The emerging ‘invisible’ underclass in S’pore
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http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/opinion/2013/03/12/the-emerging-%E2%80%98invisible%E2%80%99-underclass-in-spore/
The news just did not surprise anyone, simply because it could not! The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in a report last month labeled the ‘economic oasis’ everybody knows as Singapore as the nation with the greatest income inequality.
The report did not mention the city-state’s income inequality was the worst in the world, but a sensation is steadily gaining that eroding income levels have accelerated a slow and painful process of societal alienation, thus in the process increasingly fostering class divides.
Not since one-time political dissident and erstwhile gun-blazing firebrand of the Workers’ Party, J.B. Jeyaretnam (JBJ) first complained of “pockets of poverty behind gleaming office towers” to a Western newspaper in 1982 has a more salient focus been once again turned on the city-state.
Those remarks from Jeyaretnam, needless to say, earned him some of harsh and most withering of barbs from the then and late education minister, Tan Eng Soon.
Yet after some 30 years, an ‘invisible’ Singapore underclass is hardly indistinguishable. The sight of the old and infirm waiting out at tables, clearing rubbish in the streets or scavenging into trash bins to eke out whatever living that is sanely and remotely possible is not just commonplace.
It has now lead to strident calls to temper the very harsh, forbidding facets of Singaporean-style meritocracy with a compassionate edge replete with a welfare system even as that maybe ideological bugaboo.
That call is almost certain to grow louder as the nation continues to age brought on firstly by a birth rate that remains stubbornly low and the lack of any favourable measures to reverse the decline in falling birth rates.
According to the BBC report which cited the United Nations, the income gap in Singapore is the second biggest among Asia’s developed nations, which again given the lack of a minimum wage regime, is excruciatingly unsurprising.
The report did not say which Asian nation had the biggest income gap but there leaves nothing to doubt what a Far Eastern Economic Review (FEER) said several years that Singapore’s ruling Peoples’ Action Party (PAP) is “quick to tax its people but slow in granting privileges”.
Do you think its true? For myself, I'm still not used to old people clearing the tables in food courts.
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Times are bad.
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char is bad.
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The majority of Singapore population are average income earners and we work hard for our money but yet our CPF money is not there when we reached retirement age. You don't have to go far, just go across to Malaysia, you can't see old people cleaning and wiping tables. Even in Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines etcs...you don't see old people cleaning and wiping tables. They are supported and taken care of by their own family members. In fact, when tourists visited Singapore, they were so surprised to see old Singaporeans are still working. Singapore is the only country you can see many old people doing cleaning and wiping the tables to make ends meet or collect carton boxes and empty soft drink cans to sell to the karang guni man. Singapore is the only country whereby their own family members cannot take care of their own elderlies because of high cost of living and average income earners' salaries are insufficient to make ends meet or to take care of their own old parents due to long working hours.
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If you earn million dollars a year, how will you understand?
How?
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The majority of the Singaporean also agree with this.
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we have 800 billion reserves??
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Originally posted by dragg:
we have 800 billion reserves??
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Originally posted by dragg:
we have 800 billion reserves??
How you know?
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We have to work until what age?
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Cannot retire.
damn stressed.
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char is bad.