A consumer finance company in Japan recently started offering lower mortgage interest rates to “intelligent” customers. One might wonder if banks here have missed a trick, given the premium that society here places on “intelligence”.
GE Consumer Finance Company, a subsidiary of an American industrial and financial conglomerate, is giving discounts to people who have good English or computer skills, and work in “high-value” areas such as medicine. It claims this is the first time Japanese mortgage rates have been calculated like this.
People who have high scores on a test of English proficiency and officially certified IT skills can apply for a small discount.
Those in certain jobs (such as lawyers, accountants, doctors and financial experts) can obtain further discounts.
If a couple are both among the 20 “high-value” professions, they are entitled to a bigger discount. The skills of parents, children and even siblings also help to make the mortgage cheaper.
The more one thinks about it, the possibilities of using something like this to make Singapore a more prosperous and fairer place seem endless.
In his book, Swimming with Sharks, Swedish academic Hans C Blomqvist wrote: “The Singapore model of governance seems close to that of managing a big corporation, where the citizens take on the role of employees (rather than shareholders) and the board of directors (the Government) determines strategies.”
Like all good boards, the Government tries hard to introduce strategies that add value to the company while making employees’ lives better monetarily and socially.
And, in trying to build the kind of place it thinks Singaporeans want, it is not afraid to practice social engineering to get the kind of employees (read: Citizens) it wants. Heavy traffic on the roads? Buy a licence to own a car for 10 years and pay tolls, or else take public transport.
Want young people to get married and breed? Discriminate against singles (here, I’d better declare I am a happy single) when it comes to public housing and give incentives to married couples to have children.
The social engineering projects go on and on.
Here are some suggestions as to how the Government could use a GE-type model:
It could implement a scoring system to subsidise the mortgages of those who have the skills it wants Singaporeans to develop (languages and IT), as well as those in “worthy” sectors such as teaching and social work, that are short of manpower but where the pay is not as good compared to that of other jobs.
People who score well in the use of a second language and who have IT skills, for example, could apply for discounts from mortgage lenders, who would get reimbursed by the Government.
Those in “worthy” professions could get a discount on mortgage rates, too. If a couple both hold “worthy” jobs, they could be entitled to a bigger discount.
Many children may miss out on opportunities because their parents cannot afford to pay for educational extras, yet they are not entitled to government grants or help because the families are not poor enough.
The Government could subsidise the parents’ educational loan from the bank. The more intelligent the family, the bigger the discount the bank could offer (recoverable from the Government, of course). As Singapore believes in the importance of the extended family, the intelligence of extended family members (parents’ parents and siblings) could help to make the mortgage cheaper.
This could have the added advantage of helping to promote intelligence among Singaporeans, like how the English gentry bred speed into their racehorses. If we encourage an “intelligent” strain, Singaporeans could, in 300 years, be the brainiest people in the world.
And what about developing a points system for those who usually miss out on valuable issues because they fall into a disadvantaged category due to some policy?
Take the law that disallows singles below 35 to buy subsidised HDB flats, for example. Instead of a complete ban, suppose there is a points system allowing singles to accumulate points for being good Singaporeans (marrying and breeding excepted).
True, such a system would require good planning and implementation. But this should not pose a problem as Singapore is good at both. As to its intrusiveness, Singaporeans are mature enough to know that intrusiveness has its good points, no matter what the chattering classes, who mindlessly ape the West, say.
The contributor is a freelance financial writer. His favourite authors are Jane Austen, Jonathan Swift, Evelyn Waugh and George Orwell.
Source: Today, 10 July 2007