Unrealistic Expectations from PAP or Singaporeans?

The following is from a FB friend ...

What people think of LHL. Honestly speaking, this man had gone cuckoo.

*An excellent piece written by Gerard Ong*_
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Elgin Toh, The Straits Times Deputy Political Editor said in his commentary on Aug 20, our PM has turned into one of those savvy financial advisers who dispense valuable tips on how to save money on daily expenses at his Rally speech on 19 Aug.

These tips included, being more mindful of water and electricity usage, watching data usage, tapping wireless@SG when available, not using expensive brands in your household and looking for economical options at new hawker centres.

Really Elgin? Our PM a savvy financial advisor? Then my late grandma who brought me up must have been an A grade financial advisor as well. She constantly lectured me why I should not waste electricity & water, switch on appliances unnecessarily, buy branded stuff and expensive food. I think she only had a primary school education before the war.

I remember as a young officer in the army some of my cohort used to nick name some of our senior commanders as “five & ten cents” officers because they emphasised on the small stuff instead of focusing on the big picture which everyone knew was more important and relevant.

I hope our PM reads the yearly stats on the world’s most expensive cities and realises that Singapore has been named the most expensive city in the world for the past few years.

Perhaps a man of his status may not realise it as like Tun Mahathir who said recently that when he was PM he did not need much money. This was because where ever he went things were paid by organisations or people around him. So he does not understand why people (he was jibing UMNO ministers) need so much money.

I wonder if our PM has stepped into an NTUC FairPrice supermarket to compare prices of nonbranded household goods or a wet market to know prices of meat, poultry and fish.

The prices are high not because the sellers are profiteering but because everything in Singapore is highly priced or taxed which tinkles down and wallops the consumer. If the price of vehicles, fuel and rent are high, the prices of deliverable goods go up in price. You don’t need to be an economics graduate to know that.

In 1978, I bought a good second-hand car for S$1,500. My five room Normanton Park apartment cost S$37,000 and came with a swimming pool and tennis courts. Today a five-room flat in far flung Punggol cost S$400,000 and you will have to wait two to four years for it.

These prices do not reflect the interest payments which bring up the overall price of the flat considerably. I am not even talking of resale flats as prices of such apartments are insane when you compare them with property prices in fully developed countries.

There will be people who will compare us with Hong Kong and say we are better off. Well they could compare us with a village in the far north of Thailand and say we are better off as we have electricity and piped-in gas. Such comparisons are futile as we are talking about our cost of living and how it affects the middle-income earners and those living on their wits end in Singapore.

It is the big-ticket prices in Singapore that have raised the cost of living for all of us. Why are houses and flats so expensive. It is primarily because land sales have been priced high and developers upping their prices and profits.

Let us not forget with every property sales transaction, a tax is levied which brings up the cost of the purchase. Primarily the major portion of our income goes into paying of mortgages.

Why are goods so expensive? You don’t need a finance degree to figure it out. High cost of property + high rentals + high cost of vehicles and taxes + high costs of services + salaries (with CPF) + worker levies = high overall cost

At the end of the day, the rich and high performing ministers and bureaucrats with their humongous salaries will not feel the pinch when we talk about the high cost of living in Singapore.

Unless you are Edwin Tong who told Goh Chok Tong that if he took up a post as a Minister of State, he may not be able to take care of his family, mother and father-in-law with his $500k yearly salary!