May Day! MAY DAY!

To be utterly honest, I haven't felt any urge to write since my last entry...after all, great things can't be happening everyday right? (Otherwise my life would still be boring...since there's no variation)
Well...but I do have a comment on the news report last night on our local english channel, Channel 5. Oddly, I heard nothing much other than labour strikes and protests last night. The report just jumped from the States, to UK to Indonesia. And then I realise that it's because of Labour Day. Well, in Singapore, we'll be much more willing and obliged to have a great day to rest (or party, for some) and complain about wages or labour conditions over a drink.

Call it apathy, it's really more like we know things can't quite change unless the National Wages Council tries to push for it...and it has met limited success(in my opinion) with regards to its push for the flexi-wage reform. I guess, in economic terms, the opportunity cost (the cost of the 2nd best alternative foregone) of spending time foregone is just way too high. Well, come to think of it, we don't even have a minimum hourly wage legislation to ensure no exploitation of inexperienced or temporary labour.

Of course the flip side of the story is that the minimum wage would kill the labour market's flexibility in responding to demand conditions of goods and services. But a slightly deeper probe would ensure the surfacing of this question: "Are those at fast food chains fairly paid?"

I really wonder...
At the same time, this has some implications for my economic board game...(I should really get it a name)...coupled with whatever I've been telling my students in writing and responding to economics essay questions: The ball is in your court, you set the parameters. And I realise, just like Robert Kiyosaki's Cashflow game, I have to limit my game to a fixed set of (lesson) objectives and, therefore, game structure.
I have this strong feeling that Kiyosaki would have liked the game to be more flexible and reflect the real world of investing even more closely, which led him to design Cashflow 202, the advanced version of the basic Cashflow game, called 101. And I think he would have liked to taught people how bank loans and negotiations and financing and property checklists and advertising for buyer (and a whole lot of other stuff one has to learn in doing real estate and asset management) are done. Well, yeah, I'm complaining that why aren't all this in the game!
Guess what, I'll meet the same objections with my game. The fact is, a board game, to achieve its purpose of teaching certain principles or policies or evaluations, can't be fully "practical", ie. a good part of it is theoretical in nature. And the complexity of the game would depend on how "realistic" I want it to be. In a very fundamental economic way, I now have to make choices. Because there would be both costs and benefits to choosing "complexity with realism" or "simple but theoretical". In fact, Kiyosaki already influenced me and convinced me of a need for a advanced board, although, in my mind, I can build that into the current game just by changing the cards.
Well, for now it'll be some mauling over the cards for the first basic set! (Now who is gonna test run the game?)