They Need to Read Huxley's Brave New World

If you've been reading the papers or following the news on the radio and TVs, you'd know that the Singapore government is most proud of the fact that the number of jobs created last year was a "record high". They are again publishing the same b***s*** as Oct 2006. To know what b***s*** they've published last year, you can read my comments by clicking on this link.

See, jobs are just jobs. A job is good for people who simply want to have some money to fill their stomachs, to have a shirt on the back and to have a roof over the head. However, for a certain percentage of the population, a job is not good enough. They want a career. It’s more than just having enough or having excess to spend. It’s having something you enjoy doing everyday, something to challenge you, something that makes you feel that you have not wasted half your lifetime years later when you look back on it. Simply put it’s a mental satisfaction.

Repeating myself again, we need to look at what kinds of jobs are created. You need to match the employee’s skill to the job. Does underemployment sound familiar? Even Huxley who’s born more than 7 decades ago knew of this, because if you’ve read his Brave New World, there was this part when John Savage questioned the Controller on the need to force humans into different castes. Why was it not possible to make everybody Alpha Pluses, the crème de la crème. The Controller’s answer: it results in social instability. They had experimented years back by filling an island with Alphas and the Alphas who were put to do routine and intellectually unchallenging jobs soon got bored. They wanted to do something more challenging, and tried to oust those who are in more challenging jobs out of their jobs. The result: civil war. Of course, this is just a story, but there is some sense in it.

I mean, telling me there are more jobs created for the manufacturing and construction sectors does not help. I want to know what types of jobs in manufacturing and construction are created. Are we looking at R&D? Managerial positions? Or are we looking at filling up the assembly lines? Are we looking at jobs for architects, and engineers? Or are we looking at jobs for construction workers? No point creating plenty of low level jobs when the unemployed and underemployed are more capable of pushing the economy at higher level jobs. However, I am not saying there aren't people who are suitable to fill those low level jobs. Just like the Brave New World, I am sure we have our Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons in our society who can do a better job at the assembly lines then the Alphas and Betas; the latter would probably create more havoc at the lines by asking too many questions and challenging of the authorities. My point being, we need to look at the percentage of Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons in need of jobs and create jobs that suit them. It is okay to say we retrain our Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons so they move up a grade to fit the job, but what about the Alphas and Betas who lost their jobs during the economic downturn? Pretend to be less capable and move down a grade to fit the job?

Anyway, after publishing in the Straits Times on the all time high employment rate in Oct 2006, an analysis done in Dec 2006 showed that the picture was not as rosy as it was initially painted. A significant percentage of those who regained employment after retrenchment had to settle for either lower paying jobs, or jobs for which they are over-qualified. There are also those who cannot get a job for more than six months despite the willingness to take on a lower paying job, or a job that does not need that much qualification.

Saddened me when I read that because it shows the government still thinks the citizens are like children and they can pacify us with skimpy stats. It almost feels like propaganda, wanting the citizens to believe all is nice and rosy and using herd psychology to pressure those who are unemployed to get a job soon.