Friday, June 04, 2021

We Don’t Talk About It

 Everyone knows that there’s money in Singapore. As a visitor to Singapore, one cannot help but be impressed by the wonderful roads from the airport to the centre of town and our range of spick and span high rise buildings. We are, on paper, one of the wealthiest nations on the planet. Our GDP per person is one of the highest in the world – higher than Germany, largest economy in Europe and higher than the UK, our former colonial master. Everyone (other than the natives), it seems, thinks we’re heaven on earth. As one Dutch expat said to me, “Where else is there worth living?” The list of countries and their nominal GDP per capita can be found at:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita

Nobody is denying that there are plenty of nice things in Singapore. However, as someone who has lived in Singapore at the ground level for over two decades, the most important thing to remember is the fact that the veneer of perfection that Singapore presents to the outside world is just that – a veneer.

Real Singapore has real problems and I don’t mean the ones that involve the professional class complaining about their kids not being able to get their kids into the school of their birthright. We have people who struggle to put food on the table and more importantly, we have slowly but surely growing number of homeless people.

 

Taken from Mr. Gilbert Goh

I’m used to seeing homeless people. I lived in London’s Soho area for three years of my life, where you couldn’t help but run into a tramp asking you for spare change every five metres. The tramp situation was such that my sister and I ended up “adopting” a tramp called “Dave” and there was another Irish lass called Zoe who would act as my messenger – she would always let me know if a friend had dropped by looking for me whenever I was out.

However, whilst the homeless in London were inevitably young and white (the type that could easily find a job or hustle), the ones in Singapore are inevitably old and increasingly feeble. In London, it was easy to walk past the homeless without giving change. You could always tell yourself that the guy was a lazy sod and giving him money was only going to encourage him to stay off the labour market. You can’t do that in Singapore. The homeless belong to the generation that did nothing other than work. This was the generation that “built” our economy into the “tiger” economy that Western economist and local officials jack off over. Our homeless are not begging either. In two decades of living here, I’ve never been asked for spare change from our “homeless.” They’re doing things like collecting drinks cans and card board boxes for sale or they’re trying to sell you tissue paper.

The late Lee Kuan Yew used to make all sorts of speeches about how we were an “Asian Society” with “Asian Values” that respected society over the self and dare I say, our elders. Well, what he forgot to mention was that in Singapore’s version of respect for the elderly, there was a limitation or rather the fact that he would focus the national veneration for the old onto himself. Whilst he stepped aside, he made sure that he collected consulting gigs that paid exceedingly well. Every other old person was left to rot.

My previous posting asked why we, the younger generation were not having babies. Well,perhaps the answer lies in the fact that we realise that getting old inSingapore is going to be a pretty miserable experience. Whenever we see oldfolks needing to rummage through the trash to look for cans to crush and sellfor pennies on the dollar (with the inevitable government promises ofprotecting the trash for the big companies), it gives us the idea that this ishow we could end up.

When you’re faced with the prospect that no matter what you do, you’re going to end up destitute in old age, you’re less likely to want to have kids. Why spend money on raising a kid when you’re going to have to keep every penny to ensure you don’t die in a pauper’s grave? Why spend money on kids if all you’re preparing them for is a destitute old age? These are questions that our social planners need to look at if they want to solve the social problems of not enough babies.

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Maira Gall