So, Pritam Singh chose to grandstand again, this time preaching about the dangers of division of the country into two Singapores. To fight it he urges more wealth redistribution! And then he chose to circulate what I'm sure his party colleague would call "folksy wisdom", that social mobility is getting harder in Singapore and the society is becoming more economically polarized.
Unfortunately, as ever, the Workers' Party chooses not to speak in objective terms, opting instead to peddle subliminal propaganda. They're effectively sending a message to millions of Singaporeans that their lives are not in their hands and that if they are feeling unsuccessful or inferior in any way, it's not their responsibility but rather a failing of the government which should have redistributed more wealth that they surely deserve.
I still like to, perhaps naively and foolishly, believe that most people are decent at heart. However, this means that the source of Pritam's words is delusion, ignorance and incompetence.
So, let's speak about objective figures.
Over the past 5 years the bottom 10% earners saw their real incomes rise by almost 16%. Meanwhile the incomes of the top 10% dropped by 2%. In fact, outside of the top 20% incomes have increased by 10% or more - that is for 8 out of 10 Singaporeans.
Let's move to another metric, that lefties typically love but somehow refrain from mentioning it - Gini coefficient, whose role is to be a measure of "inequality". As much as I hate it, because it's a pointless tool of dividing the society, which doesn't say much about it (if a country has a lot of billionaires it may appear to be unequal but is it really worse off?), we can clearly understand why it doesn't appear in parliamentary speeches in Singapore - because it has consistently been going down.
Moreover, when accounting for government transfers - i.e. the "wealth redistribution" - Singapore's Gini drops below the US, a bit ahead of New Zealand or the UK, and not that far off EU countries. Mind you, this is for a major metropolis that attracts lots of capital and has a considerable population of very wealthy residents.
If that's not enough let's look at other facts.
Top 10% taxpayers pay 80% of income taxes. Top 20% + foreigners pay 60% of GST. The wealthiest also bear the burden of the highest stamp duties on properties and exorbitant taxes on car ownership + COE.
Even at the new 9% GST rate effective next year, Singapore would rank bottom 3rd among OECD countries where VAT rates top out at 27%, in addition to much higher income taxation on all.
In other words, most Singaporeans pay very little in taxes while the entire national budget is effectively bankrolled by the rich and aided by investment returns in the form NIRC, coming from well-managed reserves.
This pays for gigantic housing subsidies, education subsidies, public transit, infrastructure and a good deal of healthcare. It also pays for annual government transfers to the public, which each year amount to over S$5000 per person, with the residents of smallest apartments receiving more than twice that.
And that's still not enough?
When will WP address these figures and please tell everyone where should even more money come from? The country already exists largely by the charity of the rich, corporations and profitable investment of reserves that the party itself wants to raid to fund some of itd ideas.
Somehow it never says how to MAKE more money, though.
The only people intent on creating two Singapores are those fanning the flames of envy in the public for their own political gain.
