Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Income gap in Singapore

Read this article.
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2 comments:

Kojakbt said...

MM Lee said that the problem of a widening income gap is one that most countries - not just Singapore - have to contend with and that such a split is inevitable in a globalised world. Global competition, he said, both depresses wages at the bottom and boosts wages at the top.

Let us then compare the Gini coefficients of US and Singapore. I chose US because it is also one of the most affected by global competition and after Singapore, US is the country with the next highest income gap among the advanced economies. No doubt, the Gini coefficient of US is also high but we want to see how the US managed in all these years comparing with Singapore:

http://i35.tinypic.com/333wry0.jpg

The blue color line refers to SG Household Income Inequality after accounting for Govt Benefits & Taxes. SG's Gini coefficient is based on household Income from work per household member. Data from US and SG Govt sources:

http://www.singstat.gov.sg/pubn/papers/people/op-s15.pdf
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/histinc/IE-1.pdf

http://i35.tinypic.com/207tdu1.jpg

Here's a better view of the graph without the values:

http://i34.tinypic.com/15pq0ox.jpg

In general, we can conclude one thing. US's income gap may be high but it is not widening. For Singapore, under PAP's managment, our income gap has definitely increased in the last 9 years!

October 21, 2009 3:13 AM
Anonymous said...

This is called an "Elephant in the room"

(From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant_in_the_room

An English idiom for an obvious truth that is being ignored or goes unaddressed.

The idiomatic expression also applies to an obvious problem no one wants to discuss.[1]

It is based on the idea that an elephant in a room would be impossible to overlook; thus, people in the room who pretend the elephant is not there might be concerning themselves with relatively small and even irrelevant matters, compared to the looming big one.

It's quite fun (and funny) to open up your mind and count the number of elephants we have in this small room called Singapore.

Another source Urban Dictionary
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=elephant+in+the+room

A very large issue that everyone is acutely aware of, but nobody wants to talk about.

Perhaps a sore spot, perhaps politically incorrect, or perhaps a political hot potato, it's something that no one wants to touch with a ten foot pole. Sometimes pink elephant in the room.

October 21, 2009 8:13 AM

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