Been noticing things for a while now and now the data and evidence is clear as daylight. Our smartest r just so so, our best entrepreneurs don't cut it (and the evidence shows). Where r our best and brightest that will create world winning companies and innovation. When people talk about our Neighbours catching up or even surpassing us, they often see it in terms of infrastructure ..eg Bangkok's MBK beating Orchard Paragon..etc. However we r looking at the wrong picture! Look at their who's who's making waves in the world!! Some of the smartest businessmen r Malaysians, Thais.. Etc. Our Neighbours sons and daughters have made their mark at home and abroad. In fact a lot of them r success stories in Sinkapore beating us in our own tuft! That's why our gahment don't want to chase away the FTs. They know the whole country will regress tremendously if that happen.
We joke about this but it's very true. If we chase the FTs out and prevent the best from coming in, we will revert back to a fishing village !
Don't you see the difference now?
All those neighbouring countries you mentioned have fishing village and natural heritage conserved.
This includes super powers like US, China, Russia..the list goes on.
In fact, the existing status of SG, could be due to the vanishing of fishing village, kampong and all those natural heritage that were gone.
To sum it all, it is also due to the materialistic, narrow-minded and the greedy policy maker.
They don't believe in nature. They believe in building more condo, shopping complex...to make more money.
They view fishing village, kampong and natural environment as backwards.
To think of it, human is part of the nature.
To excel, human need to be embraced with nature but not being taken apart from it.
As for taking FT from other countries, we're merely going backwards.
Isn't most of our grandparents, or even our parents are FT from China, India and so on?
And also in terms of quality, what kind of FT they're bring in?
When we have to resort to something happened 50, 60 years or even longer ago, it clearly shows that someone in this country is running out of idea, desperate, panicking and clueless of what to do best.