How useful are the numbers?

The White Paper is arguably one of the most important policy documents we have had in recent years.

By setting out the policy direction on population matters for the coming decades, it touches on a critical issue that will determine not just our economic viability, but the evolution of our national identity in the future.

As the discussion opens up on the issues set out in the paper, some key aspects of importance include potential follow-ups that the National Population and Talent Division (NPTD) could look into, the usefulness of the projections in the paper, the factors that affect the validity of the projections used to rationalise the policy arguments and what immigration should mean to Singapore.

The usefulness of the projections extends beyond just the figures. They inform us of the challenges we have been through on the population issue and suggests what is likely to occur under circumstances as we understand them today.

There are, of course, unknowns when you project that far into the future, and it is useful to consider what factors could significantly throw off the projections.

At least two come to mind: Technology and politics.

TECHNOLOGY REVOLUTION?

Much of our current technology was unimaginable mere decades ago.

If you go online today, you see videos showing how mobile phones can be used to recognise and solve a scrambled Rubik’s cube.

Yet, for all practical purposes, it is still very difficult for the average person to harness an iPhone’s massive computing capacity to do the laundry.

But, laundry aside, there are already indications that the reach of at least some forms of manpower could be extended by latching onto the increasingly powerful Internet connectivity that’s available to us.

In all areas of science and technology, we appear to be poised tantalisingly on the edge of new frontiers that could re-shape the relationship of human beings to work.

If we can envisage one day mining asteroids for rare minerals, we could then find that the equation for our economic efficiency is dependent on quite different variables from today’s.

We might then even consider a very different world where numbers of persons are less important than the technology they can wield.

THE WILDCARD OF POLITICS

The other great unknown is politics.

We do not yet know if the politics of the future will facilitate or inhibit the flow of manpower.

In contrast to the relatively slow pace at which technology has extended the reach of manpower, the political changes of the last three decades have been the primary factor accelerating it.

People travel across the borders of former adversaries, in numbers we thought impossible during the stand-off of the former Cold War.

The large movements across the Iron Curtain, or out of Vietnam or China, in the 1960s and 1970s were largely driven by conflicts and ideological struggles. Yet, they benefited their receiving countries, and led to significant transformations.

Who could have imagined a China possibly outstripping the United States and Europe as a magnet for the most talented manpower in the world?

At the same time, its workers man factories, build roads and staff offices from Africa to Latin America.

SLOWER INCREASE BETTER BUT ...

In the coming days, as the discussion probes the minutiae of the White Paper’s analysis, another aspect of potential interest could be the changing nature of immigration.

It is almost certainly going to be true that people will migrate across borders in increasingly large numbers.

The latest post on the Asian Development Bank Institute blog, Asia Pathways, discusses the potential for international workers to contribute more to global output growth than would the further opening up of trade.

Thus, the question here is not whether we need foreign manpower, because Singapore has depended on and benefited from the availability of such workers since independence.

The difference is the rate of increase in recent years.

Indeed, a Singapore without foreign manpower will not be possible.

If we recognise that, then the question is how much we can accommodate and what the policies needed to accommodate such a migrant workforce should be.

A slower rate of increase, in my opinion, should be better because it allows Singapore citizens time to come to terms with the changes while benefiting foreign workers at the same time.

Having said that, it would run counter to the efforts Singapore has made over the last few years if we turn against the tide of an economic vision of a borderless world for talent — just at the point when the rest of our competitors are embracing it.

The one thing we have learned is that we should be careful not to reach that point ahead of our time.

Randolph Tan is Associate Professor of Business at SIM University, School of Business.