Rant 1041 / Babby Nuts

LKY again urges Singaporeans to procreate.

Talk is easy, sir.

One problem is that young couples worry that having children will dramatically affect their current lifestyle. The current subsidies are simply not effective at reducing this issue. For example, the baby bonus is nothing compared to the rest of the costs of raising a child. This is a long term issue that requires a long term answer; one-off aids will not work.

IMHO the priority given to this must be roughly the same as what is given to public education. After all, what's the point of a good education system if there are not going to be a lot of local students? If you just want to make money off foreign students, you should just privatise everything and let capitalism work its magic.

In other words, why not consider setting up at least a whole department within one of the ministries just for procreation? If you're desperate, that's an extreme measure right there.

Otherwise, there are other extreme measures that could work.

For one, instead of subsidising public education, make it free for citizens. Furthermore, make all textbooks, work books and a specific amount of stationery free every year up till the tertiary education level. C'mon, this is nothing compared to what Mindef is forking out for our soldiers, although to be fair, Mindef only has to do it for slightly over a decade per batch and it's mostly for guys, ie half the generation.

In addition, provide child care services and school meals for free.

You want to let couples stop worrying if their kids will change their lifestyles and kill their budgets? That's how. Even if you give ten thousand bucks per baby, that's still going to be nothing.

All the ministers have their own families, so they should know.

Seriously, I'm only one step away from suggesting that we have 24/7 child care services that might as well be a national orphange, except everyone knows who their parents are from birth.

Y'know what? If you're desperate enough about raising our birth rates, you could consider even that. Have huge residential areas specially for our next generations where they live under the supervision of government-funded specialists. Like boarding schools but on a much larger scale.

How about that?

And this will obviously be subsidised for citizens.

See where I'm going?

Younger people do not want all that commitment. Plain and simple. You reduce that, and babies will pop out.

Having one child is a pain; having two or more is a leading source of hair problems.

Don't look down on the younger generation for hating that extra commitment. They aren't as free as their parents were. Adults today have lots of things to do, other than working OT.

All the different forms of entertainment, like spas, KTV, theatres, iFly and etc, these are the reasons our capitalistic world works and these are the reasons we need a lot of time for ourselves. We just have so many things to do, so many things to spend money on.

So you want our money machine of a society to work and still encourage young educated (ie making decent money) couples to have kids?

You better have some seriously badass incentives waiting, because that's what it's going to take to compensate for a minimum of 18 years of pure commitment per baby per parent from people who are going to be in senior management in a decade or two.

36 man-years, buddy. Thirty-fucking-six.

You think a few tens of thousands of dollars' worth of cash and subsidies will do the trick?

Dream on, sir. Dream. On.






Where will the money come from? Why? I don't know. That's what your bean counters and top-grade ministers are for, aren't they?

I'm talking about pay cuts.