- To be a free agent nation . 80% of the people works as a contractor, temporary job, or micro-businesses (with 3-4 people). The goal is to make every industries either a blend of oligopoly and monopolistic competition. In essence, there’s a long tail of small businesses serving the niches that the market giants fail to serve.

- Office buildings to be set up at residential areas to relieve traffic congestion from the city centre. More online stores to reduce the reliance on our natural constraint of lack of space. More home businesses consultancies to be set up. Startup hubs with decent facilities and contacts could be set up to encourage collaboration between different companies.

Social Welfare

- Waiver of GST on medical facilities, school fees, and costs (with the exception of cosmetic surgeries such as LASIK). These are basic welfare necessities that citizens should be entitled to.

- Families whose income per family member under S$800-$1000 to have their utilities bills waived for a certain reasonable limit, such as $50/pax.

- Increase in minimum wage of blue-collar workers. Local (Singapore citizen or PR) workers to be increased to S$9/hr and foreign workers to increase to S$12 per hour.

Transportation

- Privatizing feeder-bus services in Singapore. It is a waste to have large single-deck buses with unused capacity going around during off-peak hours. It would be more beneficial to have private mini-buses (capacity of 8-16 pax) at 2-3 minutes interval going between towns. The extra feeder buses that are freed up could be used to serve the public more extensively during peak hours.

- Carpool lanes in expressways, and heavily congested roads. ERP to be waived for carpool lanes. Implementing bus-lanes on heavy traffic roads (such as Marymount Road)

- Taxi-bus door-to-door transportation service available. Consumer can book a cab online or through phone SMS (no booking charges) and receive a fixed quote and expected time and pickup location which will be charged to his online account automatically.

- Increase in COE prices by 70%, except for vehicles registered by businesses. This will reduce the number of cars on the roads.

Technology

- S$10-$20/month for unlimited mobile data plans usage. 100MB mobile data plans included in all mobile plans. Mobile companies are hurting their profits if they fail to even encourage their customers to try out their mobile service. Think about it. Would you have such a heavy volume of SMS without the extensive number of free messages that comes embedded in your service?

- The ability for us to receive our credit card and utilities bills or statements online. (And to give us the option to stop paper-delivery of our statements). The ability to receive free itemized billing if we take up the option of online-delivery of our bills.

- The ability for us to view up to 7 years of financial transactions with our bank accounts. Not the pathetic 2 months that we currently have now.

However, I believe a common sales tax-rate across the board punishes the middle-class and lower-income families un-necessary. Ideally, we need a tiered sales-tax system. To start off, the tax system have to distinguish between the needs and luxurious items that we consume. Healthcare (excluding cosmetic healthcare), Groceries, insurance services, and “non-restaurants and cafes” F&B and “compulsory” school textbooks should be exempted from the GST. In its place, a GST of 15-20% could be imposed on luxurious items exceeding a certain value which “provides limited benefits on top and over that of another non-branded consumption good.” Examples of such taxes could be made on luxurious vehicles or housing which exceed the certain stipulated fair-value. However, this would most likely be met with huge protests by the multinationals, who might threaten to abandon their operations in our country.

I did not like the idea of the government relaxing the prices on the COE, only to raise prices on the ERP later. It caused more congestion, and only increased the cost of living. We are no better off than before. It does not make sense for new car-owners to sell their cars as easily as the ERP rates are revised. There are too many tiers of cash outflows from owning a car in Singapore.

Perhaps a change also needs to be made for us to have a steeper progressive income-tax system. However the risks of having the rich leave the country to maintain their extravagant lifestyles would be a key concern. The next key question to ask is – How will Singapore be impacted when the top 20% of the rich leaves the country? Will we be better off, or worse off? I don’t know the answer to that question, and what it could imply.

If you believe that leaving the country is the way to go, I advise you to think again. Rising costs, and the lack of job security is a world-wide problem. The effects of globalization will eventually haunt any nation that fails to keep up with the rest of the world in terms of competitiveness.

Let me try to examine Singapore’s key concerns. The first problem is brain-drain, where the rich and/or smart leaves the country in search of better prospects. The second problem is the over-reliance of our economy on big foreign corporations. We have to fragment the economy by breaking it up into a strong network of small businesses, which is independent of the help of the government. We have to look further, think further and move faster. Yes. I’m going to preach about entrepreneurship again.

When you think about entrepreneurship, think beyond starting a consumer/retail trading business (import/export), or F&B that is constrained by space. The morals of these business are not wrong, but they are fundamentally flawed. The largest constraint on trading and F&B busineses are in rental prices and import-based inflation, which is Singapore’s weakness. Any business we should start need to follow at least one of these 3 factors:

1. Scalable – The ability to accomodate growth in your business with minimal space and human resource constraints. To keep it simple, think of your email or webhosting providers. In essence scalability involves technology.

2. Service-based – Where you charge by the hour for some intangible services, such as graphics design, programming, development, research, writing etc. This relates more to consulting services, or freelance services.

3. Passive-income generating – Where you earn income without being actively involved. This normally relates to financial investments, royalties from selling books, affiliate marketing, or advertising revenue. Imagine a writer has to write a book once, and he receives income for every copy that sells without putting in any work.

The point is – We should not worry about affairs that we cannot change directly. It’s time for us to start thinking what we really want to work as, and how we can provide our own financial and job security without depending on multinational corporations.

Note: Apologies for the lack of coherence, the grammatical errors, and for losing my focus halfway through. I did not get to put my arguments as strong I liked. I personally find that this is quite a bad write-up, but I have no wish to continue further.

The Seiko-Epson Ebook Reader”

The next industry to protest against technology after RIAA is the publishing industry. Not that they have not made any noise so far. Check out the complains of Association of American Publishers , Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers and Authors Guild. on Google’s Print Publishing.

The Wifi-enabled Ebook reader of the future. You download your daily newsfeed or e-Newspaper to read on the go. Your e-magazines subscriptions are sent to you via these feeds. Stock market and analysts reports are sent to you, not unlike the way you receive SMS on your mobile phone. You will check your emails on the go, and reply your mails using a touch-screen keyboard.

Your kids need not tug along a 10kg heavy bag full of textbooks when they goes to school – And he will never ever forget to bring his books. The school bookstores no longer holds a monopoly over the books. College students need not queue up at absurd long queues at their school bookstores when the semester starts.

There will be a revived interest in creating a common free textbook for use by all students, and students are no longer forced to purchase and read books whose information are outdated. Authors will shift their publishing mediums over to Ebooks. No longer will they suffer from the lack of control of the lack of marketing for their books in bookstores.

The next technology revolution: Ebook Readers.

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