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Speaking after several of his People's Action Party (PAP) colleagues have spoken in response to Workers' Party's (WP) Jamus Lim's suggestion of a universal minimum wage for Singapore, Senior Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam stepped in and gave his response in Parliament.
The banging of heads took place on Thursday, Sep. 3, on the fourth day of the parliamentary debate on the President's Address.
Why Progressive Wage Model is superior to minimum wage model
Tharman, who entered almost sage-like into the fray, first said that he was not intending to speak, but he thought he would make "a very brief intervention".
He said the government believes that it is important to raise the wages of the country's lowest paid workers, and that more should be done even after "significant progress" has been achieved in the last 10 years.
Saying that while he "would not exaggerate" the differences between the Progressive Wage Model (PWM) and the minimum wage model, the PWM is in fact "a minimum wage plus" and a "sectoral approach", which has a lot to commend.
Tharman then explained why he thinks the PWM is a good model for Singapore:
"It allows you to set the minimum rung at a level that is not so low, and not so high, because we have a single level. You'll have to decide where to pitch it, how to do it without having (people game the system) -- (it) is an issue that policymakers grapple with."
"(It is) not such a complicated issue in practice, to be frank, and you have to watch what happens at the edges, but it's a very sensible approach."
No one has a monopoly over compassion
The Coordinating Minister for Social Policies continued to say that no one has "a monopoly over compassion", adding that he said that not to "discredit anyone in particular", and that he respects where Lim is coming from "intellectually" and "emotionally".
"But no one should assume that you have a monopoly over compassion," he said.
Tharman then said some of his PAP colleagues have "really made an impression" on him, not just for the "very forceful proposals" they made that often went beyond what the government is doing, but also because of the "emotional force of their conviction".
He then reiterated again that no one has "a monopoly over compassion".
Advised Lim to avoid "straw man arguments"
Tharman further provided a piece of advice for Lim, which is to "avoid straw man arguments", like saying "the government is only interested in efficiency and not equity".
"That's frankly laughable," he said. "Try to avoid that manner of argument, or painting everything in binary terms."
He continued to say that while "it is not necessary" for him to reply to Lim, he would say, as "a piece of general advice", that "raising the standard of living of the poor is a complicated matter".
"I say this, by the way, as an economist, as someone who studies overseas experience very carefully, and who, together with my colleagues, is a practitioner," he added.
The government helps the poor raise their standard of living through the progressive wage model that has to be expanded, Workfare, and a range of other subsidies, including those for housing, he elaborated.
Both parties are not very far away from each other in their objective to help Singapore's poor, Tharman said.
Continuing his argument, the senior figure in the PAP who enjoys a certain cachet with the public, said: "But just try to avoid straw man arguments and pretending that you have a monopoly in compassion."
He ended his response to Lim by saying that even though it is "a very small point", he has never heard of economists citing universities as a source of research.
He said: "Individuals do research, and may be very credible research, but universities don't publish research."
Lim: Not setting out a straw man argument
In response to Tharman's brief intervention in the debate, Lim said he regrets if he or the WP came across as suggesting that they have a "monopoly over compassion".
Rejecting that claim, Lim said this was why he cited explicitly cases where existing government policy demonstrated "oodles of compassion", adding that some cases were even from members outside of the WP.
He then said he agrees with Tharman in that there is not much of a gap between the thinking of the two parties.
Lim then defended himself against Tharman's accusation, and said he does not think that in talking about a trade-off between "efficiency" and "equity", he was making a straw man argument as he was talking about "a continuum".
The WP MP explained:
"So I'm not suggesting that every policy that is currently in place is only geared towards efficiency, and likewise, I'm not suggesting that every policy that I have laid out in my speech and elsewhere is only geared to equity.
Rather it is about a continuum, and I am arguing that we can move more in the direction of favouring equity over efficiency, and that was the entire point of the argument, not to create an artificial straw man."
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Top image adapted via Tharman Shanmugaratnam & Jamus Lim's Facebook pages