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The Emperor Has No Clothes: Singapore’s Consumer Economy Is in Quiet Crisis
medium.com
2 min read
·
2 days ago
By Bala Shetty
Walk down Clarke Quay on a weekend night and you’ll hear the silence louder than the music. The bars are half-full, the queues are gone, and the buzz has evaporated. What was once a showcase of Singapore’s vibrant nightlife now feels like a well-lit museum: clean, curated, but hollow.
Across the island, the story repeats. Restaurants are buckling under unsustainable rents. Concert halls are cancelling shows due to lack of ticket sales. Gig workers—once seen as flexible entrepreneurs—are driving ten-hour shifts just to take home SGD 3,000 before taxes and costs. It’s not just a blip. It’s a systemic slowdown that no one wants to acknowledge.
The signs are everywhere. At Lau Pa Sat, the longest queue isn’t for Korean BBQ or craft burgers—it’s for the mixed vegetable rice stall. At just three dollars a plate, it represents the brutal arithmetic of working-class survival. Meanwhile, logistics aggregators are paying delivery vendors $1.50–$2.00 per drop—the price of a bus fare. Who profits in this equation? Not the driver, nor the small business trying to stay afloat.
Tourism, once a golden goose, is limping. Chinese travellers are constrained by their own economic uncertainty. Indian tourists are hesitant amid rumours of a new COVID variant. High-end events targeting the NRI diaspora are seeing poor turnout and last-minute cancellations. Even Geylang—a barometer of Singapore’s underground economy—has gone quiet.
Interns flood the job market, pushing wages down. High Net-Worth Individuals are quietly shifting base to Dubai, where luxury meets leniency. The only thing increasing is the number of “for rent” signs in shophouses and event venues.
And yet, we keep up the façade. We speak of resilience and recovery, of digital transformation and green growth. But without acknowledging the human cost—burnout, stagnation, despair—these are just hollow buzzwords. Optimism without data is naivety. Growth without distribution is delusion.
So let’s say it: the emperor has no clothes.
It is time to stop whispering and start fixing. That begins by listening—to the hawker who sells $3 meals, the rider who can’t afford a sick day, the venue operator cancelling bookings, and the startup founder wondering whether to stay or leave. Their silence isn't apathy. It’s exhaustion.
Singapore’s future has always rested not just on its GDP, but on its ability to course-correct with clarity and courage. That time is now.
medium.com
2 min read
·
2 days ago
By Bala Shetty
Walk down Clarke Quay on a weekend night and you’ll hear the silence louder than the music. The bars are half-full, the queues are gone, and the buzz has evaporated. What was once a showcase of Singapore’s vibrant nightlife now feels like a well-lit museum: clean, curated, but hollow.
Across the island, the story repeats. Restaurants are buckling under unsustainable rents. Concert halls are cancelling shows due to lack of ticket sales. Gig workers—once seen as flexible entrepreneurs—are driving ten-hour shifts just to take home SGD 3,000 before taxes and costs. It’s not just a blip. It’s a systemic slowdown that no one wants to acknowledge.
The signs are everywhere. At Lau Pa Sat, the longest queue isn’t for Korean BBQ or craft burgers—it’s for the mixed vegetable rice stall. At just three dollars a plate, it represents the brutal arithmetic of working-class survival. Meanwhile, logistics aggregators are paying delivery vendors $1.50–$2.00 per drop—the price of a bus fare. Who profits in this equation? Not the driver, nor the small business trying to stay afloat.
Tourism, once a golden goose, is limping. Chinese travellers are constrained by their own economic uncertainty. Indian tourists are hesitant amid rumours of a new COVID variant. High-end events targeting the NRI diaspora are seeing poor turnout and last-minute cancellations. Even Geylang—a barometer of Singapore’s underground economy—has gone quiet.
Interns flood the job market, pushing wages down. High Net-Worth Individuals are quietly shifting base to Dubai, where luxury meets leniency. The only thing increasing is the number of “for rent” signs in shophouses and event venues.
And yet, we keep up the façade. We speak of resilience and recovery, of digital transformation and green growth. But without acknowledging the human cost—burnout, stagnation, despair—these are just hollow buzzwords. Optimism without data is naivety. Growth without distribution is delusion.
So let’s say it: the emperor has no clothes.
It is time to stop whispering and start fixing. That begins by listening—to the hawker who sells $3 meals, the rider who can’t afford a sick day, the venue operator cancelling bookings, and the startup founder wondering whether to stay or leave. Their silence isn't apathy. It’s exhaustion.
Singapore’s future has always rested not just on its GDP, but on its ability to course-correct with clarity and courage. That time is now.
