2.3 Understanding Trade-offs

A situation in which you accept something bad in order to have something good

1. Due to the limited amount of resources available, there is a need to make choices about how to make the best use of these resources.
2. This will ensure more people are able to gain the most benefits from these decisions.
3. The Singapore government has to consider our limited resources when making decisions on developing Singapore.
4. In 2014, the government had to make a decision to acquire land previously used for other purposes, such as residential and commercial, to build the Thomson-East Coast Line. When fully operational in 2024, the new MRT line is expected to serve 500 000 commuters daily in the initial years, rising to one million commuters in the longer term.
5. By making this decision, the trade-off was that this piece of land could no longer be used for recreation or industry in the future.
6. Very often, the government needs to balance the costs of trade-offs with that it chooses to spend its resources on.