Singapore's booming community of millionaires, and China's striking workers

Check the Times of London story below on China's striking workers.

Communist one-party-ruled China is doing something unprecedented and unique: It is allowing, even encouraging its workers to organise and strike. It is letting its people demand higher wages and better living conditions. Note the two bold paragraphs.

In contrast, Singapore's one-party feudal system is crushing its people and letting the inequality gap widen.

Companies, in particular MNCs, are still making rich profits. Why is this happening?

In one word: SELFISHNESS.

The political leadership is stacked with selfish greedy leaders, and the business community is just taking the cue. The number of millionaires in Singapore has risen to a record level, which the system is proudly trumpeting. Religion has been hijacked by big churches, temples and mosques led by powerful and rich leaders. There are no honest intellectuals left in this country. When the collective leadership has become this selfish, the system has reached its peak. There are no new ideas because the value system is bankrupt and corrupt.

Singapore is nothing but a money-making machine, each man to look out for himself. It's a very sick place that doesn't know it is sick.

TIMES of London report below, 13 June 2010
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/markets/china/article7149002.ece

Reacting to public opinion, a chorus of editorials and commentaries in the state-controlled press praised the trend towards higher pay. “Analysts ... predict that these actions could ultimately bring an end to cheap labour in China,” said the China Daily in a front-page report.

“The Chinese workforce is no longer infinite,” said Zhang Wenkui at the development and research centre run by the state council, China’s cabinet. “It’s finite. That means walkouts and strikes will be more frequent.”

Independent research for The Sunday Times found an epidemic of strikes and bold wage claims in recent months across manufacturing zones.

On May 14, 5,000 workers at a privatised textile factory at Pingdingshan in Henan province, blocked the gates and posted a slogan reading, “We ask our mother, the Communist party, to give us a bowl of rice to eat.” Police arrested four strike leaders, but faced resolute workers angry about alleged corruption in the privatisation process and poor compensation.

In Yunnan province, a taxi drivers’ strike paralysed the city of Honghe and spread to 13 counties. Again, the causes were complaints about extortionate fees and graft.

The China Management Daily, an influential business newspaper, said: “It’s not only Honda that should panic. China should panic, too.”

“The Honda strike is a milestone in China,” said economic analyst Xu Jianfeng in an online commentary. “For ages the people’s government has forbidden working people to go on strike and forbidden the media from reporting strikes, but this time the government failed to do that.”

Powerful lobbies, led by the ministry of commerce and by exporters, are fighting a rearguard action to stop change. However, the sudden upsurge in labour unrest may subtly have reframed the debate. Economists say rising wages in China will help to spur domestic demand and consumption.

Researchers for The Sunday Times examined wage slips that showed many workers for multinational suppliers have seen no rise in pay for eight years. In the same period, consumer price inflation has eroded earning power in real terms and the proportion of China’s GDP taken by wages has fallen.

So higher pay fulfils two aims of China’s more enlightened policymakers. It will give workers more money to spend on goods, and it should also spur Chinese factories to move up the “value chain” and out of the sweatshop era.

Such Chinese firms face a tough time because, to take one example from the state media, most textile factories are surviving on profit margins of 1% to 2%.

But there is no question that foreign middlemen have room to cut their margins. When The Sunday Times tracked a plastic item that retailed in London for 99p back to its source, it emerged that the cost price at the factory gate was 22p. And when the factory’s raw material costs were stripped out, the Chinese supplier had only 6p to cover wages, operating costs and profit.

“In other words, wages could double and it could be absorbed,” said one British buyer.

The Death of Las Vegas: The Future of Singapore's IRs

Singapore's two Integrated Resorts and casinos have been nothing but trouble since they started operating this year.

The police and courts are spending more time dealing with crimes related to the two casinos. More people are getting sucked into gambling and creating social problems.

Worst, the two projects will simply collapse because they depend on gamblers to throw money away. Singapore will soon be hit by the financial and economic problems affecting the US, Europe and Japan, three of their biggest export markets. Story on Las Vegas rapid collapse below is the future of Singapore's IRs.


June 11 2010
There are quite a few U.S. cities that are complete and utter economic disaster zones in 2010 (Detroit for example), but there is something about the demise of Las Vegas that is absolutely stunning. In recent decades, Las Vegas has become a symbol for the over-the-top affluence and decadence of America. But now it is a microcosm of the economic nightmare that has gripped the entire nation. When the subprime mortgage crisis stuck, no major U.S. city was more devastated than Las Vegas. When the recession went from bad to worse, Americans decided that they really didn't need to gamble so much and casino revenues plummeted. Suddenly unemployment started to increase dramatically in Vegas and even today it continues to soar. Like so many other cities that are highly dependent on tourism and entertainment, Las Vegas has gone from boom to bust. Local officials are hoping that the worst will soon be over, but the truth is that the worst is yet to come. As the U.S. economy continues to unravel, average Americans will be spending what little money they do have to put a roof over their heads and to feed their families. The truth is that the glory days of Las Vegas are over and they are not coming back.
Already, the number of unemployed in Las Vegas is reaching unprecedented levels. Unemployment rates for the state of Nevada and for the city of Las Vegas both set new records during the month of April. In Las Vegas the unemployment rate in April was 14.2%. For the entire state the unemployment rate was 13.7%.
Of course those are just the "official" numbers. We all know that the "real" unemployment numbers are much higher.
For example, the "official" unemployment figure is about 14 percent in the state of Michigan right now. But if you actually believe that 86 percent of able-bodied workers in the state of Michigan are employed, then perhaps you would be interested in an offer to purchase the Golden Gate Bridge as well.
Elliott Parker, an economist at the University of Nevada, Reno says that the record-setting unemployment numbers in Nevada are just part of a larger trend....
"Nevada has been losing jobs since March 2008, and we are continuing to do so."