In the previous CID lessons, I have learnt that China's economy is growing rapidly and had a second rank in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). There are many factors contributing to the economic growth and the high GDP.
Firstly, the fact that China is endowed and rich with natural resources like coal, natural gas and steel. Therefore, they do not need to spend extra money to buy from other countries like Singapore. In addition, China can sell away the extra natural resources to other countries and earn profit from selling. This is one of the economic source China have.
Next, as China has one of the lowest corporate tax rate on the world. Because of this factor, foreign investors and businessman would be attracted to do and develop their business in China rather than any other countries with a higher corporate tax rate.
China also has a cheaper export than other countries like America. With that people would want to export from China instead of America and this will be beneficial to China. China would be the first choice in businessman's eyes, thus China would have a higher number of exports and more profits would be earned.
Also, as the population in China is high, there would be much more manpower and furthermore, there is cheap laboring in China. With more labours, there would be a more efficient production in factories and mass production is possible.
However, a disadvantage with the large population size of China is that the GDP per capital is low and is ranked the 4th in the world. This means that although the country is prosperous, the citizens are not. The rich are extremely rich and the poor are extremely poor. This will create a rich-poor division and it is worsening.
Singapore's Dwindling Population
Singapore's population had been decreasing rapidly from the past up till now. Research had shown that with the current birth rate, the median age in 2030 will rise up to 49 from 39 in 2011.
As the population in Singapore is dwindling, there will be fewer children to be there to support there parents and grandparents. Therefore, this will cause many elderlies to be living alone. In addition, this will also cause the children to take up a larger responsibility to take care of their parents in comparison with others with more siblings, regardless in the aspect of physically or financially.
The decreasing population in Singapore will also cause a higher demand for national healthcare as there is a larger proportion of the senior citizens to the young people, therefore more of them would be prone to age-related illnesses. This will cause a need for more healthcare services. Hence, the government will spend more time and effort to build up healthcare services for the elderlies instead of giving the younger generation a better education and better foster them.
This dwindling of population will definitely cause the competitiveness in the working industries as lesser people will be fighting of the same particular job. This will eventually result in a shortage for manpower and everyone might need to work at an earlier age and for longer hours and age. The working age population will then feel the strain as government gets revenue from taxes paid by working population. If you are the only child, you might need to pay more tax.
Similar to the previous point, the decreasing in population will also cause Singapore to have a smaller security force and weakens the strength of defense of our country and make us more vulnerable. The reason for this is that with a fewer number of babies, fewer man would be able to serve the national service.
To prepare for all these situations, Singapore government can encourage more marriage and giving birth. They can offer more types of tax reliefs to support the citizens financially so that they would not fear to give birth because of the financial burden that they thought will be a problem. Also, the government can make the retirement age older than 60 so that people could help to serve the nation longer as there is a shortage of manpower with a decreasing number of working population. Finally, government can welcome more immigration into Singapore as the foreign people would be able to help us to increase our population by staying here.
Reflection on 23/1/2015's CID lesson
"A picture paints a thousand words"I felt that this CID lesson taught me a lot valuable lessons.
Firstly, we were shown a picture of a vulture and a boy. This was a famous picture taken in Sudan by Kevin Carter. This picture showed us about poverty how bad poverty is in some parts of the world. I felt that we should cherish what we have now in life that we could at least have three meals a day while in other undeveloped countries, children will be satisfied with just one meal a day.
We were first shown two photos whereby in each photo, shows different people begging for money. After that, we were asked who would we choose if we were to give the only one dollar I have to. Immediately, I came into conclusion that I want to give it to the woman carrying a baby, reading another man's newspaper on the street, instead of the man sitting beside the street, carrying a cardboard.
I thought that the woman was pitiful as she was begging for money even though she was carrying a baby. I also believed that she was too poor to afford a newspaper, therefore she looked into a stranger's newspaper. As a result, I wanted to give my money to the woman as it is inconvenient for her to work and look after her baby at the same time too.
However, after our teacher revealed the real stories behind them, I felt cheated and regretted my choice to help the lady. She was working with an illegal organisation to cheat people's money from empathizing the lady. The man was the one who needed real help. With that wrong decision, my money will go into the illegal organizations, benefiting them, instead of helping the man who just needed one dollar to call. This one dollar was crucial for the man as he had nothing with him at that time.
Therefore, through this activity, something hit hard upon me. I always thought that what we see with our eyes are always the truth. However, this lesson thought me that what seems like the truth in the outside might not always be real. We must not jump into conclusions without knowing the background or the full story.
Based on some research, I found out that poverty in Singapore grew from 16% in 2002 to 28% in 2013. I was dumbfounded to hear that. I assumed that poverty in Singapore would be like 10% as Singapore is a highly urbanized country in the world and could be considered one of the richest countries in the world. We have the highest proportion of poor among the developed countries and the countries in our region!
Talking about poverty in Singapore, I hardly see beggars on the street begging for money. However, I always see old people in wheelchairs or sometimes without, going around selling tissue papers. There will be organizations to help up those who is poor or those old people living in one room flats. With this compared to other countries, I genuinely thought that poverty in Singapore was not high but I was wrong.
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