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A disproportionate number of S'poreans are among the world's wealthiest. So why the blues?
By JOYCE HOOI Business Times
LAST month, if Singapore had been a person, it would have stood above the unwashed tableau of Occupy Wall Street (OWS), watching from its penthouse and laughing into its cognac. But it has spent the year being a little down in the mouth, preoccupied with property prices, taxi fares and faulty trains.
This gloom is hard to explain in the grander scheme of things. When OWS's gross simplification of the one per cent trampling on the 99 per cent is contemplated, Singapore is practically part of the world's one per cent.
This is a country where, every single day, 25 people bought either a Mercedes-Benz or a BMW for the first 11 months of the year. In the same period, every four days, someone drove away from the Ferrari showroom with a big smile on his face. (One assumes that, each time, it's a different person.)
Says Mizuho economist Vishnu Varathan: 'Being disgruntled is always a relative thing. More often than not, it is the middle class who tend to be more disgruntled. They tend to be slightly more educated and upwardly mobile, so they are frustrated when they see the guy earning the $1 million salary.
'They might not be badly off. They might be getting their $80,000 or $100,000 a year, but they're disgruntled because they think, 'Hey, I know almost as much as that guy does. Why is he getting the $1 million salary?'
Chia Wai Mun, assistant professor of economics at NTU, says that in Singapore, 'there is a significant jump in the income and educational status of later generations relative to the earlier ones'. 'However . . . intergenerational mobility . . . is low. Those whose parents were at the bottom tend to remain at the bottom and those whose parents were at the top tend to stay at the top.'
It does not help either that even the asset-rich might not feel rich. In the last quarter, residential property assets made up 50.2 per cent of total household assets here.
Says Citi's Mr Kit: 'Having a large chunk of wealth plastered into your home may not necessarily be a good gauge of economic well-being, especially when there are limited avenues to monetise housing net wealth in Singapore.'
Ultimately, the math of the middle class is a messy one. But even the less mathematically rigorous endeavour of counting your blessings is hard when you do not have much time for it.
Last year, the average person in Singapore worked the most hours among developed countries, clocking 2,409 hours annually. Norwegians worked just about half as hard: 1,414 hours.
Gallingly, Singaporeans were among the least productive, with the fourth-lowest gross domestic product per hour worked in purchasing power parity terms - while their restful Norwegian counterparts ranked first.
Whether cubicle drones here have themselves and Facebook-surfing to blame is as muddled as the larger issues that plague the middle class.
OWS is, on tangible terms, a shadow of itself. Last month, police evicted protesters from Zuccotti Park, the movement's flagship site. Thousands of protesters-turned-homeless people melted into the night with no place to go.
Singapore, with its 87.2 per cent home ownership rate among residents, will not find answers in OWS.
That does not mean, however, that the questions will go away.
Copyright © 2010 Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved.
By JOYCE HOOI Business Times
LAST month, if Singapore had been a person, it would have stood above the unwashed tableau of Occupy Wall Street (OWS), watching from its penthouse and laughing into its cognac. But it has spent the year being a little down in the mouth, preoccupied with property prices, taxi fares and faulty trains.
This gloom is hard to explain in the grander scheme of things. When OWS's gross simplification of the one per cent trampling on the 99 per cent is contemplated, Singapore is practically part of the world's one per cent.
This is a country where, every single day, 25 people bought either a Mercedes-Benz or a BMW for the first 11 months of the year. In the same period, every four days, someone drove away from the Ferrari showroom with a big smile on his face. (One assumes that, each time, it's a different person.)
Says Mizuho economist Vishnu Varathan: 'Being disgruntled is always a relative thing. More often than not, it is the middle class who tend to be more disgruntled. They tend to be slightly more educated and upwardly mobile, so they are frustrated when they see the guy earning the $1 million salary.
'They might not be badly off. They might be getting their $80,000 or $100,000 a year, but they're disgruntled because they think, 'Hey, I know almost as much as that guy does. Why is he getting the $1 million salary?'
Chia Wai Mun, assistant professor of economics at NTU, says that in Singapore, 'there is a significant jump in the income and educational status of later generations relative to the earlier ones'. 'However . . . intergenerational mobility . . . is low. Those whose parents were at the bottom tend to remain at the bottom and those whose parents were at the top tend to stay at the top.'
It does not help either that even the asset-rich might not feel rich. In the last quarter, residential property assets made up 50.2 per cent of total household assets here.
Says Citi's Mr Kit: 'Having a large chunk of wealth plastered into your home may not necessarily be a good gauge of economic well-being, especially when there are limited avenues to monetise housing net wealth in Singapore.'
Ultimately, the math of the middle class is a messy one. But even the less mathematically rigorous endeavour of counting your blessings is hard when you do not have much time for it.
Last year, the average person in Singapore worked the most hours among developed countries, clocking 2,409 hours annually. Norwegians worked just about half as hard: 1,414 hours.
Gallingly, Singaporeans were among the least productive, with the fourth-lowest gross domestic product per hour worked in purchasing power parity terms - while their restful Norwegian counterparts ranked first.
Whether cubicle drones here have themselves and Facebook-surfing to blame is as muddled as the larger issues that plague the middle class.
OWS is, on tangible terms, a shadow of itself. Last month, police evicted protesters from Zuccotti Park, the movement's flagship site. Thousands of protesters-turned-homeless people melted into the night with no place to go.
Singapore, with its 87.2 per cent home ownership rate among residents, will not find answers in OWS.
That does not mean, however, that the questions will go away.
Copyright © 2010 Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved.
