum of which has people holding back and thus undermining the government's stimulus.
We need to be working on all three at once and urgently. How? Others have focused on the aggregate demand problem, so I would like to address some of the structural impediments and uncertainty.
On Friday, the McKinsey Global Institute released a long study of the structural issues ailing the US job market, entitled: "An Economy That Works: Job Creation and America's Future."
It begins: "Only in the most optimistic scenario will the United States return to full employment before 2020. Achieving this outcome will require sustained demand growth, rising US competitiveness in the global economy and better matching of US workers to jobs."
Over the last 20 years, McKinsey notes, with each recession more employers have used the downturn to replace workers with machines and software, so it takes much longer for full employment to come back.
US WORKERS NEED RETOOLING
I have been working on a book that required talking to a lot of entrepreneurs and have been struck by how many told me some version of: "I used the recession to downsize and get really efficient. None of those jobs are coming back. I am doing a little hiring now but for people with more skills."
At the same time, you talk to US companies doing advanced manufacturing and many will tell you they struggle even now to find workers with the blue-collar skills they need to replace their retiring employees.
Thanks to a credit bubble over the last decade, we created a lot of jobs for people - in construction and retail - who did not have globally competitive skills or post-high school degrees. Those workers will need retooling.
McKinsey says its research found that "too few Americans who attend college and vocational schools choose fields of study that will give them specific skills that employers are seeking. Our interviews point to potential shortages in many occupations, such as nutritionists, welders and nurse's aides - in addition to the often-predicted shortfall in computer specialists and engineers".
The report concludes: "Progress on four dimensions is needed: Ensuring that the work force acquires skills needed for the jobs that will be in demand, finding ways for US workers to win 'share' in the global economy" - by encouraging more foreign investment in the US and by getting companies who have off-shored jobs to take advantage of falling telecom prices to on-shore them to low-cost American cities and towns instead - "encouraging innovation, new company creation, and scaling up of industries in the United States, and removing unnecessary impediments that slow business investment and job creation".
Today, everything from patent delays to overlapping or conflicting land use regulations inhibit start-ups and factory creation. According to the World Economic Forum, America now ranks 27th on the ease of getting a construction permit, behind Saudi Arabia.
But do not underestimate uncertainty as a silent jobs killer. Congress and the White House seem paralysed in deciding the future of taxes and spending. Where are we going in these areas? Investors and companies who have to make hiring decisions have no clue.
"The economy is paying a high uncertainty premium right now," says Mohamed El-Erian, the CEO of the world's largest bond fund, Pimco. "With such uncertainty, people delay as many decisions as possible."
Any good news? Yes, US corporations are getting so productive and sitting on so much cash, just a few big, smart, bipartisan decisions by Congress on taxes and spending (and mortgages) and I think this whole economy starts to improve again.
Workers with skills will be the first to be hired.
THE NEW YORK TIMES
Thomas L Friedman has won three Pulitzer Prizes, the most recent in 2002 for commentary.
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Diverting water from Yangtze to parched north
Jun 3, 2011
High cost, impact on environment and lives among key concerns
DANJIANGKOU (Hubei): North China is dying.
A chronic drought is ravaging farmland. The Gobi Desert is inching south. The Yellow River, the so-called birthplace of Chinese civilisation, is so polluted it can no longer supply drinking water. The rapid growth of megacities - 22 million people in Beijing and 12 million in Tianjin alone - has drained underground aquifers that took millennia to fill.
Not atypically, the Chinese government has a grand and expensive solution: Divert at least 23 billion cu m of water each year hundreds of kilo-metres from the other great Chinese river, the Yangtze, to slake the thirst of the north China plain and its 440 million people.
The engineering feat, called the South-North Water Diversion Project, is China's most ambitious attempt to subjugate nature. It would be like channelling water from the Mississippi River to meet the drinking needs of Boston, New York and Washington.
Its US$62 billion (S$77 billion) price tag is twice that of the Three Gorges Dam. And like that project, which Chinese officials last month admitted has 'urgent problems', the water diversion scheme is increasingly mired in concerns about its cost, its environmental impact and the sacrifices poor people in the provinces are told to make for those in richer cities.
Three artificial channels from the Yangtze would transport precious water from the south, which itself is increasingly afflicted by droughts - the region is suffering its worst one in half a century.
The project's human cost is staggering - along the central route, which starts in Hubei province at a gigantic reservoir and snakes 1,300km to Beijing, about 350,000 villagers are being relocated to make way for the canal. Many are being resettled far from their homes and given low-grade farmland. In Hubei, thousands of people have been moved to the grounds of a former prison.
Some Chinese scientists say the diversion could destroy the ecology of the southern rivers. The government has neglected to do proper impact studies, they say.
More than 14 million people in Hubei will be affected if the project damages the Han River, the tributary of the Yangtze where the central route starts, said Dr Du Yun, a geographer at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Wuhan, the provincial capital.
Officials in provinces south of Beijing and Tianjin have privately raised objections and are haggling over water pricing and compensation.
Overseers of the eastern route, which is being built beside an ancient waterway for barges called the Grand Canal, have found that the drinking water to be brought to Tianjin from the Yangtze is so polluted that 426 sewage treatment plants have to be built. Water pollution control on the route takes up 44 per cent of the US$5 billion investment, according to the official Xinhua news agency.
The source water from the Han River on the central route is cleaner, but the main channel will cross 205 rivers and streams in the industrial heartland of China before reaching Beijing.
'When water comes to Beijing, there's the danger of the water not being safe to drink,' said environment advocate Dai Qing, who has written critically about the Three Gorges Dam.
Former environmental management official Wang Jian agreed that the project carries huge risks, but said there were no other options given the severity of the current water shortage.
The eastern route is expected to be operational by 2013, while the central route is to start major operations the following year. The lines were originally supposed to open by the 2008 Summer Olympic Games, but have been hobbled by myriad problems.
The diversion project was first studied in the 1950s but the government did not look at the project seriously again until the 1990s, when north China was hit hard by droughts. In 2002, the State Council gave the green light for work to start on the central and eastern routes.
The western route, which would run at an average altitude of 3,000m to 4,000m across the Tibetan plateau to help irrigate the Yellow River basin, has been deemed too difficult to start for now.
Officials in Tianjin are so sceptical of the eastern route's ability to deliver drinkable water that they are looking at desalination as an alternative.
Planners have more hope for the central route, though the engineering is a much greater challenge - the canal has to be built from scratch, with 1,774 structures along its length to channel the water, since there is no pre-existing waterway like the Grand Canal to follow.
At the start of the route, the water level of the Danjiangkou Reservoir on the Han River has been raised 13m to 170m so the water can flow downhill to Beijing. The government said the rising waters and a need to combat soil erosion required moving 130,000 farmers last year from around the reservoir. Similar relocations are taking place all along the main channel, which runs through four provinces.
Forced relocations, though, could pale next to larger fallouts from the project. 'We feel we are still unsure how the project is going to impact on the environment, ecologies, economies and society at large,' said Dr Du, the geographer in Wuhan, who carefully added that he was not outrightly opposed to the project.
In a paper published in the Bulletin of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dr Du and two co-authors estimated that the diversion project would reduce the flow of the middle and lower stretches of the Han significantly.
The demands of the north will not abate. Migration from rural areas means Beijing's population is growing by one million every two years, according to an estimate in an essay in China Daily, written last October by population development scholar Hou Dongmin.
'With its dwindling water resources, Beijing cannot sustain a larger population,' he said. 'Instead, it should make serious efforts to control the population, if not reduce it.'
Beijing has about 100 cu m of water available per person. According to a standard adopted by the United Nations, that is just a fraction of the 1,000 cu m per person that indicates chronic water scarcity.
Planning Beijing's growth by the State Council up to 2020 already assumes the water diversion will work, rather than planning growth with much less water, said Mr Wang, the former official.
'Instead of transferring water to meet the growing demand of a city, we should decide the size of a city according to how much water resources it has,' he said. 'People's desire for development has no end.'
NEW YORK TIMES
Jun 18, 2011
Water transfer project no cure-all for waste
By Ho Ai Li
I WAS in Hubei talking to farmers who had to make way for a plan to pipe water from central Hubei to northern cities such as Beijing.
A neatly dressed man who said he was an official approached me and asked to see my press card. Another official was on his way and wanted to 'have a meal' with me, I was told, as he copied down my details. Never mind that it was 3pm and too hot to eat.
The man left. The villagers asked me to do the same. 'Get out before they stop you,' warned one of them.
Later, I was told villagers elsewhere had clammed up in front of reporters; others answered reporters' questions nervously in the presence of officials.
Their fear is understandable.
For the plan, called Nanshui Beidiao, or North-South Water Diversion, has come under even more scrutiny, what with severe droughts draining Hubei, the province of a thousand lakes.
A rare admission by Beijing last month that the Three Gorges Dam has led to serious problems has also raised doubts about the transfer, dwarfed only in scale by the dam.
On May 18, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao chaired a State Council meeting to look into 'urgent' environmental problems caused by the building of the dam, the world's largest hydroelectric project.
Underlining the severity of the problems, the State Council has set aside 100 billion yuan (S$19 billion) - about two-fifths the cost of the 254 billion yuan spent to build the dam - to repair the damage. Among other things, the Three Gorges project has left surrounding river banks more prone to landslides and earthquakes. It has also displaced at least 1.2 million people.
Much of the money will be used to compensate the people whose lives were disrupted by the move. Corrupt officials siphoned off some money meant for them. A state probe found that 12 per cent of the resettlement budget was pocketed by officials in 1999.
The worry is whether farmers living around the Danjiangkou Reservoir, one of Asia's largest and the source of water to be sent to Beijing, will encounter the same problems. One resettled farmer told me he was unhappy with the quality of his new dwellings and suspected that it was made of materials cheaper than promised. He and other farmers also wonder whether the water transfer project will cause similar environmental problems as the dam.
Projected to cost US$62 billion (S$76 billion), twice as much as the Three Gorges Dam, the water transfer is the largest water diversion project in the world. When ready by 2050, the water routes will span 4,350km - the approximate distance between Singapore and Beijing.
Under the plan, water will be piped from the south to the north via three routes - eastern, central and western. Water will be pumped into cities such as Beijing and Tianjin, and also north-western parts like Gansu and Inner Mongolia. Transferring water to these arid areas will boost industries, proponents of the plan say. Its supporters included Chairman Mao Zedong himself, who famously declared back in 1952: 'The south has a lot of water, the north little. If possible, it's fine to lend a little water.'
But what was the case in Mao's days nearly six decades ago might be changing.
Climate change has made rainfall unpredictable, noted Mr Peter Bosshard, policy director of California-based environmental group International Rivers. He said: 'Already, people and the eco-system in the lower Yangtze basin are crying out for water. How can you withdraw so much water to send to Beijing?'
Indeed, the south is getting drier - total freshwater reserves in the Yangtze went down to 172 billion cubic metres in 2009, a drop of 17 per cent from 2005.
Problems with pollution have also surfaced. Water pumped via the eastern canal from Yangzhou to Tianjin is expected to be so costly and polluted that the Tianjin authorities are looking at the desalination of seawater as an alternative instead.
Enormous infrastructure projects such as the water diversion scheme reflect the top Chinese leaders' penchant for engineering solutions, said Mr Bosshard, noting that many of them are trained engineers.
Indeed, China has traditionally sought ways to increase the supply of water rather than to manage demand.
Such massive solutions obscure the need for smaller efforts to change individuals' behaviour. Some city dwellers have little sense of the sacrifices made by their poorer cousins in the countryside just so that they don't have to fret about water.
A Chinese reporter recounted a meeting with a Beijing woman who threw away a half-drunk bottle of mineral water, saying it was too heavy to carry and would ruin the shape of her handbag. She said there was no need to worry about the capital running out of water - the North-South Water Diversion will come to its rescue. That is typical of the blind faith that many city dwellers in Beijing have in the water transfer to quench their thirst.
But, in fact, they are already living on borrowed water. The city drains the resource from nearby provinces like Hebei, as well as from beneath the ground.
In a country known for social campaigns, little has been done to drive home the message that water is precious. Nor is the operation of snow parks, spas and golf courses - which use a lot of water for leisure purposes - curtailed in the capital.
The water diversion project is seen to be a lifeline supplying Beijing with one billion cubic metres of water a year, almost a third of the amount it used up in 2009. But it is no cure-all that allows city folk to fritter away water with abandon. Unless a mindset change is engineered among people, no amount of water siphoned from the south will be able to quench their thirst for more.
hoaili@sph.com.sg
High cost, impact on environment and lives among key concerns
DANJIANGKOU (Hubei): North China is dying.
A chronic drought is ravaging farmland. The Gobi Desert is inching south. The Yellow River, the so-called birthplace of Chinese civilisation, is so polluted it can no longer supply drinking water. The rapid growth of megacities - 22 million people in Beijing and 12 million in Tianjin alone - has drained underground aquifers that took millennia to fill.
Not atypically, the Chinese government has a grand and expensive solution: Divert at least 23 billion cu m of water each year hundreds of kilo-metres from the other great Chinese river, the Yangtze, to slake the thirst of the north China plain and its 440 million people.
The engineering feat, called the South-North Water Diversion Project, is China's most ambitious attempt to subjugate nature. It would be like channelling water from the Mississippi River to meet the drinking needs of Boston, New York and Washington.
Its US$62 billion (S$77 billion) price tag is twice that of the Three Gorges Dam. And like that project, which Chinese officials last month admitted has 'urgent problems', the water diversion scheme is increasingly mired in concerns about its cost, its environmental impact and the sacrifices poor people in the provinces are told to make for those in richer cities.
Three artificial channels from the Yangtze would transport precious water from the south, which itself is increasingly afflicted by droughts - the region is suffering its worst one in half a century.
The project's human cost is staggering - along the central route, which starts in Hubei province at a gigantic reservoir and snakes 1,300km to Beijing, about 350,000 villagers are being relocated to make way for the canal. Many are being resettled far from their homes and given low-grade farmland. In Hubei, thousands of people have been moved to the grounds of a former prison.
Some Chinese scientists say the diversion could destroy the ecology of the southern rivers. The government has neglected to do proper impact studies, they say.
More than 14 million people in Hubei will be affected if the project damages the Han River, the tributary of the Yangtze where the central route starts, said Dr Du Yun, a geographer at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Wuhan, the provincial capital.
Officials in provinces south of Beijing and Tianjin have privately raised objections and are haggling over water pricing and compensation.
Overseers of the eastern route, which is being built beside an ancient waterway for barges called the Grand Canal, have found that the drinking water to be brought to Tianjin from the Yangtze is so polluted that 426 sewage treatment plants have to be built. Water pollution control on the route takes up 44 per cent of the US$5 billion investment, according to the official Xinhua news agency.
The source water from the Han River on the central route is cleaner, but the main channel will cross 205 rivers and streams in the industrial heartland of China before reaching Beijing.
'When water comes to Beijing, there's the danger of the water not being safe to drink,' said environment advocate Dai Qing, who has written critically about the Three Gorges Dam.
Former environmental management official Wang Jian agreed that the project carries huge risks, but said there were no other options given the severity of the current water shortage.
The eastern route is expected to be operational by 2013, while the central route is to start major operations the following year. The lines were originally supposed to open by the 2008 Summer Olympic Games, but have been hobbled by myriad problems.
The diversion project was first studied in the 1950s but the government did not look at the project seriously again until the 1990s, when north China was hit hard by droughts. In 2002, the State Council gave the green light for work to start on the central and eastern routes.
The western route, which would run at an average altitude of 3,000m to 4,000m across the Tibetan plateau to help irrigate the Yellow River basin, has been deemed too difficult to start for now.
Officials in Tianjin are so sceptical of the eastern route's ability to deliver drinkable water that they are looking at desalination as an alternative.
Planners have more hope for the central route, though the engineering is a much greater challenge - the canal has to be built from scratch, with 1,774 structures along its length to channel the water, since there is no pre-existing waterway like the Grand Canal to follow.
At the start of the route, the water level of the Danjiangkou Reservoir on the Han River has been raised 13m to 170m so the water can flow downhill to Beijing. The government said the rising waters and a need to combat soil erosion required moving 130,000 farmers last year from around the reservoir. Similar relocations are taking place all along the main channel, which runs through four provinces.
Forced relocations, though, could pale next to larger fallouts from the project. 'We feel we are still unsure how the project is going to impact on the environment, ecologies, economies and society at large,' said Dr Du, the geographer in Wuhan, who carefully added that he was not outrightly opposed to the project.
In a paper published in the Bulletin of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dr Du and two co-authors estimated that the diversion project would reduce the flow of the middle and lower stretches of the Han significantly.
The demands of the north will not abate. Migration from rural areas means Beijing's population is growing by one million every two years, according to an estimate in an essay in China Daily, written last October by population development scholar Hou Dongmin.
'With its dwindling water resources, Beijing cannot sustain a larger population,' he said. 'Instead, it should make serious efforts to control the population, if not reduce it.'
Beijing has about 100 cu m of water available per person. According to a standard adopted by the United Nations, that is just a fraction of the 1,000 cu m per person that indicates chronic water scarcity.
Planning Beijing's growth by the State Council up to 2020 already assumes the water diversion will work, rather than planning growth with much less water, said Mr Wang, the former official.
'Instead of transferring water to meet the growing demand of a city, we should decide the size of a city according to how much water resources it has,' he said. 'People's desire for development has no end.'
NEW YORK TIMES
Jun 18, 2011
Water transfer project no cure-all for waste
By Ho Ai Li
I WAS in Hubei talking to farmers who had to make way for a plan to pipe water from central Hubei to northern cities such as Beijing.
A neatly dressed man who said he was an official approached me and asked to see my press card. Another official was on his way and wanted to 'have a meal' with me, I was told, as he copied down my details. Never mind that it was 3pm and too hot to eat.
The man left. The villagers asked me to do the same. 'Get out before they stop you,' warned one of them.
Later, I was told villagers elsewhere had clammed up in front of reporters; others answered reporters' questions nervously in the presence of officials.
Their fear is understandable.
For the plan, called Nanshui Beidiao, or North-South Water Diversion, has come under even more scrutiny, what with severe droughts draining Hubei, the province of a thousand lakes.
A rare admission by Beijing last month that the Three Gorges Dam has led to serious problems has also raised doubts about the transfer, dwarfed only in scale by the dam.
On May 18, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao chaired a State Council meeting to look into 'urgent' environmental problems caused by the building of the dam, the world's largest hydroelectric project.
Underlining the severity of the problems, the State Council has set aside 100 billion yuan (S$19 billion) - about two-fifths the cost of the 254 billion yuan spent to build the dam - to repair the damage. Among other things, the Three Gorges project has left surrounding river banks more prone to landslides and earthquakes. It has also displaced at least 1.2 million people.
Much of the money will be used to compensate the people whose lives were disrupted by the move. Corrupt officials siphoned off some money meant for them. A state probe found that 12 per cent of the resettlement budget was pocketed by officials in 1999.
The worry is whether farmers living around the Danjiangkou Reservoir, one of Asia's largest and the source of water to be sent to Beijing, will encounter the same problems. One resettled farmer told me he was unhappy with the quality of his new dwellings and suspected that it was made of materials cheaper than promised. He and other farmers also wonder whether the water transfer project will cause similar environmental problems as the dam.
Projected to cost US$62 billion (S$76 billion), twice as much as the Three Gorges Dam, the water transfer is the largest water diversion project in the world. When ready by 2050, the water routes will span 4,350km - the approximate distance between Singapore and Beijing.
Under the plan, water will be piped from the south to the north via three routes - eastern, central and western. Water will be pumped into cities such as Beijing and Tianjin, and also north-western parts like Gansu and Inner Mongolia. Transferring water to these arid areas will boost industries, proponents of the plan say. Its supporters included Chairman Mao Zedong himself, who famously declared back in 1952: 'The south has a lot of water, the north little. If possible, it's fine to lend a little water.'
But what was the case in Mao's days nearly six decades ago might be changing.
Climate change has made rainfall unpredictable, noted Mr Peter Bosshard, policy director of California-based environmental group International Rivers. He said: 'Already, people and the eco-system in the lower Yangtze basin are crying out for water. How can you withdraw so much water to send to Beijing?'
Indeed, the south is getting drier - total freshwater reserves in the Yangtze went down to 172 billion cubic metres in 2009, a drop of 17 per cent from 2005.
Problems with pollution have also surfaced. Water pumped via the eastern canal from Yangzhou to Tianjin is expected to be so costly and polluted that the Tianjin authorities are looking at the desalination of seawater as an alternative instead.
Enormous infrastructure projects such as the water diversion scheme reflect the top Chinese leaders' penchant for engineering solutions, said Mr Bosshard, noting that many of them are trained engineers.
Indeed, China has traditionally sought ways to increase the supply of water rather than to manage demand.
Such massive solutions obscure the need for smaller efforts to change individuals' behaviour. Some city dwellers have little sense of the sacrifices made by their poorer cousins in the countryside just so that they don't have to fret about water.
A Chinese reporter recounted a meeting with a Beijing woman who threw away a half-drunk bottle of mineral water, saying it was too heavy to carry and would ruin the shape of her handbag. She said there was no need to worry about the capital running out of water - the North-South Water Diversion will come to its rescue. That is typical of the blind faith that many city dwellers in Beijing have in the water transfer to quench their thirst.
But, in fact, they are already living on borrowed water. The city drains the resource from nearby provinces like Hebei, as well as from beneath the ground.
In a country known for social campaigns, little has been done to drive home the message that water is precious. Nor is the operation of snow parks, spas and golf courses - which use a lot of water for leisure purposes - curtailed in the capital.
The water diversion project is seen to be a lifeline supplying Beijing with one billion cubic metres of water a year, almost a third of the amount it used up in 2009. But it is no cure-all that allows city folk to fritter away water with abandon. Unless a mindset change is engineered among people, no amount of water siphoned from the south will be able to quench their thirst for more.
hoaili@sph.com.sg
Jury still out on HK minimum wage
Jun 17, 2011
Pay goes up for some workers but employers also find ways to get round the new law
By Lee Choo Kiong
WHEN the announcement of an impending pay rise came, it put Madam Lui Ping Zyu on tenterhooks. Instead of looking forward to a higher salary, she started fearing that she could lose her job.
That was last month, when Hong Kong's statutory minimum wage kicked in, mandating employers pay all workers at least HK$28 (S$4.50) an hour.
'I was happy when it was first announced,' recalled the 50-year-old laundry worker. 'But then I wondered if my boss would resort to reducing staff benefits to cut costs.'
Fortunately, she kept her job, and saw her pay go up from HK$6,000 a month - which was based on an hourly rate of HK$20 - to HK$7,000 now.
Although Madam Lui lost some benefits, like paid rest days, said she is still better off with the Minimum Wage Ordinance, which the Hong Kong government introduced to improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of workers struggling at the lower rungs of society. Many blue-collar workers like her have benefited similarly. Security guards, for instance, have seen their salaries shoot up by HK$2,000 overnight from around HK$6,000.
But, as Madam Lui found out, the new minimum wage rule has brought worries of its own, for employees as well as employers. Industry players told The Straits Times that it is upsetting the fundamentals of Hong Kong's job market.
'Fresh graduates take home about HK$10,000 a month, which is close to what a poorly educated guard earns under the new policy. Is this fair?' said an industry watcher. 'When income does not commensurate with skills, the society will be bogged down.'
Employers have also found ways to get round the law, often to the detriment of workers.
'These days, more companies on the Hong Kong Labour Department's job-matching website are advertising cleaning jobs that pay exactly HK$5,824, which they derive by multiplying HK$28 by eight hours by 26 days,' noted Mr Mark Kwok, the labour affairs organiser at the Neighbourhood and Worker's Service Centre, a political group offering help to workers.
'But during the interview, they tell the candidates that they must report to work 30 minutes earlier to 'prepare', and knock off 30 minutes later to 'clean up'.'
Some are hiring more part-timers or 'freelancers' - essentially employees told to set up shell companies to do the same work for their old pay.
Disabled workers have been among the hardest hit. Before, their biggest edge over able-bodied counterparts was that they were willing to be paid below the market rate. But now, many are being shunned or even sacked, said Mr Cheung, webmaster of 5loaves2fish.com, a job portal for the needy and disabled. He declined to give his full name.
The government has, however, defended the new minimum wage law, noting that it has improved the earnings of hundreds of thousands of workers who used to draw less than HK$28 an hour.
According to figures from the Census and Statistics Department, there were about 273,800 workers in this category in the second quarter of last year.
While the Labour Department is reported to have uncovered six cases of workers being underpaid between June 1 and 7 - after the new law came into effect - the number of part-time vacancies has not risen significantly. There were 9,607 part-time vacancies in the private sector in April, which made up 16.4 per cent of the job market. It rose about 5 per cent to 10,113 last month, but that made up a smaller proportion of overall vacancies, at 15.3 per cent.
But some industry analysts are optimistic that employers will adapt to the new law - without breaking it. It is common, said Mr Vincent Koo, managing director of JobsDB Hong Kong, for bosses to take a 'cautious approach' at the initial stage.
He added: 'At this moment, employers would still be willing to maintain the existing labour force or increase headcount as the economy is picking up.'
leeck@sph.com.sg
Additional reporting by Jason Ou
Pay goes up for some workers but employers also find ways to get round the new law
By Lee Choo Kiong
WHEN the announcement of an impending pay rise came, it put Madam Lui Ping Zyu on tenterhooks. Instead of looking forward to a higher salary, she started fearing that she could lose her job.
That was last month, when Hong Kong's statutory minimum wage kicked in, mandating employers pay all workers at least HK$28 (S$4.50) an hour.
'I was happy when it was first announced,' recalled the 50-year-old laundry worker. 'But then I wondered if my boss would resort to reducing staff benefits to cut costs.'
Fortunately, she kept her job, and saw her pay go up from HK$6,000 a month - which was based on an hourly rate of HK$20 - to HK$7,000 now.
Although Madam Lui lost some benefits, like paid rest days, said she is still better off with the Minimum Wage Ordinance, which the Hong Kong government introduced to improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of workers struggling at the lower rungs of society. Many blue-collar workers like her have benefited similarly. Security guards, for instance, have seen their salaries shoot up by HK$2,000 overnight from around HK$6,000.
But, as Madam Lui found out, the new minimum wage rule has brought worries of its own, for employees as well as employers. Industry players told The Straits Times that it is upsetting the fundamentals of Hong Kong's job market.
'Fresh graduates take home about HK$10,000 a month, which is close to what a poorly educated guard earns under the new policy. Is this fair?' said an industry watcher. 'When income does not commensurate with skills, the society will be bogged down.'
Employers have also found ways to get round the law, often to the detriment of workers.
'These days, more companies on the Hong Kong Labour Department's job-matching website are advertising cleaning jobs that pay exactly HK$5,824, which they derive by multiplying HK$28 by eight hours by 26 days,' noted Mr Mark Kwok, the labour affairs organiser at the Neighbourhood and Worker's Service Centre, a political group offering help to workers.
'But during the interview, they tell the candidates that they must report to work 30 minutes earlier to 'prepare', and knock off 30 minutes later to 'clean up'.'
Some are hiring more part-timers or 'freelancers' - essentially employees told to set up shell companies to do the same work for their old pay.
Disabled workers have been among the hardest hit. Before, their biggest edge over able-bodied counterparts was that they were willing to be paid below the market rate. But now, many are being shunned or even sacked, said Mr Cheung, webmaster of 5loaves2fish.com, a job portal for the needy and disabled. He declined to give his full name.
The government has, however, defended the new minimum wage law, noting that it has improved the earnings of hundreds of thousands of workers who used to draw less than HK$28 an hour.
According to figures from the Census and Statistics Department, there were about 273,800 workers in this category in the second quarter of last year.
While the Labour Department is reported to have uncovered six cases of workers being underpaid between June 1 and 7 - after the new law came into effect - the number of part-time vacancies has not risen significantly. There were 9,607 part-time vacancies in the private sector in April, which made up 16.4 per cent of the job market. It rose about 5 per cent to 10,113 last month, but that made up a smaller proportion of overall vacancies, at 15.3 per cent.
But some industry analysts are optimistic that employers will adapt to the new law - without breaking it. It is common, said Mr Vincent Koo, managing director of JobsDB Hong Kong, for bosses to take a 'cautious approach' at the initial stage.
He added: 'At this moment, employers would still be willing to maintain the existing labour force or increase headcount as the economy is picking up.'
leeck@sph.com.sg
Additional reporting by Jason Ou
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Two languages, one purpose
Jun 16, 2011
RELIGION AND THE PUBLIC SPACE
By William F. Vendley
THE elderly Venerable Tep Vong, the Supreme Patriarch of the Buddhist community in Cambodia, travelled to Jaffna in Sri Lanka in the midst of the recent civil war.
In a broken city under siege, he joined others - Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims and Christians - to try to bring a peaceful end to the violent separatist conflict.
The force of his quiet Buddhist resolve was unmistakable. Yet, he never quoted a single Buddhist scripture. He spoke, instead, in the plainest of ordinary words.
Who would have thought that speaking plainly in ordinary language is revolutionary? But for many religious communities, it is.
The revolution consists of the growth of multi-religious action based upon ancient religious meanings, but using new ways to communicate across religious lines.
The evidence, if you look, is everywhere: war zones, places of extreme poverty, schools and regular neighbourhoods. Religiously fanatical forces capture headlines, but the big story is that religious communities are actively cooperating on a scale until recently unimaginable.
Shoulder-to-shoulder on the front lines of today's challenges, multi-religious cooperation is mainstream and it is growing.
What's up? Have religious communities decided to blur their distinctive identities, drop their doctrinal differences and jettison the transcendent to flatten themselves into merely humanistic organisations? Hardly.
They are holding fast to defining differences in relationship to the transcendent, but they are also working together. It is the successful melding of these two - real religious differences and positive cooperation - on an ever-greater scale that is revolutionary.
A key to understanding the underlying revolution is the fact that today's religious communities are increasingly 'bilingual'.
A double image illustrates the new bilingualism. In the 1960s, American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr preached to a small Christian church about the scourge of racism. He used the language of Christianity - its scriptures, images, theologies, prayers and other customs. He spoke to Christians as a Christian in their own religious language.
Now follow King to his famous 'I have a dream' speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, where he spoke with conviction on racism to hundreds of thousands of people, some of whom held different - or no - religious beliefs.
King remained the same religious man. He did not change as he walked from church to public mall. But he couldn't just repeat the sermon given in his little church.
Many of the people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial did not share the language of his church. Instead, King spoke in the language of the public square. He never ceased being a believer. But in the different circumstances of church and public square, he expressed his religiously rooted care in two distinct ways. He was religiously bilingual.
Many religious communities are rapidly gaining this same bilingual skill. They keep their own religious language for exchange and action within their communities, but use ordinary language for the same purpose in the public space.
Dr Mustafa Ceric, the Grand Mufti of Bosnia-Herzegovina, led his Islamic community towards healing and reconciliation after the bitter trauma of civil war. To do so, he first worked as a Muslim among Muslims, using the riches of Islamic language, including its scriptures and traditions.
But together with Roman Catholic Cardinal Puljic, Serbian Orthodox Metropolitan Nikolai and Jewish leader Jakob Finci, he also worked in a shared public language to offer the exhausted nation a common vision of unity that called all to action. In the aftermath of the pain of war, bilingualism helped harness the powers of each religious community to cooperate to build the nation.
Both sectarian religious and public languages are irreplaceably important for religious communities in our globalised world. Neither can be collapsed into the other without impoverishing a religious community's ability to both know itself and to act upon its deepest possibilities for care in today's pluralistic world.
A revolution is under way because more and more religious communities have acquired the remarkable ability to switch from the language of the temple, synagogue, mosque, church or gurdwara to the language of the public square.
Discourse in both languages is required for us to have diverse religious communities composed of well-informed members with durable moral sensibilities, who can find a medium for collaboration with people of all faiths, or none at all, in facing the global challenges of our day.
The writer is secretary-general of the United States-based Religions For Peace, a multi-religious international organisation. This is the concluding essay in the Religion And The Public Space series.
RELIGION AND THE PUBLIC SPACE
By William F. Vendley
THE elderly Venerable Tep Vong, the Supreme Patriarch of the Buddhist community in Cambodia, travelled to Jaffna in Sri Lanka in the midst of the recent civil war.
In a broken city under siege, he joined others - Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims and Christians - to try to bring a peaceful end to the violent separatist conflict.
The force of his quiet Buddhist resolve was unmistakable. Yet, he never quoted a single Buddhist scripture. He spoke, instead, in the plainest of ordinary words.
Who would have thought that speaking plainly in ordinary language is revolutionary? But for many religious communities, it is.
The revolution consists of the growth of multi-religious action based upon ancient religious meanings, but using new ways to communicate across religious lines.
The evidence, if you look, is everywhere: war zones, places of extreme poverty, schools and regular neighbourhoods. Religiously fanatical forces capture headlines, but the big story is that religious communities are actively cooperating on a scale until recently unimaginable.
Shoulder-to-shoulder on the front lines of today's challenges, multi-religious cooperation is mainstream and it is growing.
What's up? Have religious communities decided to blur their distinctive identities, drop their doctrinal differences and jettison the transcendent to flatten themselves into merely humanistic organisations? Hardly.
They are holding fast to defining differences in relationship to the transcendent, but they are also working together. It is the successful melding of these two - real religious differences and positive cooperation - on an ever-greater scale that is revolutionary.
A key to understanding the underlying revolution is the fact that today's religious communities are increasingly 'bilingual'.
A double image illustrates the new bilingualism. In the 1960s, American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr preached to a small Christian church about the scourge of racism. He used the language of Christianity - its scriptures, images, theologies, prayers and other customs. He spoke to Christians as a Christian in their own religious language.
Now follow King to his famous 'I have a dream' speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, where he spoke with conviction on racism to hundreds of thousands of people, some of whom held different - or no - religious beliefs.
King remained the same religious man. He did not change as he walked from church to public mall. But he couldn't just repeat the sermon given in his little church.
Many of the people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial did not share the language of his church. Instead, King spoke in the language of the public square. He never ceased being a believer. But in the different circumstances of church and public square, he expressed his religiously rooted care in two distinct ways. He was religiously bilingual.
Many religious communities are rapidly gaining this same bilingual skill. They keep their own religious language for exchange and action within their communities, but use ordinary language for the same purpose in the public space.
Dr Mustafa Ceric, the Grand Mufti of Bosnia-Herzegovina, led his Islamic community towards healing and reconciliation after the bitter trauma of civil war. To do so, he first worked as a Muslim among Muslims, using the riches of Islamic language, including its scriptures and traditions.
But together with Roman Catholic Cardinal Puljic, Serbian Orthodox Metropolitan Nikolai and Jewish leader Jakob Finci, he also worked in a shared public language to offer the exhausted nation a common vision of unity that called all to action. In the aftermath of the pain of war, bilingualism helped harness the powers of each religious community to cooperate to build the nation.
Both sectarian religious and public languages are irreplaceably important for religious communities in our globalised world. Neither can be collapsed into the other without impoverishing a religious community's ability to both know itself and to act upon its deepest possibilities for care in today's pluralistic world.
A revolution is under way because more and more religious communities have acquired the remarkable ability to switch from the language of the temple, synagogue, mosque, church or gurdwara to the language of the public square.
Discourse in both languages is required for us to have diverse religious communities composed of well-informed members with durable moral sensibilities, who can find a medium for collaboration with people of all faiths, or none at all, in facing the global challenges of our day.
The writer is secretary-general of the United States-based Religions For Peace, a multi-religious international organisation. This is the concluding essay in the Religion And The Public Space series.
Demystifying the presidential office
Jun 15, 2011
THINK-TANK
By Tommy Koh
NOW that the general election is behind us, the Singapore electorate is getting ready for another election.
The president's term expires on Aug 31. An election will therefore have to be held to elect a new president before the end of August. In this essay, I hope to demystify the office of the president and discuss some of his roles, functions and powers.
First, the president is the head of the state of Singapore. He occupies the same position as the British queen, the Malaysian king, and the Indian president - but with enhanced powers.
The president is not the head of government, who is the prime minister. The president is the symbol of the country.
THINK-TANK
By Tommy Koh
NOW that the general election is behind us, the Singapore electorate is getting ready for another election.
The president's term expires on Aug 31. An election will therefore have to be held to elect a new president before the end of August. In this essay, I hope to demystify the office of the president and discuss some of his roles, functions and powers.
First, the president is the head of the state of Singapore. He occupies the same position as the British queen, the Malaysian king, and the Indian president - but with enhanced powers.
The president is not the head of government, who is the prime minister. The president is the symbol of the country.
Monday, June 13, 2011
Why don't we ditch nukes and coal?
June 10, 2011
From The Straight Dope
Dear Cecil:
[Concerning your April column on whether nuclear power is safe:] Nuclear power sucks. Coal power sucks more. Boggles my mind that we don't just ditch them both and use options we know are better.
— Randvek, via the Straight Dope Message Board
Cecil replies:
Ah, a believer in alternative energy. You think if we build enough windmills, install enough solar panels, and distill enough ethanol from corn we'll be able to dispense with noxious energy sources such as coal and nuclear power. I admire this noble goal. One needs to ask, however, whether it's actually possible. Let's browse amongst the databases and see what we can find out.
Here's just the thing — a 2006 paper by MIT chemistry professor Daniel Nocera entitled "On the Future of Global Energy." Nocera's twofold ambition: one, to see how much energy the world is going to need by midcentury. Two, to figure out where we might get it. Glancing through this, Randvek, I have to be honest: things are looking a little grim.
The first thing we learn is that, according to UN experts, world population is expected to reach around nine billion people by midcentury and then stabilize. The stabilization part is good, if maybe surprising to those raised on scare talk about the population explosion. The bad part is that nine billion is two billion more than we've got now. Given that almost half the world lives on less than $2.50 a day as it is, you can appreciate that coming up with enough food, shelter, and yes, energy to keep everybody happy is going to present some challenges.
The second thing to understand is that we damn well better keep everybody happy. The projection that world population is going to stabilize is based on the observation that, as people become more urbanized and at least a little more prosperous, they have smaller families. That’s a worldwide trend. In Japan and much of Europe, in fact, the population is actually declining. The flip side is that if people remain impoverished villagers, they continue having big families and total world population keeps going up. In other words, a stable future is predicated on a modicum of global urban affluence. To the extent the world stays rural and poor, eventually much of it starves.
The third thing to understand is that the more affluent people become, the more energy they use. That doesn't necessarily mean U.S.-scale two-SUVs-and-a-vacation-home-type affluence. Most of the world would be content with, you know, running water and electric lights.
How much energy will that take? In 2002, Nocera points out, the global energy consumption rate was 13.5 terawatts. What will it be in 2050? If everybody were to burn through the juice at the current U.S. rate, Nocera calculates, we'd need 102 terawatts — seven times as much. Chances of our producing that: zero.
Instead, Nocera conservatively pegs annual global energy usage circa 2050 at between 28 terawatts — which assumes average consumption at the same rate as in present-day Poland — and 35 terawatts, roughly the rate now seen in Samoa. You may say: Samoa sounds like a lifestyle I could get used to. That’s sporting of you, but it still means we'll need about 15 to 20 more terawatts of energy than we're consuming right now.
Where will it come from? Nocera runs through some possibilities:
First, biomass. If we devote all the arable land on earth to energy production rather than food crops and presumably just don't eat, we could generate 7 to 10 terawatts.
Next, wind. If we build wind farms on 100 percent of the sufficiently windy land, we could produce 2.1 terawatts.
Third, hydroelectric. If we dam all the remaining rivers, we could come up with 0.7 to 2 additional terawatts.
Finally, nuclear. I know you don't like nukes, Randvek, but the professor's evident aim was to tote up all power sources that aren't net emitters of greenhouse gases. He thinks we could produce 8 terawatts by constructing 8,000 nuclear power plants, which would mean one new plant every two days for the next 40 years.
Total: around 18 to 22 terawatts. In other words, if we squeeze out every available watt of alternative energy on the planet, and build nukes at an impossibly aggressive rate, we'll barely keep up with the energy needed to support even a modest standard of living for the world's people.
In reality, we'll need to find additional energy somewhere. Nocera's solution is to push for a technological breakthrough in solar power, currently a relatively trivial contributor to the world energy mix. Good luck, seriously. Barring that, however, we're stuck with more coal, oil, and gas, and you know the problems with those.
My point isn't that the situation is hopeless, although it certainly gives one pause. All I'm saying is we need to dispense with the illusory notion of "alternative" energy, which suggests we'll get to be choosy about energy sources. Sorry, not going to happen. We'll have to use them all.
— Cecil Adams
Jun 13, 2011
Many at WEF feel nuclear energy is still relevant
By Zubaidah Nazeer
JAKARTA: Despite the horrors of the nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima reactors in Japan, leaders attending the World Economic Forum (WEF) on East Asia yesterday were loath to say 'no' to nuclear energy in Asia.
What is needed is just better technology and stricter regulation, said participants in one session of talks that included hedge fund managers, resource company chief executive officers (CEOs) and analysts.
Concerns over nuclear energy were raised after the crisis in Japan that saw the nuclear reactors exploding and engulfed in fire after the earthquake and tsunami in March.
However, many at the talks yesterday felt that energy from nuclear sources was necessary as a means of providing more power efficiently.
Ms Evita Legowo, director-general of oil and gas at the Energy and Mining Ministry in Indonesia, said that it would need only 0.02 tonnes of uranium versus 1,230 tonnes of oil to generate 1,000 megawatts of electricity.
Some countries like France, which has a large population and energy needs, rely on nuclear power as a practical energy source.
Though the general sentiment was that nuclear energy was still relevant, many also felt it was a case of 'not in my backyard', said the talk's moderator, Mr John Foley, Asia bureau chief of Reuters' breaking news section.
Mr Choo Chiau Beng, CEO of Singapore's Keppel Corporation, noted that it would be difficult for Singapore to find a site for a nuclear plant because if a worst-case scenario happened, such as a nuclear reactor explosion, people would have nowhere to evacuate to.
'It's not a choice for Singapore,' he said.
Indonesia, which had broached the idea of going nuclear, took a cautious approach.
In a separate discussion marking the opening ceremony of the WEF, the CEO of its state oil and gas company Pertamina, Ms Karen Agustiawan, said the country would not consider nuclear energy in the next decade or two, but could look more closely at it after that.
She said Pertamina would look at tapping the diverse sources of energy in Indonesia first, such as renewable energy in the form of biofuels and geothermal energy.
'Focusing on looking at (other sources of energy) does not always mean the option of using nuclear. We are open to all options of energy sources,' she said.
Should the population rise to 6.5m or 30% increase over the current 5m, and assuming power usage rises proportionally, peak demand would rise to 8,500 MW which would still be within our current power generation capacity... IF we can still fuel the power generation plant - assuming natural gas and other fuel prices do not rise prohibitively, and assuming no worldwide moratorium on fossil fuel or carbon emission laws.]
From The Straight Dope
Dear Cecil:
[Concerning your April column on whether nuclear power is safe:] Nuclear power sucks. Coal power sucks more. Boggles my mind that we don't just ditch them both and use options we know are better.
— Randvek, via the Straight Dope Message Board
Cecil replies:
Ah, a believer in alternative energy. You think if we build enough windmills, install enough solar panels, and distill enough ethanol from corn we'll be able to dispense with noxious energy sources such as coal and nuclear power. I admire this noble goal. One needs to ask, however, whether it's actually possible. Let's browse amongst the databases and see what we can find out.
Here's just the thing — a 2006 paper by MIT chemistry professor Daniel Nocera entitled "On the Future of Global Energy." Nocera's twofold ambition: one, to see how much energy the world is going to need by midcentury. Two, to figure out where we might get it. Glancing through this, Randvek, I have to be honest: things are looking a little grim.
The first thing we learn is that, according to UN experts, world population is expected to reach around nine billion people by midcentury and then stabilize. The stabilization part is good, if maybe surprising to those raised on scare talk about the population explosion. The bad part is that nine billion is two billion more than we've got now. Given that almost half the world lives on less than $2.50 a day as it is, you can appreciate that coming up with enough food, shelter, and yes, energy to keep everybody happy is going to present some challenges.
The second thing to understand is that we damn well better keep everybody happy. The projection that world population is going to stabilize is based on the observation that, as people become more urbanized and at least a little more prosperous, they have smaller families. That’s a worldwide trend. In Japan and much of Europe, in fact, the population is actually declining. The flip side is that if people remain impoverished villagers, they continue having big families and total world population keeps going up. In other words, a stable future is predicated on a modicum of global urban affluence. To the extent the world stays rural and poor, eventually much of it starves.
The third thing to understand is that the more affluent people become, the more energy they use. That doesn't necessarily mean U.S.-scale two-SUVs-and-a-vacation-home-type affluence. Most of the world would be content with, you know, running water and electric lights.
How much energy will that take? In 2002, Nocera points out, the global energy consumption rate was 13.5 terawatts. What will it be in 2050? If everybody were to burn through the juice at the current U.S. rate, Nocera calculates, we'd need 102 terawatts — seven times as much. Chances of our producing that: zero.
Instead, Nocera conservatively pegs annual global energy usage circa 2050 at between 28 terawatts — which assumes average consumption at the same rate as in present-day Poland — and 35 terawatts, roughly the rate now seen in Samoa. You may say: Samoa sounds like a lifestyle I could get used to. That’s sporting of you, but it still means we'll need about 15 to 20 more terawatts of energy than we're consuming right now.
Where will it come from? Nocera runs through some possibilities:
First, biomass. If we devote all the arable land on earth to energy production rather than food crops and presumably just don't eat, we could generate 7 to 10 terawatts.
Next, wind. If we build wind farms on 100 percent of the sufficiently windy land, we could produce 2.1 terawatts.
Third, hydroelectric. If we dam all the remaining rivers, we could come up with 0.7 to 2 additional terawatts.
Finally, nuclear. I know you don't like nukes, Randvek, but the professor's evident aim was to tote up all power sources that aren't net emitters of greenhouse gases. He thinks we could produce 8 terawatts by constructing 8,000 nuclear power plants, which would mean one new plant every two days for the next 40 years.
Total: around 18 to 22 terawatts. In other words, if we squeeze out every available watt of alternative energy on the planet, and build nukes at an impossibly aggressive rate, we'll barely keep up with the energy needed to support even a modest standard of living for the world's people.
In reality, we'll need to find additional energy somewhere. Nocera's solution is to push for a technological breakthrough in solar power, currently a relatively trivial contributor to the world energy mix. Good luck, seriously. Barring that, however, we're stuck with more coal, oil, and gas, and you know the problems with those.
My point isn't that the situation is hopeless, although it certainly gives one pause. All I'm saying is we need to dispense with the illusory notion of "alternative" energy, which suggests we'll get to be choosy about energy sources. Sorry, not going to happen. We'll have to use them all.
— Cecil Adams
Jun 13, 2011
Many at WEF feel nuclear energy is still relevant
By Zubaidah Nazeer
JAKARTA: Despite the horrors of the nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima reactors in Japan, leaders attending the World Economic Forum (WEF) on East Asia yesterday were loath to say 'no' to nuclear energy in Asia.
What is needed is just better technology and stricter regulation, said participants in one session of talks that included hedge fund managers, resource company chief executive officers (CEOs) and analysts.
Concerns over nuclear energy were raised after the crisis in Japan that saw the nuclear reactors exploding and engulfed in fire after the earthquake and tsunami in March.
However, many at the talks yesterday felt that energy from nuclear sources was necessary as a means of providing more power efficiently.
Ms Evita Legowo, director-general of oil and gas at the Energy and Mining Ministry in Indonesia, said that it would need only 0.02 tonnes of uranium versus 1,230 tonnes of oil to generate 1,000 megawatts of electricity.
Some countries like France, which has a large population and energy needs, rely on nuclear power as a practical energy source.
Though the general sentiment was that nuclear energy was still relevant, many also felt it was a case of 'not in my backyard', said the talk's moderator, Mr John Foley, Asia bureau chief of Reuters' breaking news section.
Mr Choo Chiau Beng, CEO of Singapore's Keppel Corporation, noted that it would be difficult for Singapore to find a site for a nuclear plant because if a worst-case scenario happened, such as a nuclear reactor explosion, people would have nowhere to evacuate to.
'It's not a choice for Singapore,' he said.
Indonesia, which had broached the idea of going nuclear, took a cautious approach.
In a separate discussion marking the opening ceremony of the WEF, the CEO of its state oil and gas company Pertamina, Ms Karen Agustiawan, said the country would not consider nuclear energy in the next decade or two, but could look more closely at it after that.
She said Pertamina would look at tapping the diverse sources of energy in Indonesia first, such as renewable energy in the form of biofuels and geothermal energy.
'Focusing on looking at (other sources of energy) does not always mean the option of using nuclear. We are open to all options of energy sources,' she said.
[Currently, Singapore is using about 40 million MWh per year. Our estimated full capacity is 86m MWh per year (9,800 MWh). However, Peak usage currently is 6,500 MWh.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
US should bank on rebuilding
Jun 11, 2011
By Fareed Zakaria
EVERY week brings fresh evidence that America's unemployment crisis is much deeper and more systemic than predicted - yet Washington seems unwilling or unable to do anything about it.
Fears over the budget deficit and a dysfunctional political climate have paralysed people on both sides of the political aisle. The result is that America is 'sleepwalking' through its biggest crisis, writes Mr Mohamed El-Erian, the low-key chief executive of Pimco, a global management investment fund.
About 24 million Americans are unemployed or underemployed (the latter in part-time jobs that average US$19,000 (S$23,000), half the median wage). If these people don't find jobs soon, they will lose skills and work habits and become permanently unemployable, with grim consequences for their families, communities and the country. And if job growth does not pick up significantly, tax revenue will stay depressed, unemployment costs will rise and the deficit will balloon well beyond current projections.
America still seems to be hoping that somehow this problem will resolve itself, but it won't. Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke explained this week that the economy has gone through the worst financial crisis and the deepest housing collapse since the Great Depression.
In fact, the problem is even worse. Employment growth has been stalled since 2000. If not for the housing and credit bubble, this jobs crisis would have revealed itself much earlier.
It's a new world for the American worker. Technological change and globalisation allow companies to get more output with fewer workers. Emerging markets provide millions of skilled workers who can produce the same products at a fraction of the price that Americans can. The Bureau of Labour Statistics notes that from 1947 till 2000, productivity growth was correlated with employment growth. Since 2000, they have diverged. Productivity has risen while employment has fallen. The Nobel Prize-winning economist Michael Spence has concluded that in the United States, growth and employment will diverge in the future.
Does this mean that America is stuck in a low-growth, low-employment future? No, but the crisis is structural, and Americans have to recognise its scope and urgency. 'Shutting off the alarm and pulling the blanket over one's head is not a solution,' says Mr El-Erian.
Republican concerns about government spending over the long term are understandable, but cutting spending in the short run will result in more unemployment and slower growth. President Barack Obama talks about jobs but seems too paralysed to do something ambitious to help create them. Even Mr Bernanke said this week that there isn't much he could do about the slow-growth, high-unemployment trajectory America is on. Have Americans all become fatalists?
In fact, Washington could enact some measures that would spur job creation, many with a limited effect on the deficit. Most immediately, it needs to find ways to employ the millions of workers whose jobs disappeared with the housing bust. The simplest way to help them, and the country, would be to create a national infrastructure bank to repair and rebuild America's infrastructure - which is in a shambles and ranks 23rd globally, according to the World Economic Forum - down from sixth only a decade ago.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has played down this proposal as just more stimulus, but if Republicans set aside ideology they would see it is actually an opportunity to push for two of their favourite ideas: privatisation and the elimination of earmarks.
The US builds infrastructure in a remarkably socialist manner; the government funds, builds and operates almost all of it. In many countries in Europe and Asia, the private sector plays a large role in financing and operation of roads, highways, railways and airports, as well as other public resources. An infrastructure bank would create a mechanism by which such private-sector participation would become possible in the US as well. Yes, some public money would be involved, mostly through issuing bonds, but such projects, with huge long-term payoffs, could genuinely be called investments, not expenditure.
A national infrastructure bank would also address a legitimate complaint of the Tea Party - earmarks. One of the reasons federal spending has been inefficient is that Congress spreads money around in ways that make political sense but are economically inefficient. An infrastructure bank would make these decisions using cost-benefit analysis, in a meritocratic system, rather than basing decisions on patronage and whimsy.
The US needs much more: a revival of manufacturing, emphasising technical training and apprenticeship programmes; aggressive measures to promote those industries that are booming, such as entertainment and tourism; an expansion of retraining; streamlining the patent process; more visas for skilled immigrants to stay and create companies and jobs. These should be part of a national plan for jobs that President Obama must lay out soon. But start with something that would have an immediate impact and put people back to work - the rebuilding of America.
WASHINGTON POST WRITERS GROUP
By Fareed Zakaria
EVERY week brings fresh evidence that America's unemployment crisis is much deeper and more systemic than predicted - yet Washington seems unwilling or unable to do anything about it.
Fears over the budget deficit and a dysfunctional political climate have paralysed people on both sides of the political aisle. The result is that America is 'sleepwalking' through its biggest crisis, writes Mr Mohamed El-Erian, the low-key chief executive of Pimco, a global management investment fund.
About 24 million Americans are unemployed or underemployed (the latter in part-time jobs that average US$19,000 (S$23,000), half the median wage). If these people don't find jobs soon, they will lose skills and work habits and become permanently unemployable, with grim consequences for their families, communities and the country. And if job growth does not pick up significantly, tax revenue will stay depressed, unemployment costs will rise and the deficit will balloon well beyond current projections.
America still seems to be hoping that somehow this problem will resolve itself, but it won't. Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke explained this week that the economy has gone through the worst financial crisis and the deepest housing collapse since the Great Depression.
In fact, the problem is even worse. Employment growth has been stalled since 2000. If not for the housing and credit bubble, this jobs crisis would have revealed itself much earlier.
It's a new world for the American worker. Technological change and globalisation allow companies to get more output with fewer workers. Emerging markets provide millions of skilled workers who can produce the same products at a fraction of the price that Americans can. The Bureau of Labour Statistics notes that from 1947 till 2000, productivity growth was correlated with employment growth. Since 2000, they have diverged. Productivity has risen while employment has fallen. The Nobel Prize-winning economist Michael Spence has concluded that in the United States, growth and employment will diverge in the future.
Does this mean that America is stuck in a low-growth, low-employment future? No, but the crisis is structural, and Americans have to recognise its scope and urgency. 'Shutting off the alarm and pulling the blanket over one's head is not a solution,' says Mr El-Erian.
Republican concerns about government spending over the long term are understandable, but cutting spending in the short run will result in more unemployment and slower growth. President Barack Obama talks about jobs but seems too paralysed to do something ambitious to help create them. Even Mr Bernanke said this week that there isn't much he could do about the slow-growth, high-unemployment trajectory America is on. Have Americans all become fatalists?
In fact, Washington could enact some measures that would spur job creation, many with a limited effect on the deficit. Most immediately, it needs to find ways to employ the millions of workers whose jobs disappeared with the housing bust. The simplest way to help them, and the country, would be to create a national infrastructure bank to repair and rebuild America's infrastructure - which is in a shambles and ranks 23rd globally, according to the World Economic Forum - down from sixth only a decade ago.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has played down this proposal as just more stimulus, but if Republicans set aside ideology they would see it is actually an opportunity to push for two of their favourite ideas: privatisation and the elimination of earmarks.
The US builds infrastructure in a remarkably socialist manner; the government funds, builds and operates almost all of it. In many countries in Europe and Asia, the private sector plays a large role in financing and operation of roads, highways, railways and airports, as well as other public resources. An infrastructure bank would create a mechanism by which such private-sector participation would become possible in the US as well. Yes, some public money would be involved, mostly through issuing bonds, but such projects, with huge long-term payoffs, could genuinely be called investments, not expenditure.
A national infrastructure bank would also address a legitimate complaint of the Tea Party - earmarks. One of the reasons federal spending has been inefficient is that Congress spreads money around in ways that make political sense but are economically inefficient. An infrastructure bank would make these decisions using cost-benefit analysis, in a meritocratic system, rather than basing decisions on patronage and whimsy.
The US needs much more: a revival of manufacturing, emphasising technical training and apprenticeship programmes; aggressive measures to promote those industries that are booming, such as entertainment and tourism; an expansion of retraining; streamlining the patent process; more visas for skilled immigrants to stay and create companies and jobs. These should be part of a national plan for jobs that President Obama must lay out soon. But start with something that would have an immediate impact and put people back to work - the rebuilding of America.
WASHINGTON POST WRITERS GROUP
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