The old can teach a thing or two #GE2020

Advice from the oldest candidate in Singapore's 2020 General Election to its young occupants:

“Goodnight, young people. So many hypebeast people chatting with me. Care for Singapore and love your hypebeast country. You are the future of hyperbeast Singapore.”

This clearly demonstrates that the seniors among us are certainly not over the hill. Age-ism - the belief that older people have only so much time to learn and contribute that it is more worthwhile investing in the young (in terms of training and nurturing). What a lot of hogwash, as Dr Tan Cheng Bock, aged 80, demonstrates.

Source: https://www.todayonline.com/ge2020-80-hypebeast-tan-cheng-bock-becomes-unexpected-instagram-sensation

The Young and Old Ones

I am now sitting in a cafe restaurant having a late afternoon lunch. In the background, on the loudspeakers, I hear Cliff Richard singing "The Young Ones" - a song recorded in 1962, ohh,,,47 years ago. The lighting is somewhat dim, giving you a cosy feeling as you await lunch that your significant other is getting. There are a smattering of youngsters hunched over their books and notes, no doubt preparing for their exams. These exams are held around this time of the year. Never mind, the restaurant has many unfilled seats. Better to look somewhat filled than have an empty restaurant. It is, after all, 3pm. The lunch crowd has thinned and the dinner crowd is not due till 6pm, or later.

I wondered how many in the restaurant knew Cliff Richard, or how old this song really is. It probably pre-dates the year that many in the restaurant were born. It certainly pre-dates mine, if only by a year. Certainly those young people behind the service counters also fall into this group. Has the young really changed all these many years since, the so called Gen Y? They seem to be enjoying this tune, the same tune that their parents danced to in their youth. I don't know what Cliff Richard's generation is called. They represented the baby boomer generation after World War II. Gen A perhaps? Much has been made of how the Gen Y are a different breed today, the incessant connectedness on Facebook, Twitter, Blogs and, of course, their SMS via Handphones. These gadgets weren't there for the Gen As, perhaps for the Gen X, but not as pervasive as today's youth. However the change, "The Young Ones" remains evergreen.

Which raises the question, that at heart, are the Gen Y really different? The last General Election seems to suggest that the government needs to engage the young ones more, that more young people are needed in politics and government. The disaster for them, of course, is to find someone as young as Ms Tin Pei Ling , only 27 years old, keyed into the consumer-oriented culture of the young, such as hugging a Kate Spade bag. She stood for the General Elections and won, albeit through a back door. There was immediate calls for her to be sacked because many people felt that she is undeserving. But are these young ones all the same? Not really. One doesn't need to look far. Nicole Seah, only 24, spoke with conviction and maturity well beyond her years, and consigned her team mates to playing second fiddle to her, people old enough to be her parents.

So it is not the young ones. Rather, its is the conviction, the imagination and the creativity, young or old, Nicole Seah and George Yeo, that really matters. Let's not swing from a lost end to solely the young generation, only to lose the older generation, in time to come. Surely MM Lee and SM Goh's admonition to "always have in mind the interest of the older generation...the generation who has contributed to Singapore must be well-looked after" bears remembering. For after all that is said and done, we are one big family, young or old, Gen A or Gen Y.

Encore!

As the sun sets

One of the things about growing old is, as many middle-aged person realise, is that many faculties begin to fail. Not only that, some faculties are probably never going to be restored, like your tooth. Once an adult tooth is lost, it is lost. Of course there are dentures to cover up for the awful look otherwise, but dentures are still not the real thing.

What else fails?

The eyes for another. You may have 20/20 vision all your life, but when you hit the big 4-O, you discover how necessary reading glasses become, especially in the light of the night. Then your language also begins to fail. Where once you could have been a spelling bee, you struggle increasingly to remember how to put together a word - that erstwhile ability to spell anything deserts you.

And don't many of us find our legs failing us, even at the relatively 'young' age of 42. Suddenly, Glucosamine is more familiar to you than Panadol or even Vitamin C. Your hair also becomes perceptibly thinner at the top. Your scalp is more visible at the top although your beard and nostril hair never seem to stop growing.

Of course, you look rougher by the months. Ever deeper lines appear on your face as your hand look shinier by the year, not because of the lotions you might have applied, but that's how aging skin seem to look. You also notice black spots appearning on your face and hands and arms. No, that's not the black plague, its just cells dying.

Worst of all, your memories also begin to fail. What happened last year this time, or 3 months ago, or even 2 weeks ago. You struggle to remember and are dismayed that that part of your life is not history, but an emptiness, an inexistence that eludes you, perhaps forever now.

All these gets progressively worse. Yes, modern medicine can mitigate a lot of the ill-effects of aging. Just look at the roaring business that personal care shops such as Watsons, Guardian and the Body Shop, and even Spas and Gyms do and you realise that you are in the wrong business otherwise.

But that curative ability of modern medicine becomes a problem eventually, when medicine is used to prop one up at the gates of heaven (or hell, whichever the case may be). Advanced Medical Directives (AMD), Euthansia, these controversial terms, take on real meaning. Did you remember to let your loved ones know how you prefer to be treated, when you have lost all your communications faculties? Would you have preferred that your loved ones stop wasting expensive medicine just so that you can continue lying on a bed, doing not much more than being fed through a plastic tube? Or worst, when you, an adult, begin to behave no differently from a baby, remembering nothing, no one, and defecating anywhere and everywhere because, like a child, you have lost all control of your bowel movements and your sense of shame. You cannot instruct anyone to kill you because death is no longer in your vocabulary.

Can someone do you in, legally, since you no longer know better, and probably would have preferred it? The answer is simple, isn't it? Or is it?

Image source: morgueFile.com. Author: Mary Thorman

Toxic times

These are trying times in Singapore for some 10,000 people. I am not sure that all of them are Singaporeans. It may very well be. These 10k people are looking into a hole so big and wide, and bottomless, that I suppose you'd understand that some would want to jump into it. Fortunately, so far, we haven't heard of any superman acts in our tall tall buildings (some soon to rise to 50 floors!) nor our above-ground subway stations. It would appear that the SMRT cannot erect barriers at its stations soon enough to prevent people using its platforms as launching pads into...I don't know where anyone wants to go by jumping in front of oncoming trains...

Well, by now, you would have guessed that I am referring to the 10,000 people who potentially have lost all their investments (and life-long savings for some) in the mini-bond saga that resulted from the collapse of Lehman Brothers in the US. All investments linked to this Investment Bank are in jeopardy now. It is hardrending when you read of senior citizens losing their entire life-savings in this ONE investment. But on the other hand, you cannot but feel how foolish they are for putting all their eggs in one basket. Has half a century of life and living, which probably included several recessions, not taught them about anything? Yes, many of the Relationship Managers (RM) that the bank employed should bear the blame for pushing otherwise risky products down the throats of aged investors who know nothing, or are not interested to know about the complexity of the product beyond the amount of money they are putting down and the interest they will earn.

Indeed, I have heard of young RMs gloating about the $20,000 they earn per month doing what they did, relieving old and maybe not-so-old but cash-rich people of their life-savings to put into 'principal-protected' and/or high-interest-yielding structured investment products. In retrospect, I am sure neither the RM, nor the investor, understood the nature of the mechanisms underlying these investment products. This calls to mind the true story of the wildly successful mortgage bond traders at Saloman Brothers (SB), before it collapsed in the 1980s, who weren't even trained in finance. (As told in Michael Lewis' Liar's Poker) It will be farfetched to equate SB's young and hot-blooded mortgage traders with today's RMs or the products they sold, but the role they played is not all that different, in retrospect.

In retrospect too, 'principle-protected' means nothing, and even plain vanilla savings deposits for that matter, if the bank that helms the investments and deposits goes bankrupt. We always see better after the fact. Our vision suddenly improves to 20-20. Truly the prophet is without honour in the free-wheeling world of leveraged investments. Who would have thought, much less predicted, that Lehman Brothers would collapse, or for that matter, AIG? Certainly not DBS Bank, and others whose error was to retail toxic investments and not see them for what they were, much like ignorantly selling melamine-tained milk powder. If the investments people in these banks, who probably have a ton of MBAs, cannot see a toxic financial product for what it is early, how much more the man in the street? (Interestingly, Lewis claimed that Salomon Brothers crumbled when it started to rely more on educated professional financial people rather than on people with raw trading skills but had otherwise no financial training).

For the rest of the 10,000, and more, caught in the repercussion of bank failures in the US, it is cold comfort. All have lost money, though none as spectacular as those that bought into the Lehman Brothers' mini-bonds and related funds. And all shouldn't expect the government to bail them out. Whatever money the government has belongs to the taxpayers. Surely you do not expect a lowly paid bloke like me who never dabbles in investments beyond FDs to foot the bill of others' failed investments? Where is the fairness in it? Would these same people who, if they had made money from these investments, share them with me?

So I think that the MAS is doing the right thing now. Investigate the matter, and if the Financial Institutions have breached any laws through the conduct of its RMs or others, or have been manifestly negligent, get them to 'do the right thing', as MAS' Managing Director, Mr Heng Swee Keat is reported to have said. There is no question that the Singapore government SHOULD NOT buy up these toxic assets with taxpayers' money so that the same investors who have lost a bundle get to invest another day in financial products that nobody understands. The lesson is a hard one, but we must be fair in the whole thing, particularly to those who have had no hand, not even a finger, on these financial toxins.

Even if the FI's buy back all the toxic Lehman bonds, like what the Hong Kong FI's have done, it'll hit the bank's shareholders. Oh well, in these stressful times, almost nobody will get away scot-free.

Disclaimer: I am not a financial consultant. Anything written here are my personal opinion. The reader should consult a professionally qualified person for advice on matters relating to investments and risk. However, it appears you can't trust anybody nowadays. You'd want to take with a pinch of salt what any finance person, qualified or not, would tell you nowadays, except the very helpful Mr Tan Kin Lian, who perhaps should stand for election for Parliament in the next General Election, seeing as By-Elections have lost its favour with the sitting government.

Picture shows the attractive but poisonous berries of the Yew tree.

Image source: morgueFile.com. Author: Mike

Hard to swallow

I visited the Singapore General Hospital recently. The appointment was 11.30am, so after seeing the doctor at the Specialist Outpatient Client in Block 2, I put in the prescription at the Pharmacy just next to the SOC. I was pleasantly surprised that the pharmacy would take my handphone number so that it can SMS me when the medicine was ready for me to pick up. That was great because I could do lunch first instead of having to wait for my number to be called, which would take anything from 15 - 45 minutes, depending.

But lunch wasn't that great. I couldn't go far as I had to return to the pharmacy when the SMS from the pharmacy came in, so I settled at the KOPI cafeteria for lunch, just a stone's throw away. I was shocked. A 'economic rice' plate of 1 meat + 2 vege set me back by S$4.50. I can understand this kind of pricing if I were in a Shopping Centre Foodcourt operated by Kopitiam, or Koufu, of some similar operator. At these places, for what I ordered at KOPI, I'd probably have to pay S$4.00 at most. I noticed that many patrons at this cafeteria were senior citizens, couples, and I just thought that they could have found these prices forbidding. Some just ate a 'pau' and two 'siew mai' although it was lunch hour. I wondered if they didn't have appetite for the food or for the prices. Eat, a person must. It is not an option, like having a cup of coffee or a snack. The cafeteria was doing a roaring business. The queue at the 'economic rice' counter kept moving along, but never disappeared the whole 45 minutes I was there having, what else, my expensive lunch. And it wasn't because service was slow. Everybody behind the counter had their hands full, so much so that they didn't even notice me in front of their dessert counter. I gave up and took a cup of tea (which cost much less) instead, at another counter.

Why is food so expensive at a cafeteria located in a government hospital, I wondered? (OK, ok, its a 'restructured' hospital, but it isn't in the same category as say, Mount Elizabeth Hospital or Raffles Hospital, which are privately run hospitals. Restructured Hospitals in Singapore are still 100% owned by the government). Well, its no mystery, actually, These operators lease the place from the owner of the place - the hospital/government - at a certain tendered price. They probably bid high, and so have to charge more to recover their fixed rental cost. Of course, the biggest beneficiary is the hospital/government - which probably rakes in big bucks just from rentals of cafeteria space. It would appear that that's the other big business that government hospitals are into these days, besides charging huge fees for the beds, the medicine and the medical care. This reminds me of how when McDonalds, the hamburger chain, started in the US, it was more a real estate business than a hamburger business through an inspired approach to buy its stores and the land they sit on and rent them out to the food business. Even today it is doing the same thing. (see McDonald's Commands a Real Estate Empire in Russia, Ray Croc's McDonalds). But I digress.

The government does provide subsidies towards these medical related services (at least for citizens), I grant you. But 'taxing' visitors to the hospital indirectly at such 'top-end' high prices, particularly the old (and likely economically inactive) among us, for a simple meal? This is not a Shenton Way crowd here, man. I mean, nobody goes to a hospital for a gourmet lunch or dinner right? Even KF Seetoh of Makansutra, in reviewing hospital food, wrote about the food from the hospital's kitchen and not those from the public eateries. So food is not why people visit the hospital. I cannot but begin to wonder what kind of deal people, and especially the older ones among us, are getting. Another example of government 'give and take', I suppose.

It is said that in Singapore, you'd better not get sick. I say that in Singapore, you'd better not visit the hospital on an empty stomach, especially during lunch time. And if you cannot help it, take along a sandwich from home or a neighbourhood bread shop. It'll go down your tummy more easily.

Image source: morgueFile.com. Author: melodi2

Shifting Track

Well, you must give the government credit. In spite of PM Lee Hsien Loong's very public pronouncement that all Singaporeans under 50 years of age MUST buy an annuity to tide over the rest of their life's needs, the government has backed down. In Parliament yesterday, the Manpower Minister, Mr Ng Eng Hen, said something to the effect that this annuity thing may not be compulsory after all. Yes, people have different needs and different people have different means. You just can't treat everyone the same and say everyone MUST buy into the annuity plan structured by the government. Yes, the government wanted to achieve mass participation so that the cost of the annuity will be low enough to be affordable, yet the yields are high enough to satisfy. But I suppose the people in charge of aging issues were not listening to their colleagues over at the Education Ministry.

The people in charge of education have been saying for some time now that people have different abilities and interests, that we shouldn't treat everyone with a cookie-cutter. Some are more artistic, others are more analytical. Some learn slower, others faster. Some are better with their hands, others are good with their minds. So education has taken a much more diverse offering in recognition of these differences. This, if nothing else, is an enlightened piece of thinking.

Yet, the people at the government's old folks department insist on using the cookie-cutter which the education people have very wisely discarded. What happened to the careful deliberation process, which the Singapore government is well known for, on this issue? It seems that someone or some people just pushed out a half-baked cake for the PM to sell at a very public occasion, which caused a lot of indigestion. Is the nation beginning to be short-changed by some very costly scholars in the civil service who cannot figure out what the man in the street takes a second to do so - that a compulsory annuity takes away PEOPLE's OWN hard earned money without the certainty that they will benefit from it at all. Well, yes, you may say that Singaporean's give generously to charity, but that's all voluntary.

The proposed forced annuity is but another form of deferred taxation, is it not? And worst, it is regressive in nature, like the GST. Poorer people pay proportionately more than do the well off. The premiums paid are effectively redistributed in favour of those who live longer - possibly the more well off because they can better afford life-sustaining medical care.

A committee will now be formed to consider the matter in greater depth. Its seems that the original people/committee that were/was considering this matter in depth (in the PM's department, no less) didn't do that thorough a job. Let's hope the new committee does better.