commentary

I refer to Aw Mun Khay’s blog entry entitled “ Are career demands killing marriages in Singapore? ”

I agree with Mun Khay to a large extent that career demands is a main cause of divorce and unhappy family. She mentioned that people overwork and force themselves through strenuous programmes to upgrade their skills while struggling to juggle with their already heavy workload. Thus, they neglect their families and spouse, resulting in divorce. I assume that she is only referring to the lower and middle-income group members. In fact, even people holding high-ranking position faced heavy workloads and long working hours.

I too agree with Mun Khay that all the above are one of the main causes of family miscommunication, leading to divorce and for a country like Singapore, it is best for us to do something about rather than moan about it after it worsen. As mentioned in her entry, Singapore’s only main resource is humans. If most of our people overwork themselves and neglect their families, not only will Singapore have a sickly workforce, we would also experience high divorce rate that will in turn result in low birth rate, which would then affect our main resource. The government should thus take measures to take care of this problems and the solution in Mun Khay’s entry are feasible ones.

In conclusion, Singapore cannot afford to have workforces that always fall sick due to overworking. The government should help reduce this problem to as minimum as possible.

Death Penalty

I definitely support death penalty. According to Antonio Cassese, if you would to keep murderers in prison, the probability that they might kill again is very high. In order to ensure the safety of our society, capital punishment against murders is the most appropriate one. Moreover, if the government decides to keep them in prison for life instead of killing them, they have to spend a lot more money at the expense of the community. Capital punishment also does deter other murderers, which is the most effective way to bring down crime rate. According to Becker, murderers fight very hard in order to not get caught, this proves that they fear capital punishments. Lastly, it is justifiable to kill a murderer as he took someone’s life away, thus he have to pay for it with his own life, as referred to an old law of “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” Statistics had also proven that a country with capital punishment has a much lower crime rate than those who do not have.

However, careful investigation must be carried out before carrying out capital punishments. This is to prevent the execution of innocent people. Also, death penalty debate should not absorb all our attention. If we intend to abolish the gallows, we should also fight for the prevention of crime and against the inhumanity of many prisons. After all, what is the point of suggesting imprisonment as an alternative to electrocution, if inmates are subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment?

Can poverty ever be eradicated?

I think that poverty can never be eradicated, it can only be minimized. From the article “Can the poor countries be rich?”, it is mentioned that poorer countries can never get rich on their own without help as importing technologies requires money and earning money requires technology. Thus, richer nations can lend a helping hand to the poorer ones by providing them with financial aids or loans. However, in my opinion, poorer nations cannot always depend on richer ones to help them, as these richer nations might not find it feasible to always give aid to them. Thus, poorer nations may be better off with the aids the richer nations had given, but not to the extent that all poverty is eradicated from the country. Therefore, poorer nations should also help themselves, for example, by introducing a better education system, as education is the key to being rich. Moreover, it is mentioned that the geography of a country determines its wealth. Thus, it is impossible to eradicated poverty as there is no way to change the geography around you, as the only way is too expensive.

Furthermore, some government in poorer nations practices corruption. Even if richer nations give aids to them, their government would simply keep the money of its own use. One example is the fact that Indonesian government keeping most the money Singapore had gave to aid the local farmers in an effort to reduce deforestation and forest fires. In such countries, poverty can never be eradicated.