Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Most capitalist country

My friend from Sweden, who had worked in Singapore for a few years previously, came back for a short visit. He was surprised at the high cost of living here. He said that milk powder in Cold Storage cost 4 times the price in Sweden. Most of the other items here are more expensive than Sweden.

He also said that Singapore has become the most capitalist country. I asked him to explain this statement. He saw two 20 year old condominiums in Holland being torn down to build new condominiums that are higher and smaller. While this can bring profit to the developer, it is wasteful to tear down a building that is still relatively new and replace it with smaller apartments in taller buildings. This must reduce the quality of the living space, for the sake of short term profit.

I agreed with this view. I have always been against the practice of tearing down relatively new buildings.

Tan Kin Lian
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5 comments:

yujuan said...

Have seen a relatively nice block of apartments torn down at aged 7 to 8 years old. Twenty years old is too old already. True, only the developers are winners.

January 25, 2011 5:27 PM
spavic said...

HDB also tears down 4 room HDB flats of about 20 years old. However, there are 2 rooms, 3 rooms flats which are same age or older in the same district which are not torn down but upgraded with lifts and extra room. Did the lease on these old flats increase in lenght? Nope.. still the same.

What is the criteria for tearing down? ???
To build carpark or sell away land for private developer or leave land empty for years???

Sigh...

January 25, 2011 8:22 PM
Dickson said...

Sweden is also one of the 20+ countries in the world with higher Human Development Index than Singapore.

We're pretty high up but still there are things we can learn from each other…

I would like to go to Sweden for Student Exchange during my study in SMU…

January 26, 2011 12:02 AM
Kenny said...

Milk is probably produced locally there. I also believe they do not have things like COE and ERP so the cost transportation of products is relatively low. For genuine business, Singapore should reduce road taxes, COE and ERP for them, this will help to reduce the cost of doing business.

En-bloc is quite unique in Singapore due to our small land size. In order to house more people we have to build up (higher and smaller) unlike sweden they build out (suburbs)

January 26, 2011 9:16 AM
Ray said...

NTUC was charged with setting up their childcare centres to help lower class/ middle class families cope with raising children. Yet, even NTUC Childcare is charging $1,200/month to care for infants. Amazing, right?

January 26, 2011 12:59 PM

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