To all readers of my blog(well is there anyone?), here's a friendly invitation for you to leave comments on my blog. If there is enough demand for a tagboard I might decide not to be lazy and actually put one.(which i am clueless as to how to put it, given how hopeless I am at web publishing)
Have a good day everyone!
Sunday, February 26, 2006
Monday, February 20, 2006
Adulthood in SG is 22 years old
A semi rant here...
The supposed legal age for adulthood in Singapore is 21 years old, and I am supposed to be an adult now(my 21st birthday was in Jan). While most institutions(like banks, cinemas) will recognise it, our government who sets the legal age DOES NOT!
First it was the ineligibilty to vote in the upcoming elections(well if there is a opposition contesting in my GRC, and I won't know what constituency/GRC my family would fall under until the boundaries are decided upon), and now its the PROGRESS package.
To quote the release: "Individuals must be 21 years or above as of 31 December last year to get the Growth Dividends, and at least 50 years old to qualify for the CPF top-ups."
Which means if you are born in 1985 even though you may be celebrating(or have celebrated) your 21st bday, there's nothing to celebrate about for the new and upcoming budget's PROGRESS.
It's rather ironical that many guys my age are almost through with the army, having gone through what 'separates the men from the boys', handling firearms, leading men(in the case of officers and specs),making decisions that really matter to(like whether to charge/defend their men(who are usually older) for AWOL/drug abuse etc, and yet are still not considered adult.
The supposed legal age for adulthood in Singapore is 21 years old, and I am supposed to be an adult now(my 21st birthday was in Jan). While most institutions(like banks, cinemas) will recognise it, our government who sets the legal age DOES NOT!
First it was the ineligibilty to vote in the upcoming elections(well if there is a opposition contesting in my GRC, and I won't know what constituency/GRC my family would fall under until the boundaries are decided upon), and now its the PROGRESS package.
To quote the release: "Individuals must be 21 years or above as of 31 December last year to get the Growth Dividends, and at least 50 years old to qualify for the CPF top-ups."
Which means if you are born in 1985 even though you may be celebrating(or have celebrated) your 21st bday, there's nothing to celebrate about for the new and upcoming budget's PROGRESS.
It's rather ironical that many guys my age are almost through with the army, having gone through what 'separates the men from the boys', handling firearms, leading men(in the case of officers and specs),making decisions that really matter to(like whether to charge/defend their men(who are usually older) for AWOL/drug abuse etc, and yet are still not considered adult.
Saturday, February 11, 2006
Quote on economics
Here's a quote concerning economics which I agree very much with(must be Banard's influence).
I have never been able to grasp how one can understand any ideas without knowing where it came from, how it evolved out of previous ideas. ... Great theories, in economics as in other subjects, are path dependent ... that is, it is not possible to explain their occurence without considering the corpus of received ideas which led to the development of that particular new theory; had the body of received ideas been different we would have arrived at a different theory at the culmination of that development. In other words, without the history of economics, economics theories just drop from the sky; you have to take them on faith. The moment you wish to judge a theory, you have to ask how they came to be produced in the first place and that is a question that can only be answered by the history of ideas. (Blaug, 1994c)
I especially agree with the part on "without the history of economics, economics theories just drop from the sky", which is in my opinion, sadly, the state of affairs of economics teaching and learning(and a lot of other subjects for that matter) in the Singaporean education system. Unlike perhaps the physical sciences, economics (and any other social science/humanities as well) cannot be treated as gospel(if only the world was that simple). The historical perspective definitely makes economics much more understandable than just pure theory. It would also aid in the understanding of the limitations of the various models and assumptions in economics(it appals me to see people advocating and applying economic concepts like free trade, taxes, subsidy blindly using textbook analysis smugly, thinking that they can't go wrong.)
What an incoherent rant.
I have never been able to grasp how one can understand any ideas without knowing where it came from, how it evolved out of previous ideas. ... Great theories, in economics as in other subjects, are path dependent ... that is, it is not possible to explain their occurence without considering the corpus of received ideas which led to the development of that particular new theory; had the body of received ideas been different we would have arrived at a different theory at the culmination of that development. In other words, without the history of economics, economics theories just drop from the sky; you have to take them on faith. The moment you wish to judge a theory, you have to ask how they came to be produced in the first place and that is a question that can only be answered by the history of ideas. (Blaug, 1994c)
I especially agree with the part on "without the history of economics, economics theories just drop from the sky", which is in my opinion, sadly, the state of affairs of economics teaching and learning(and a lot of other subjects for that matter) in the Singaporean education system. Unlike perhaps the physical sciences, economics (and any other social science/humanities as well) cannot be treated as gospel(if only the world was that simple). The historical perspective definitely makes economics much more understandable than just pure theory. It would also aid in the understanding of the limitations of the various models and assumptions in economics(it appals me to see people advocating and applying economic concepts like free trade, taxes, subsidy blindly using textbook analysis smugly, thinking that they can't go wrong.)
What an incoherent rant.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)