Perception vs Reality.
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The other day while having lunch with my colleagues, we were having a discussion of no importance when the topic of housing- or specifically the prices of housing turned up. As usual I was complaining about the ridiculous price I have to pay for my new flat when one of my colleagues who came from Shanghai commented how its not so bad. Back where he came from, the prices was even more ridiculous where only the very rich are the ones who can afford to purchase an apartment. Most people have no choice but to rent since the prices of housing was far beyond their reach. I’ve been to Shanghai and I could agree that indeed there are restaurants that have prices which even as a singaporean I would find prohibitively expensive. And not 20m from the restaurant, you would see old beggars still wearing the ubiquitous blue uniform of the Mao era, standing by the roadside begging for money. So I asked my colleague if such a gaping difference in income wouldn’t cause widepsread unhappiness in China.
Another colleague also related her experience in indonesia where you could see scores of poor people lining the streets while the rich barricaded themselves behind gilded palaces. I guess the general perception was despite whatever unhappiness we have with the government, things could be worse and that while there is a growing income gap in singapore, nonetheless, the distribution of wealth in singapore was nowhere as bad as third world countries like China and Indonesia where the differences between the rich and poor was far beyond what is happening in singapore.
Here is where it gets interesting.
Because you see, according to the gini coefficient which measures the inequality of wealth distribution in a country, singapore (42.5)Â is really not that far off from China (44.7) and is infact actually worse than Indonesia (34.3). And mind you, these are statistics derived from a 1998 UN survey. Whatever your perception of reality, I think we can all agree in the subsequent years after SARs, the Asian financial crisis and the recent bout of inflation, the poor in singapore are much worse off than before. So if the UN were to do a survey and recompile the data, singapore could very well do even worse.
Why such a big difference between perception and reality? We read about the land grab in china, the corruption cases, the newly minted billionaires and the multitude of poor and destitude being driven from their home and land and we thank our lucky stars that singapore is so much better. Yet in a comparison of statistical data, singapore wasn’t really that far off. The difference between the rich and poor in singapore was just as about the same as those in China. While the average singaporean does enjoy a much better life than his compatriot in china, the poor are also finding themselves falling further and further behind. Meanwhile the people who are supposed to prevent this from happening are too busy increasing their own inflated salaries while trying very hard to pretend this is not a problem and this is not happening.Â
Why?
6 Comments so far
Could it be a case of S’pore, having size on its side, is a whole lot easier to control?
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Firstly, I think one very real reason for the widening gap is that our elite Gahmen is creating more opportunities for the rich to become richer, due to the way the cream of the economy is distributed via a wide network of its business links associated with ruling party and its members. (NB : This is the only available option to ensure the perpetual governing of the city state by the ruling party. For that matter, democracy can go to the bins.)
Secondly, the poorer and middle masses have to cope with ever-rising costs of many essential goods and services, which many of which are perpetuated by the ruling party through a wide spectrum of controls and measures. This leave the typical average family with little or no savings to spare for further improvement or investment. Apart from the basic housing need, which essentially has to be funded through a lifetime of hard work, the typical Singaporean’s quality of life isn’t particularly better off than that of the typical Malaysian, Indonesian or Thai.
Meanwhile, whatever crumbs that are left behind by the ruling elite, has to be shared by the poor and middle classes, not unlike the manner where the destitute poor have to look to our public bins for leftover cardboards, cans, etc., to survive in this man-eat-man corporate world.
I suppose Democracy in its true sense is only a fallacy in this part of the world. At the end of the day, its still the politicians’ self interests that runs paramount to anybody else’s interests.
Why is the ruling elites pandering to the filthy rich? Simply, it’s because the wealthy can afford to pay higher taxes, e.g. the property tax for a $12 million bungalow is substantially higher than that of a $200,000 HDB flat. Ditto the ARF/Road tax of a Porsche is several times that of a Proton Saga. Hence the building of the Esplanade where tickets go for as much as $200 for a performance, and the casinos, where the sky is the limit. Why bother with subsidies for the poor? They can sleep in the void decks for all they care.
Read this book : Michael Young 1958 book Rise of the Meritocracy
London : Thames and Hudson
This book heavily influence someone up there, Money Mind. But the ending is quite interesting.
“We read about the land grab in china, the corruption cases, the newly minted billionaires and the multitude of poor and destitude being driven from their home and land and we thank our lucky stars that singapore is so much better.”
There will always be people and nations on this earth far worse than us.
Those early immigrants left their homeland to seek a better lives here. If Spore were such a bad place, these immigrants would naturally had moved on to some place else. So Spore, no matter how LKY loves to portray, was never such a bad place to begin with. Spore’s starting point was always higher than all our neighboring nations. And the British left a pretty solid civil service and system which the PAP govt inherited. And really a tiny island is not that diffcult to govern. HK is a good example.