Govt has ensured access to affordable transport instead of overcomplicating COE scheme: SM Lee to Jamus Lim

During the dialogue, Mr Lee said, “I think if you want to design a scheme which worries about all those things, it will fail.”

There is no easy way, Mr Lee said, to fairly distribute something valuable and make it cheap. Road space is scarce in Singapore, and the COE system means that buyers pay the fair market value for the right to own a car, he added.

Assoc Prof Lim said people do not want every aspect of their lives to be determined in a transactional way.

“Society has values – about compassion, equity, respect, and loyalty – (that) are poorly valued by impersonal markets.” That is why people teach children to share, spend money on their parents’ health and devote their energy to causes they believe in, he said.

“That’s why, for all our economic successes, there are ways that Singapore, Inc. operates that (rub) many people the wrong way.”

Mr Lee said during the dialogue that while he cannot promise every Singaporean an affordable car, he can guarantee affordable and convenient transportation.

“Cars, no. Transportation, yes,” he said.

He added that for families, instead of giving them cheaper COEs, the government provides more support through initiatives like the baby bonus.

“Directly help the group you need to help in cash, rather than make complicated schemes, which then end up with all kinds of contradictions and wrong incentives.”

Assoc Prof Lim said, for him, the bottom line is that “we are not mindless slaves to the prevailing structures and institutions present in the society we live in”.

He said Singaporeans have inherited a prosperous nation that was built based on the constraints and prevailing wisdom of the past, and must be active participants and shapers of the future they want.

“If we want to head in a different direction, toward a more empathetic and just economy and society, then it is on us to seize that vision and make it real,” said Assoc Prof Lim.