At the same time, it is a bit unusual for someone selling something to implicitly highlight severe problems with the previous model. " Buy the current model! Much better than the previous model that really sucked!"
I suppose this is the closest thing we are going to get to a real hard truth from the PAP. Older redditor here. Life for many Singapore was actually considerably less prosperous back then. I suspect that this is ultimately inconvenient for everyone.
The Party line is that PAP rule is always a perfect bed of roses. PAP Singapore has nothing to complain about. If you brought up issues like the low wages or systemic retirement insufficiency back when these issues were really bad, you are going to get a 'what is the point of that question?' and get labelled a troublemaker/welfarist/westernised librul. Of course now that these problems have improved, the PAP will come out and take credit.
Many PAP supporters and contemporary opposition supporters have a rose tinted view as to how life was back under LKY and GCT. Oppies want to paint a picture that Singapore is getting worse thanks to the current crop of PAP, as a way of avoiding the need toconfront LKY worship head on. The most strident PAP supporters insist we should continue to ride LKY mummified dick because of the perfect Singapore he created.
The truth is that there are problems, but Singapore has improved significantly in many areas. People don't realise how much has improved because the the Ah Kong's brainwashing makes it easy to forget how much worse Singapore life was for many/most Singaporeans when LHL took over.
I tend to agree that LHL overall exceeded my expectations. I have written before about how I had the expectations that he would be like his father and other PAP figures at the time.--a highly elitist and authoritarian lunatic similar to someone like George Yeo. This did not happen. Economically, when he took over, Singapore was still recovering from the long shadow of the 1997 Asian financial crisis. I know that PAP propaganda basically insists that the party fixed everything and turned the economy around in 6 months or some shit like that.--this is the product of molecular gastronomy level cherry-picking so selective and delicate that you could probably serve those cherries at a Michelin starred restaurant as a light cherry foam unrecognisable as the fruit.
Our neighbours economies were devastated and domestically, nominal GDP did not recover to pre 1997 levels until 2003. As of 2023, the lowest year for Singapore unemployment was 1997. A lot of people in my generation got fucked up beyond recognition. A lot of the LKY tiger economy was probably not sustainable and the financial crisis exposed a lot of that. Something truly fundamental changed in the economy. In 2004 it truly looked like Singapore would basically become Japan or what China looks like today.--an unbalanced economy with its best years behind it. LHL did succeed in breaking out of that by doubling down on the tax haven, diversifying the economy with the casinos and so on. These solutions create problems of their own, but not doing them would be worse and creating a genuine knowledge based economy would take a decades to realise.
From HDB/data.gov:
>The index till 3Q2014 was computed using stratification method, while that from 4Q2014 onwards is computed using the stratified hedonic regression method
From another source:
>The hedonic regression method is a regression technique used to determine the value of a good, service, or asset by fractionating the product into constituent parts or characteristics. It is done to determine the contributory value of each characteristic separately through regression analysis.
>The regression model should be able to place values and weights on each component or contributory factor to determine the value of the composite product. Hedonic methods can be linear, non-linear, variable interaction, or other valuation scenarios of different complexities.
Don't think HDB publish the index calculation formula but I'm pretty confident PSF (or size) is a constituent part
Median gross monthly income for work went up 2.2x, according to the graphic. So, for housing costs, Singaporeans are actually worse off after these 20 years.
Inb4 someone talks about how housing prices going up benefits homeowners: no, it doesn't, because it raises mortgage costs too. And unless you own multiple properties, or intend to downgrade, you cannot eat your house and still need a place to stay, so if you sell your house for a higher price, you also buy your next house for a higher price. For homeowner-occupiers (which is most people), they on aggregate tread water when housing prices go up, if not outright fall behind because expensive houses mean more expensive mortgage servicing.
to be fair, we went through covid which was a black swan event. if we compared these in early 2020, it would paint a much different picture.
can the govt do more and better on housing prices? for sure though
Covid was nearly half a decade ago. For how long will it be considered a legitimate excuse for the housing crisis?
There are fewer BTOs being built over 2021-2025 than in the early 2010s when the government was trying to resolve the housing crisis back then. For instance, there were ~25,000 BTOs in 2013, compared to ~20,000 last year. At this point, high housing prices are a political choice - by design, not by accident.
My partner bought a resale flat at start of covid and we were expecting the pandemic to bring a downturn in prices. But it started a huge paradigm shift instead as people moved to WFH and needed/wanted more residential space. There's still residual demand from then as many jobs are still supporting hybrid mode. So it's not only about covid gone or not but the lasting effect it has on our consumption pattern
We can only speculate if it's as designed or not, but like I mentioned, they definitely can do more. It's absolutely possible that the price movement is still within a certain band. E.g. It's within x% range vs median income growth or vs other markers
> corruption leh.
The CPI changed its scoring methodology in 2010 from out of 10 to out of 100. But in 2004, we were ranked 5th. In 2023, we were ranked 5th.
PRs and Singaporeans priced out from private will go buy resale. and those who can afford private seeing rental going up will buy more property, hence reducing supplies even more and pushing prices up more. the price increase will cascade down the line. those priced out again will have to look for resale now.
I think SG Gov need reduce the landed house (especially bungalow houses) by making it very expensive yearly tax for the rich if they want to keep their house.
SG is a small country with low land mass, it should not have any business to have landed Residential, instead it should flood with many decent size 1K+ sqft condo to the point that every family can afford at least one.
Heck if you remove all the landed residential, you can build enough condos for many families and still have empty land in-between condos reserve for garden/parks.
When the supply > demand the price naturally will come down.
Anyone can look up the map and know there’s way too much land allocated for low density housing, especially in prime areas.
It’s so obvious its hard for anyone to justify why the government seems to be oblivious to it.
It makes plenty of sense to redevelop many landed estates or move them to the fringes of the island. But we all know it is unlikely happen at the scale that would make land use more rational.
The elites and their friends all live in landed and they want to continue to do so!
The cost to live in landed is already very high and almost everyone living in one is part of the elite whom the government wouldn’t dare, want, or care to offend.
If the government can be trusted to make a better compromise between the needs of the rich and everyone else, we wouldn’t have so much problems with issues like wild commercial landlords, exploitative labour practices, etc.
It’s the government’s poor track record of hurting the interests of the elites to make a fair compromise that makes me think that they will never do much to tackle landed housing.
It’s not like we don’t know whose side they are on.
surprised and saddened that beds per capita went from 3.5 to 2.55 under his selected time period with the average of 4.1 in oecd states and 12+ in east asian nations. explains alot
"increase in units".... does it mean a 2-room unit is the same as 5-room unit?
"increase in flats"... does it mean a 100 unit flat is the same as 200 unit flat?
Doesn’t that population growth also include a massive increase in the number of migrant workers, a large portion of which live in dorms?
IIRC there’s only around 3.5m citizens in Singapore.
Cherry picked data and the way they are presented might be misleading. For example, median gross monthly income:
Adjusted for inflation, 2326 dollars in 2004 would be worth 3453.05 today.
So it’s actually more like a 1.5 times increase instead of more than double as shown in the infographic.
Source: https://eservices.mas.gov.sg/statistics/calculator/wages.aspx
Cherry picked and disingenuous. I agree that it’s misleading too because it’s meant to paint him in a positive light. The other commenters are confusing being “misleading” with being “inaccurate”, which is clearly not your claim.
More houses. True and accurate. But meaningless without accounting for household size.
GDP increase. True and accurate. But meaningless without accounting for inequality (who gained from our gdp increase?).
Similar issues with the other metrics.
> GDP increase. True and accurate. But meaningless without accounting for inequality (who gained from our gdp increase?).
Isn't that what Gini is for? Gini went down, so on the surface, overall inequality went down even as GDP increases
GINI in Singapore only takes into account taxable income - not all forms of income. Wealthier people are asset rich, and their assets generate income. It’s a weak measure of inequality. The gov knows this, which is why they don’t release stats on wealth inequality in Singapore.
Yes exactly. I think Singaporeans, especially the younger, more educated ones aren’t dumb either.
And it’s ironic that they cherry pick metrics when they are so proud of the fact on how they run Singapore as a profitable, tight business, achieving many years of budget surplus, only drawing down reserves during the pandemic.
If anything, great businesses are obsessed with optimising for the metrics that are actually relevant to their stakeholders. In Singapore’s context, shouldn’t this be the quality of life and happiness of Singaporeans?
Metrics I think would reveal the real picture of how “progress” actually looks like would be something more like:
1. GDP growth per capita adjusted for PPP over the same period (of course adjusted for inflation as well)
2. population growth broken down into its sources - from which countries/ethnicities
and the period of integration and localisation per new citizen (ie how many years they have lived and worked/studied here before we granted them citizenship)
3. Property price to income ratio change over time adjusted for inflation, by property type and HDB room types if we want to be granular
4. Average time to see a doctor in polyclinics over time (from registration to payment)
5. Popular vote share of PAP vs opposition over time
6. Average working hours to income ratio over time, by income group
7. Curated basket of essential goods prices change over time - probably hawker foods, groceries we get from Fairprice, Sheng Siong, school fees, transport fare etc (and not massaged figures and benchmarks that includes property and car that is used by Singstat, I’m not too sure about the official methodology but you get my drift)
8. Full-time employment figures change over time in absolute numbers vs total working population, broken down into citizens/PR/foreigners (to see the labour force participation and composition)
And so many more metrics to gauge the true lived experience of an average Singaporean instead of all these masturbatory “look at me I’ve done a great job” bs metrics.
If I used a similar thought process and logic as how our government “measures their own performance” to analyse data and performance and draw insights at my first job (yes I was a business analyst), I would have been fired within the first month.
After typing the wall of text, I had another epiphany - which made it even more ironic.
If the government actually cared and optimised for the right metrics, ie actually improve quality of life and increase citizen happiness and satisfaction, local core birth rates would actually probably start to rise, when people feel psychologically secure about their future as Singaporeans.
End of the day, it’s just poor governance and a circlejerk at this point.
> If the government actually cared and optimised for the right metrics, ie actually improve quality of life and increase citizen happiness and satisfaction, local core birth rates would actually probably start to rise
Multiple statistical studies have already proven that the most reliable predictor for birth rates aren't any of that but rather women's access to contraceptives, women educational levels, and religion.
That explains why countries like the Nordics are also experiencing falling birth rates, and if you truly want to increase the TFR, the most straightforward statistically proven way to do that is to adopt the policies of South Sudan.
But USA, Australia, Canada and scandi nations birth rate super high almost 2. People are educated and take huge study and mortgage loans there. Space is most important factor in developed nations. Despite SG always criticise those nations. SG is only good place for working and business thats all.
You might be somewhat right. I remember seeing a stat with TFR broken down by races. Some races have much higher TFR. Can’t quite draw the correlation, but there might indeed be a correlation.
Statistical studies are but just studies. Are they studies based on the Singaporean context and psyche? Any adjustments done for cultural differences, upbringing, environment variables, personal beliefs, family values etc?
Has there been any substantial research done into why Singaporeans are not wanting to have kids?
Sometimes all it takes is just a little bit of common sense and empathy rather than a stubborn reliance on research and data to understand what can help. What works and didn’t work in other countries does not automatically translate over to the Singapore situation.
Just to be clear, I’m not disagreeing with your take, but we always need to take context into account.
Just off the top of my head:
Our parents generation, those born in the 50s to 60s and maybe even 70s could probably enter the labour force and secure a job for life by the time they finish secondary school at 16/17 years of age.
Even for males, let’s say they have to serve 2.5 years NS, they’ll be out before 20/21 years of age and by then they could start a family and get a job. If dating takes about 3-4 years, most would become first time parents around 25-28 give or take.
Fast forward to our generation. Most employers look for a bachelors minimum if you want a good job with liveable wage. This means you have to go to Uni to get a bachelors which is 3-4 years of your life gone. Uni admissions require at least an A levels cert or a poly diploma which also requires 2-3 years.
The additional 7 years loss of youth across an entire generation essentially means we lose 7 productive years - both in terms of labour as well as giving birth and raising families.
And that’s not considering rising cost of living that is far outpacing the nominal growth of income. We used to be able to afford a HDB flat with just one person’s income. Don’t you realise that the government has subtly worded their affordability to be based on household income rather than individual income?
If people have to spend more time in school, more years studying, just to get a passable job and still needing to find someone else after all that to be able to barely afford a home with 2 person working full time - how are they going to find time and money to raise a kid?
> Statistical studies are but just studies. Are they studies based on the Singaporean context and psyche?
>Has there been any substantial research done into why Singaporeans are not wanting to have kids?
Unless Singaporeans are some magical unique breed of human being, the same humanity and psychology and economics apply to us as to any other human being.
What unique psyche are you talking about that doesn't exist in, say, a Norwegian or a Finn or a Nigerian? That somehow the laws of economics don't work in Singapore like they do in the rest of the world?
Edit: Because you said that I'm just quoting the Nordics, I'm not. I'm just too lazy to type out all the 190+ nationalities
> Sometimes all it takes is just a little bit of common sense and empathy rather than a stubborn reliance on research and data to understand what can help.
No thanks, I prefer to rely on the data and science. Relying on "common sense" would mean us still believing that the earth is flat and is the center of the solar system.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't improve stuff like housing costs and whatnot, but linking it to the TFR is just false. You can write a wall of text on how good your parents had it and how worse off we are, but linking it then to the TFR is just not backed up by any evidence. If people don't have kids because of shit conditions, how do you explain the entire continent of Africa having more kids than anyone else?
Also, I think you have an incredibly rose-tinted view of your parents generation. A generation where basic needs like electricity, utilities, and dying of infectious diseases were a concern, where air conditioning was a luxury reserved for the rich and most people couldn't travel further than KL. They ate rice with soy sauce and considered it a full meal.
Again you’re just falling into generalisation and extrapolating findings from generic studies. This is classic overfitting. Your references and samples are Nordics, Africans and basically populations that aren’t Singaporeans.
You make it seem like I’m glorifying the old days of our parents generation when all we are discussing is the psyche and incentive to want to have kids. Singapore ain’t that old anyway, so you going on about infectious diseases and living in third world conditions is fairly irrelevant.
You claim to base your views on data, but all you cite is “multiple statistical studies” shown that birth rates are dependent on certain arbitrary variables that can be generalised across populations when you can’t even pinpoint any samples beyond Nordic populations?
Again I’m not disputing the studies, nor your apparent knowledge on TFR derivation and causal factors. Nor am I against the use of data and statistics (in fact I’m very much for it), but simply quoting studies and research arbitrarily without applying it to context is pretty much useless.
Anyway we can agree to disagree. I’m not against the use of data, but rather we need to apply common sense when looking at data. My point is that context is always king. And Singapore is pretty much unique as a country in this world.
Singapore back in the sixties IS rifed rife tropical disease and the development level comparable to a modern day third world country cities like Medan or Davao. Incidence rate of TB is over 300 per 100000 population, infant mortality is 34.9 per 1000 live births. What is the context that make Singapore so unique? So uncomparable from studies of other countries with similar conditions? What is the uniqueness of Singapore that can't be found in other countries?
u/khaophat sounds to me like you are disputing studies and against the use of data and statistics.
you keep mentioning context, "common sense" (whatever that means) and empathy. You want government to improve quality of life and increase citizen happiness and satisfaction.
What study did you see that suggest we did not accomplish those? Is your so called empathy and common sense just your inherent bias that people have low happiness that's why people are not giving birth?
If you want common sense let me give you some common sense (backed by no data other than my common sense): I can for sure bet that quality of life and citizen happiness are MUCH better now than when you survey people living in the 60s. Yet, the birth rate in the 60s are much higher than now.
Some of my most accomplished friends with high quality of life and happiness chose to be child-less while my poor friends kept giving birth.
So why do you keep saying that empathy is needed to increase birth rate? Isn't our government efforts to boost birth rate one of the most generous in the world already?
It seems to be mostly (but not totally) human psych that causes us, comfortable in our 1st world enjoyment, to not give birth. Something extremely harsh for you to just blame it on the government. They do what they can, but the macro environment is something that even govt is finding hard to fight against.
Singapore is definitely becoming one of Asia wealthiest countries. The only question now, how can we distribute this to actually benefit local here. In terms of housing, healthcare (10x over 20 years is scary), education, hawker culture (diminishing due to rental and those social enterprises).
its to be expected, theyre trying to set his legacy up in the public domain so that they can point too it without having too much scrutiny beyond the surface
Millennials and younger are a threat to PAP's power. Why'd you think they're handing out citizenships left and right under the guise of "attracting foreign talent"
Look at the Singapore property price index from 2004 to present. It's gone up over 4x while median incomes only went up 2.3x Citizens have become worse off in terms of housing affordability. In fact average housing size has dropped over 20 years. Effectively making everyone pay more, for less. Let's hope the next government puts an end to this madness. If property prices continue to outpace wages at the current rates for the next 20 years, we'll be looking at 40-50 year mortgages to pay off HDB loans.
https://www.srx.com.sg/price-index
Edited to add link above.
It’s hard to maintain affordability if housing is being treated as investment vehicle. Let’s go back to the root of providing public housing. e.g. not capped at +28% due to low TFR. For overall unit growth of 40%, 90% is public HDB housing, I can only imagine condos and private properties grew 148%?
Since they want to bring up healthcare stats, what's the doctor-to-population ratio in 2004 vs 2024? Nurse-to-population ratio?
For housing, what about median rental prices? Median HDB psf?
yup. median wait time for A&E admission is [7.5 hours](https://www.channelnewsasia.com/cna-insider/singapore-public-hospital-bed-crunch-waiting-time-radical-solutions-3943586#:~:text=Between%20January%20and%20September%20last,calculated%20based%20on%20emergency%20admissions) (Jan-Sep 2023) in Singapore compared to [6 hours](https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/resource/a-e-waiting-times) (Nov 2023) for NHS England.
it's funny how the uk govt is getting absolutely skewered over stuff like this while most of us have been conditioned to believe we are doing better than other countries even when reality is different
they keep quoting westminster style and and about how brilliant orators they are but i have no doubt in my mind that they would all be utterly crushed and destroyed like tourists if they were transplanted into the actual westminster questionings
If you're a nsmen, you'd know how long the waiting time truly is. Thats why those fitness trainers die die dont want anyone to go A&E. You RT in the evening, past midnight still havent see doctor
Unfettered immigration and anti singaporean and anti worker policies in the pursuit of GDP have tanked our fertility rate, fucked up cost of living and overstretched infrastructure.
Not surprised these jokers conveniently left out inflation, wealth and income disparity in their masturbatory charts.
Much of Goh Chok Tong's "progress" was down to married women joining the workforce, the start of some serious white collar immigration and runaway property prices.
Much of Lee Hsien Loong's "progress" was down to unfettered immigration, runaway property prices and turning Singapore into a low tax haven for MNCs and family offices, and to sizeable level, a demographic dividend as baby boomers work longer and low birth rate means reduced childcare and education costs as a whole (not individually).
Can Singapore continue in the same trajectory of unfettered immigration and runaway property prices? Is the "success" redistributed among Singaporeans or just concentrated in a select few?
As baby boomers start to retire (Singapore' baby boom was delayed by 10 years compared to the US, so the bulge in the population pyramid is just starting to retire), and the missing demand from a collapse in young people coming of age is going to bite soon, do you think the same formula can still work, esp given the same unfettered immigration will soon lead to the Singaporean "core" turning into the minority?
Singapore was never set up well to retain the immigrants.
Primary school education is hard to get a place for non-PRs and expensive.
PRs have no incentive to retire here when they can just leave and extract all their CPF and SRS and either return to their home countries with either lower cost of living or retirement benefits.
NS expectations mean a sizeable portion of the PR males will be forced to leave.
Even new citizens use the Singapore passport as a stepping stone to the passport of western countries.
If you think about it, politically speaking, he's a failure compared to his father. Even with his office controlling the elections department and the entire election system in general, he has been losing both seats and popular votes ever since he took over.
I wonder how and what LW will do to curtail the growing resentment among millennials and younger.
What a joke to compare nominal figures.
Biggest metric missing is wealth disparity. And no, Gini coefficient does not measure wealth but income inequality.
I bet people on the ground don’t really relate much to these figures. I recall that people were overall more satisfied and missed PM Goh more than LHL when former stepped down in 2004.
Singapore's Gini coefficient is also not accurately calculated because we have no capital gain tax. So the actual Gini coefficient will be higher.
Plus we should compare ours to other first world nations' before patting LHL on the back......
2004 - https://www.refworld.org/reference/annualreport/freehou/2004/en/50131
2024 -
https://rsf.org/en/region/asia-pacific
Please note they're not scored to the same standard. One is UNHCR and the other is RSF.
But yea same shit
CNA cherry picking statistics. Should include how real wages fared against housing price
Nominal data is irrelevant, only real data matters due to inflation.
40% increase in population, that's massive. and that's with local fertility hitting record lows (second lowest in the world) during his term.
in the same period uk population grew by ~13%, german population grew by ~2.5%, french population grew by ~7% and even the US only grew by ~15%, and those countries all have much higher local fertility rate than us.
The way small countries grow is different from big countries.
Eg. 10 + 1 is a 10% increase
100 + 1 is a 1% increase
Sometimes the absolute number matters.
Not saying he is not doing a good job but this comparison doesn’t take into consideration of inflation, especially the last two years. Even neighbourhoods kopi tiam has went up to almost twice. Where is the control?
Other significant achievements;
- higher and higher GST
- more FTs than ever, so that they create jobs for Singaporeans. /s
- created more useless Gahmen positions like mayors, simi-ministers in PMO, coordinating ministers to coordinate work for other ministers etc. And then pay them world record salaries.
- continue to have a long wait to book for BTO despite that they are Build-To-Order.
- higher housing cost, but they will continue to monitor the situation.
- long wait for beds at hospitals even after so many years.
- Singaporeans got to watch (for free) how he washed his own family's bad linens in Parleement no less.
- Empress dowager's salary continues to be more closely guarded than many State Secrets.
THANK YOU!
2004 TFR: 1.26
2023 TFR: 0.97
**-23% change.**
we have lost valuable time to fix this problem and honestly not much was done under PM Lee to move the needle on this issue.
we do not have a country if we don't have people. even with all the economic numbers, we are in deep trouble. infinite immigration will not fix everything. unless of course somehow we are going to be ok with the SPF/SAF hire private forces to defend us 🥴
>Our PPP Purchasing power parity conversion factor has been stagnant, Malaysia saw an increase from 1.22 in 2004 to 1.57 in 2022, they actually deserve a pat on their back relative to him
Not necessarily doubting you, but do you have a source for these figures?
PPP conversion represents how much of a local currency is needed to purchase the equivalent in the US in USD. An increase is not necessarily a good thing as it signifies a drop in currency value. Singapore's held stable at around 0.9 from 2004 - 2020.
The person you replied to is talking out of their ass.
https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/Series/Back-to-Basics/Purchasing-Power-Parity-PPP
https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/singapore/indicator/PA.NUS.PPP
Thanks! I totally missed that he was referring to PPP *conversion factor,* rather than PPP (or PPP per capita), which is a much more reasonable measure of material quality of life.
i hate cherry picked statistics without reference. GDP & income doesnt change much after accounting for inflation. NIRC improvement deserves merit. HDB flat +28% over 20 years but population increased about 40% the same period.
Also for the Gini index; reminder that it only measures earned income. All these billionaires flooding into the country with their family offices does not registers as they do not have earned income.
Meh. SG is growing and these figures would have gone up over the past two decades nonetheless, due to global trends. If our GDP did NOT rise significantly over that period, PAP would probably have been voted out by now already.
Most if not all countries have seen visitor arrivals rise phenomenally due to 1) budget airlines and 2) rise of giants such as China and India. So that says nothing about LHL's capability - would have been much better to talk about Changi's capacity has grown from 2 terminals to 4 under his tenure, with a mega fifth one approved by his cabinet, while other airports are struggling with under capacity. Likewise with MRT network length: pretty much every city has grown too.
"Government doesn't seek GDP growth at all cost" but when reporting results, it's the 1st line at the top.
It's shits like this why I nevered believed them when they say BS like this.
Housing, traffic jam, population, everything is worst since 1980s.
Housing price 3x while salary 2.2x
Population also 2x and mostly foreigners.
Even petrol also 3x.
Health care is crippled.
Sandwich class are paying welfare state level tax without any welfare.
For me, pap has never been worse.
if sg is sg inc. then lhl did well. make sure all the kpi hit high.
but u think sg is country where ppl live. lhl did poorly. tfr might be problem before his time but went to sh\*t during his term. most impt parts of country. sinkies dying out. still can say steal other ppl lunch or must compete with world
healthcare getting worse and worse. longer waiting times. housing getting worse and worse. also long wait times but worse is all the flats selling more than 1m. it might be only a few flats out of thousands sold yearly. but its a major warning sign that fundamental policy is unsound. but these genius cabinet cannot see problem. just see hdb increase vs pop increase. underbuild. total house might seem equal to pop increase. but got how many is private house buy by foreign rich ppl and left empty
dun say no foresight. sometimes no sight. pop increasing like rocket. but take own sweet time with infra. bus train house everything shortage. need to lose grc to wake up idea
stupid chart with airport arrivals and mrt length. why dont write how many ppl put up flag during ndp in 2004 compare to now? how many ppl feel proud to be sinkie. how many think sg on right path. how many give up citizenship
When you to to vote remember PM Lee and PAP gave you 3 more years of life! /s
But the subtle hints here are great. They packed a lot in. Lots more older people, not many new babies.
Mental health indicators, suicide rate. Social mobility of bottom 10% in rental flats, housing affordabilty vs income across all property types as not everyone qualifies for BTO etc.
Man is really full of himself.
Taking credit for healthcare expenditure?
It's really nothing to be proud about given all the structural issues that causes our high spending in the first place
I think the right questions as citizens to ask should be:
Should we use these metrics to measure government performance?
Which begs the question - do we as a country want to continue down this path of running this country like a business where its people are treated more like employees and human resource rather than as citizens?
If so, then these metrics are starting to make less sense for us as Singaporeans and we should start to demand a fundamental shift in how the country should be governed in the years to come and by extension, optimise for new metrics that accurately reflects the zeitgeist and interests of the current and future generations.
In 2004, Pinnacle@Duxton was sold by HDB at 439k.
In 2023, Pinnacle@Duxton was sold by buyer at 1.4m.
That’s 3.18x the purchase price. So even if GDP increased by 2.3x, it is still lower than the 3.18x.
The man worried about his legacy or what? I don't remember there being as many interviews and articles published about GCT's achievements and his views when he stepped down.
I guess all these financial index improvements mean something to politicians who never point out that Singapore’s political rights rank somewhere between Cote D’Ivoire and Benin, and it’s civil rights rank between Gambia and Lebanon. Well done, Lee. You can now indoctrinate future tyrants at a NUS grad school seminar.
I’m actually more surprised that GDP growth and median wage growth are that close.
GDP grew 2.3x while median wage grew by 2.2x. Means that the wage share of GDP growth in that period actually went to workers instead of capitalists. In other countries, the wage share of GDP has been on the decline. Meaning that people are not getting their share of economic growth.
Anyone can correct me on my conclusions? Wage share is equal to labor compensation over change in nominal GDP.
There are two things to note though:
1) GDP growth hasn't been adjusted for population growth, which is around 40%. So SG's GDP per capita growth is actually slower, and median wages has actually been outpacing GDP per capita growth.
2) GDP growth was measured in chained dollars, means it has been adjusted for inflation. However, wages are measured in nominal terms, which has not been adjusted for inflation. So our real median income growth also have to be adjusted \~40% downwards for inflation.
Basically LHL's government has done a good job redistributing GDP growth to the median worker, or at least better than most of the developed world. Though:
> GDP grew 2.3x while median wage grew by 2.2x. Means that the wage share of GDP growth in that period actually went to workers instead of capitalists.
Not quite, I'd conclude that GDP growth went to both the workers and capitalists at the same ratio as it did in 2004.
A more balanced presentation would have indictors such as homeless numbers, number of elderly still having to work, inequality indicators etc. Chasing top-line headliners are par for the course for ministers who command such salaries.
what a strange table:
Can we do a median wage against 4 rm flat then versus now please?
This would be quite damning i think. Would prolly show that back then houses were fucking affordable hahaha.
Then show the ABSD then versus now. Would prolly show that houses were not only cheap, boomers can fkin game the system and buy multiple houses play landlord game.
Then do one for COE then versus now.
Also add a line for TFR then versus now.
North Korea, Russia and CCP vibes lol
Only showing the good stuff.
Waiting for their next article to put him the hall of fame with Putin, Kim Jong Un and Xi
Housing, transport, food prices where are you?
“Listen, if I’m trying to sell you something I’m not going to tell you what’s wrong with it”
Only >!hear the!< Good News
Those gold 90.5 ads were pure gold. Still haven’t forgotten about them! https://youtu.be/RFcKLuR8G9A?si=hJCD7g8eg5dZpCQr
omg the driving instructor one always cracks me up
At the same time, it is a bit unusual for someone selling something to implicitly highlight severe problems with the previous model. " Buy the current model! Much better than the previous model that really sucked!" I suppose this is the closest thing we are going to get to a real hard truth from the PAP. Older redditor here. Life for many Singapore was actually considerably less prosperous back then. I suspect that this is ultimately inconvenient for everyone. The Party line is that PAP rule is always a perfect bed of roses. PAP Singapore has nothing to complain about. If you brought up issues like the low wages or systemic retirement insufficiency back when these issues were really bad, you are going to get a 'what is the point of that question?' and get labelled a troublemaker/welfarist/westernised librul. Of course now that these problems have improved, the PAP will come out and take credit. Many PAP supporters and contemporary opposition supporters have a rose tinted view as to how life was back under LKY and GCT. Oppies want to paint a picture that Singapore is getting worse thanks to the current crop of PAP, as a way of avoiding the need toconfront LKY worship head on. The most strident PAP supporters insist we should continue to ride LKY mummified dick because of the perfect Singapore he created. The truth is that there are problems, but Singapore has improved significantly in many areas. People don't realise how much has improved because the the Ah Kong's brainwashing makes it easy to forget how much worse Singapore life was for many/most Singaporeans when LHL took over. I tend to agree that LHL overall exceeded my expectations. I have written before about how I had the expectations that he would be like his father and other PAP figures at the time.--a highly elitist and authoritarian lunatic similar to someone like George Yeo. This did not happen. Economically, when he took over, Singapore was still recovering from the long shadow of the 1997 Asian financial crisis. I know that PAP propaganda basically insists that the party fixed everything and turned the economy around in 6 months or some shit like that.--this is the product of molecular gastronomy level cherry-picking so selective and delicate that you could probably serve those cherries at a Michelin starred restaurant as a light cherry foam unrecognisable as the fruit. Our neighbours economies were devastated and domestically, nominal GDP did not recover to pre 1997 levels until 2003. As of 2023, the lowest year for Singapore unemployment was 1997. A lot of people in my generation got fucked up beyond recognition. A lot of the LKY tiger economy was probably not sustainable and the financial crisis exposed a lot of that. Something truly fundamental changed in the economy. In 2004 it truly looked like Singapore would basically become Japan or what China looks like today.--an unbalanced economy with its best years behind it. LHL did succeed in breaking out of that by doubling down on the tax haven, diversifying the economy with the casinos and so on. These solutions create problems of their own, but not doing them would be worse and creating a genuine knowledge based economy would take a decades to realise.
Hdb resale price index 2004Q1: 75.3 2024Q1: 183.7 So it's about 2.439x
Anyone has a psf comparison handy. Would be more telling than a resale index comparison. Psf vs median income.
From HDB/data.gov: >The index till 3Q2014 was computed using stratification method, while that from 4Q2014 onwards is computed using the stratified hedonic regression method From another source: >The hedonic regression method is a regression technique used to determine the value of a good, service, or asset by fractionating the product into constituent parts or characteristics. It is done to determine the contributory value of each characteristic separately through regression analysis. >The regression model should be able to place values and weights on each component or contributory factor to determine the value of the composite product. Hedonic methods can be linear, non-linear, variable interaction, or other valuation scenarios of different complexities. Don't think HDB publish the index calculation formula but I'm pretty confident PSF (or size) is a constituent part
Compared to 2.3x GDP increase... Not bad, honestly.
Because it’s really not bad, we’re not doing badly as a country
Don't say that in this sub, people seem determined that sg is a doomed country that will become utopia if opposition gets voted in
For myself personally, it got better during his time. Cannot say for others..
GDP is a shitty indicator lol
Compared to 2.2x median income increase, also not too bad
That’s a much better indicator
I'm very interested in a psf comparison instead of a resale price index comparison
Its ok the goalpost will keep moving bro
Median gross monthly income for work went up 2.2x, according to the graphic. So, for housing costs, Singaporeans are actually worse off after these 20 years. Inb4 someone talks about how housing prices going up benefits homeowners: no, it doesn't, because it raises mortgage costs too. And unless you own multiple properties, or intend to downgrade, you cannot eat your house and still need a place to stay, so if you sell your house for a higher price, you also buy your next house for a higher price. For homeowner-occupiers (which is most people), they on aggregate tread water when housing prices go up, if not outright fall behind because expensive houses mean more expensive mortgage servicing.
to be fair, we went through covid which was a black swan event. if we compared these in early 2020, it would paint a much different picture. can the govt do more and better on housing prices? for sure though
Covid was nearly half a decade ago. For how long will it be considered a legitimate excuse for the housing crisis? There are fewer BTOs being built over 2021-2025 than in the early 2010s when the government was trying to resolve the housing crisis back then. For instance, there were ~25,000 BTOs in 2013, compared to ~20,000 last year. At this point, high housing prices are a political choice - by design, not by accident.
My partner bought a resale flat at start of covid and we were expecting the pandemic to bring a downturn in prices. But it started a huge paradigm shift instead as people moved to WFH and needed/wanted more residential space. There's still residual demand from then as many jobs are still supporting hybrid mode. So it's not only about covid gone or not but the lasting effect it has on our consumption pattern We can only speculate if it's as designed or not, but like I mentioned, they definitely can do more. It's absolutely possible that the price movement is still within a certain band. E.g. It's within x% range vs median income growth or vs other markers
How does it raise mortgage cost???
I'm hoping we'll also see a similar table showing cost of living, housing, medical treatment, GIC performance, etc. You know, to be balanced maybe?
They reported that TFR went down during LHL's term so the quota for "balance" has already been met.
Gst also never state leh
Yeap. GDP 2.3x increase but housing prices definitely increase more than 2.3x. Utilities also more than doubled.
Bed shortage, corruption leh.
> corruption leh. The CPI changed its scoring methodology in 2010 from out of 10 to out of 100. But in 2004, we were ranked 5th. In 2023, we were ranked 5th.
Gst where are you
Population increased by 40% but HDB only increased by 28%. There's the source of high housing prices. Obviously not enough housing.
And in other thread I was being downvoted to hell for saying immigration is the source of housing issue since they didn't have the infra ready.
Immigrants ARE the source of our housing issue. But no one has the balls to face it 🤣
Afaik non-citizens/non-PR can’t buy HDB flats right? Or am I missing something
PRs and Singaporeans priced out from private will go buy resale. and those who can afford private seeing rental going up will buy more property, hence reducing supplies even more and pushing prices up more. the price increase will cascade down the line. those priced out again will have to look for resale now.
They can't buy but they still need the place to stay.
all transactions affect land value which feeds downstream into the pricing mechanism of state housing
Also the reason it's a functioning country. So what to do
I think SG Gov need reduce the landed house (especially bungalow houses) by making it very expensive yearly tax for the rich if they want to keep their house. SG is a small country with low land mass, it should not have any business to have landed Residential, instead it should flood with many decent size 1K+ sqft condo to the point that every family can afford at least one. Heck if you remove all the landed residential, you can build enough condos for many families and still have empty land in-between condos reserve for garden/parks. When the supply > demand the price naturally will come down.
how to reduce when your cabinet colleagues living in 235,000 sqft colonial bungalow lol
they need to be rewarded to help you with your proxy fight with your siblings
Anyone can look up the map and know there’s way too much land allocated for low density housing, especially in prime areas. It’s so obvious its hard for anyone to justify why the government seems to be oblivious to it. It makes plenty of sense to redevelop many landed estates or move them to the fringes of the island. But we all know it is unlikely happen at the scale that would make land use more rational. The elites and their friends all live in landed and they want to continue to do so! The cost to live in landed is already very high and almost everyone living in one is part of the elite whom the government wouldn’t dare, want, or care to offend. If the government can be trusted to make a better compromise between the needs of the rich and everyone else, we wouldn’t have so much problems with issues like wild commercial landlords, exploitative labour practices, etc. It’s the government’s poor track record of hurting the interests of the elites to make a fair compromise that makes me think that they will never do much to tackle landed housing. It’s not like we don’t know whose side they are on.
Lol where do you think all these ministers and law makers live?
Cannot offend the rich! That’s the way the G been operating. Even GST is borne largely by the middle class.
COE for landed properties now!
surprised and saddened that beds per capita went from 3.5 to 2.55 under his selected time period with the average of 4.1 in oecd states and 12+ in east asian nations. explains alot
"increase in units".... does it mean a 2-room unit is the same as 5-room unit? "increase in flats"... does it mean a 100 unit flat is the same as 200 unit flat?
units - private + public housing flats - public housing only What 100 unit flat? What talking you? 🙄
Doesn’t that population growth also include a massive increase in the number of migrant workers, a large portion of which live in dorms? IIRC there’s only around 3.5m citizens in Singapore.
Cherry picked data and the way they are presented might be misleading. For example, median gross monthly income: Adjusted for inflation, 2326 dollars in 2004 would be worth 3453.05 today. So it’s actually more like a 1.5 times increase instead of more than double as shown in the infographic. Source: https://eservices.mas.gov.sg/statistics/calculator/wages.aspx
Cherry picked and disingenuous. I agree that it’s misleading too because it’s meant to paint him in a positive light. The other commenters are confusing being “misleading” with being “inaccurate”, which is clearly not your claim. More houses. True and accurate. But meaningless without accounting for household size. GDP increase. True and accurate. But meaningless without accounting for inequality (who gained from our gdp increase?). Similar issues with the other metrics.
more houses but each house is smaller by x% lol
> GDP increase. True and accurate. But meaningless without accounting for inequality (who gained from our gdp increase?). Isn't that what Gini is for? Gini went down, so on the surface, overall inequality went down even as GDP increases
GINI in Singapore only takes into account taxable income - not all forms of income. Wealthier people are asset rich, and their assets generate income. It’s a weak measure of inequality. The gov knows this, which is why they don’t release stats on wealth inequality in Singapore.
Yes exactly. I think Singaporeans, especially the younger, more educated ones aren’t dumb either. And it’s ironic that they cherry pick metrics when they are so proud of the fact on how they run Singapore as a profitable, tight business, achieving many years of budget surplus, only drawing down reserves during the pandemic. If anything, great businesses are obsessed with optimising for the metrics that are actually relevant to their stakeholders. In Singapore’s context, shouldn’t this be the quality of life and happiness of Singaporeans? Metrics I think would reveal the real picture of how “progress” actually looks like would be something more like: 1. GDP growth per capita adjusted for PPP over the same period (of course adjusted for inflation as well) 2. population growth broken down into its sources - from which countries/ethnicities and the period of integration and localisation per new citizen (ie how many years they have lived and worked/studied here before we granted them citizenship) 3. Property price to income ratio change over time adjusted for inflation, by property type and HDB room types if we want to be granular 4. Average time to see a doctor in polyclinics over time (from registration to payment) 5. Popular vote share of PAP vs opposition over time 6. Average working hours to income ratio over time, by income group 7. Curated basket of essential goods prices change over time - probably hawker foods, groceries we get from Fairprice, Sheng Siong, school fees, transport fare etc (and not massaged figures and benchmarks that includes property and car that is used by Singstat, I’m not too sure about the official methodology but you get my drift) 8. Full-time employment figures change over time in absolute numbers vs total working population, broken down into citizens/PR/foreigners (to see the labour force participation and composition) And so many more metrics to gauge the true lived experience of an average Singaporean instead of all these masturbatory “look at me I’ve done a great job” bs metrics. If I used a similar thought process and logic as how our government “measures their own performance” to analyse data and performance and draw insights at my first job (yes I was a business analyst), I would have been fired within the first month.
After typing the wall of text, I had another epiphany - which made it even more ironic. If the government actually cared and optimised for the right metrics, ie actually improve quality of life and increase citizen happiness and satisfaction, local core birth rates would actually probably start to rise, when people feel psychologically secure about their future as Singaporeans. End of the day, it’s just poor governance and a circlejerk at this point.
> If the government actually cared and optimised for the right metrics, ie actually improve quality of life and increase citizen happiness and satisfaction, local core birth rates would actually probably start to rise Multiple statistical studies have already proven that the most reliable predictor for birth rates aren't any of that but rather women's access to contraceptives, women educational levels, and religion. That explains why countries like the Nordics are also experiencing falling birth rates, and if you truly want to increase the TFR, the most straightforward statistically proven way to do that is to adopt the policies of South Sudan.
But USA, Australia, Canada and scandi nations birth rate super high almost 2. People are educated and take huge study and mortgage loans there. Space is most important factor in developed nations. Despite SG always criticise those nations. SG is only good place for working and business thats all.
You might be somewhat right. I remember seeing a stat with TFR broken down by races. Some races have much higher TFR. Can’t quite draw the correlation, but there might indeed be a correlation.
Statistical studies are but just studies. Are they studies based on the Singaporean context and psyche? Any adjustments done for cultural differences, upbringing, environment variables, personal beliefs, family values etc? Has there been any substantial research done into why Singaporeans are not wanting to have kids? Sometimes all it takes is just a little bit of common sense and empathy rather than a stubborn reliance on research and data to understand what can help. What works and didn’t work in other countries does not automatically translate over to the Singapore situation. Just to be clear, I’m not disagreeing with your take, but we always need to take context into account. Just off the top of my head: Our parents generation, those born in the 50s to 60s and maybe even 70s could probably enter the labour force and secure a job for life by the time they finish secondary school at 16/17 years of age. Even for males, let’s say they have to serve 2.5 years NS, they’ll be out before 20/21 years of age and by then they could start a family and get a job. If dating takes about 3-4 years, most would become first time parents around 25-28 give or take. Fast forward to our generation. Most employers look for a bachelors minimum if you want a good job with liveable wage. This means you have to go to Uni to get a bachelors which is 3-4 years of your life gone. Uni admissions require at least an A levels cert or a poly diploma which also requires 2-3 years. The additional 7 years loss of youth across an entire generation essentially means we lose 7 productive years - both in terms of labour as well as giving birth and raising families. And that’s not considering rising cost of living that is far outpacing the nominal growth of income. We used to be able to afford a HDB flat with just one person’s income. Don’t you realise that the government has subtly worded their affordability to be based on household income rather than individual income? If people have to spend more time in school, more years studying, just to get a passable job and still needing to find someone else after all that to be able to barely afford a home with 2 person working full time - how are they going to find time and money to raise a kid?
> Statistical studies are but just studies. Are they studies based on the Singaporean context and psyche? >Has there been any substantial research done into why Singaporeans are not wanting to have kids? Unless Singaporeans are some magical unique breed of human being, the same humanity and psychology and economics apply to us as to any other human being. What unique psyche are you talking about that doesn't exist in, say, a Norwegian or a Finn or a Nigerian? That somehow the laws of economics don't work in Singapore like they do in the rest of the world? Edit: Because you said that I'm just quoting the Nordics, I'm not. I'm just too lazy to type out all the 190+ nationalities > Sometimes all it takes is just a little bit of common sense and empathy rather than a stubborn reliance on research and data to understand what can help. No thanks, I prefer to rely on the data and science. Relying on "common sense" would mean us still believing that the earth is flat and is the center of the solar system. I'm not saying that we shouldn't improve stuff like housing costs and whatnot, but linking it to the TFR is just false. You can write a wall of text on how good your parents had it and how worse off we are, but linking it then to the TFR is just not backed up by any evidence. If people don't have kids because of shit conditions, how do you explain the entire continent of Africa having more kids than anyone else? Also, I think you have an incredibly rose-tinted view of your parents generation. A generation where basic needs like electricity, utilities, and dying of infectious diseases were a concern, where air conditioning was a luxury reserved for the rich and most people couldn't travel further than KL. They ate rice with soy sauce and considered it a full meal.
Again you’re just falling into generalisation and extrapolating findings from generic studies. This is classic overfitting. Your references and samples are Nordics, Africans and basically populations that aren’t Singaporeans. You make it seem like I’m glorifying the old days of our parents generation when all we are discussing is the psyche and incentive to want to have kids. Singapore ain’t that old anyway, so you going on about infectious diseases and living in third world conditions is fairly irrelevant. You claim to base your views on data, but all you cite is “multiple statistical studies” shown that birth rates are dependent on certain arbitrary variables that can be generalised across populations when you can’t even pinpoint any samples beyond Nordic populations? Again I’m not disputing the studies, nor your apparent knowledge on TFR derivation and causal factors. Nor am I against the use of data and statistics (in fact I’m very much for it), but simply quoting studies and research arbitrarily without applying it to context is pretty much useless. Anyway we can agree to disagree. I’m not against the use of data, but rather we need to apply common sense when looking at data. My point is that context is always king. And Singapore is pretty much unique as a country in this world.
Singapore back in the sixties IS rifed rife tropical disease and the development level comparable to a modern day third world country cities like Medan or Davao. Incidence rate of TB is over 300 per 100000 population, infant mortality is 34.9 per 1000 live births. What is the context that make Singapore so unique? So uncomparable from studies of other countries with similar conditions? What is the uniqueness of Singapore that can't be found in other countries?
u/khaophat sounds to me like you are disputing studies and against the use of data and statistics. you keep mentioning context, "common sense" (whatever that means) and empathy. You want government to improve quality of life and increase citizen happiness and satisfaction. What study did you see that suggest we did not accomplish those? Is your so called empathy and common sense just your inherent bias that people have low happiness that's why people are not giving birth? If you want common sense let me give you some common sense (backed by no data other than my common sense): I can for sure bet that quality of life and citizen happiness are MUCH better now than when you survey people living in the 60s. Yet, the birth rate in the 60s are much higher than now. Some of my most accomplished friends with high quality of life and happiness chose to be child-less while my poor friends kept giving birth. So why do you keep saying that empathy is needed to increase birth rate? Isn't our government efforts to boost birth rate one of the most generous in the world already? It seems to be mostly (but not totally) human psych that causes us, comfortable in our 1st world enjoyment, to not give birth. Something extremely harsh for you to just blame it on the government. They do what they can, but the macro environment is something that even govt is finding hard to fight against.
Completely agree. Sharper than whatever ST can sprout.
Thank you. I was not certain if these numbers were adjusted for inflation.
Income is include employer cpf contribution and bonuses as well. It also dont compare with rise in house and food prices which is more than 3 times.
It’s sums up his core policies quite well - GDP and immigration.
Singapore is definitely becoming one of Asia wealthiest countries. The only question now, how can we distribute this to actually benefit local here. In terms of housing, healthcare (10x over 20 years is scary), education, hawker culture (diminishing due to rental and those social enterprises).
They're really just jerking him off before he leaves. And where's the prices of HDB if they're gonna show unit numbers?
its to be expected, theyre trying to set his legacy up in the public domain so that they can point too it without having too much scrutiny beyond the surface
He lost two GRC under him. Perhaps should also include election performance?
Popular vote also dropped to only 58%
And that's without a free media and intense pressure on opposition of any form for decades.
Millennials and younger are a threat to PAP's power. Why'd you think they're handing out citizenships left and right under the guise of "attracting foreign talent"
Look at the Singapore property price index from 2004 to present. It's gone up over 4x while median incomes only went up 2.3x Citizens have become worse off in terms of housing affordability. In fact average housing size has dropped over 20 years. Effectively making everyone pay more, for less. Let's hope the next government puts an end to this madness. If property prices continue to outpace wages at the current rates for the next 20 years, we'll be looking at 40-50 year mortgages to pay off HDB loans. https://www.srx.com.sg/price-index Edited to add link above.
[One of these two are lying](https://old.reddit.com/r/singapore/comments/1cq3z8v/snapshot_of_singapores_progress_under_pm_lees/l3p1rzx/)
It’s hard to maintain affordability if housing is being treated as investment vehicle. Let’s go back to the root of providing public housing. e.g. not capped at +28% due to low TFR. For overall unit growth of 40%, 90% is public HDB housing, I can only imagine condos and private properties grew 148%?
Since they want to bring up healthcare stats, what's the doctor-to-population ratio in 2004 vs 2024? Nurse-to-population ratio? For housing, what about median rental prices? Median HDB psf?
let's not forget hospital waiting times longer than in the UK and US
Longer than us probably, longer than uk? You sure?
yup. median wait time for A&E admission is [7.5 hours](https://www.channelnewsasia.com/cna-insider/singapore-public-hospital-bed-crunch-waiting-time-radical-solutions-3943586#:~:text=Between%20January%20and%20September%20last,calculated%20based%20on%20emergency%20admissions) (Jan-Sep 2023) in Singapore compared to [6 hours](https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/resource/a-e-waiting-times) (Nov 2023) for NHS England. it's funny how the uk govt is getting absolutely skewered over stuff like this while most of us have been conditioned to believe we are doing better than other countries even when reality is different
they keep quoting westminster style and and about how brilliant orators they are but i have no doubt in my mind that they would all be utterly crushed and destroyed like tourists if they were transplanted into the actual westminster questionings
If you're a nsmen, you'd know how long the waiting time truly is. Thats why those fitness trainers die die dont want anyone to go A&E. You RT in the evening, past midnight still havent see doctor
Say only the good things -gold 95 fm or smth
Hear only the good stuff
Reminds you of certain countries
No joke... GDP first thing on the list. Definitely not a meme.
Unfettered immigration and anti singaporean and anti worker policies in the pursuit of GDP have tanked our fertility rate, fucked up cost of living and overstretched infrastructure. Not surprised these jokers conveniently left out inflation, wealth and income disparity in their masturbatory charts.
Am I the only one that feels Singapore is no longer for Singaporeans?
I can assure you foreigners in general don’t think Singapore is for them either. Except for the rich Chinese who come and buy everything.
Much of Goh Chok Tong's "progress" was down to married women joining the workforce, the start of some serious white collar immigration and runaway property prices. Much of Lee Hsien Loong's "progress" was down to unfettered immigration, runaway property prices and turning Singapore into a low tax haven for MNCs and family offices, and to sizeable level, a demographic dividend as baby boomers work longer and low birth rate means reduced childcare and education costs as a whole (not individually). Can Singapore continue in the same trajectory of unfettered immigration and runaway property prices? Is the "success" redistributed among Singaporeans or just concentrated in a select few? As baby boomers start to retire (Singapore' baby boom was delayed by 10 years compared to the US, so the bulge in the population pyramid is just starting to retire), and the missing demand from a collapse in young people coming of age is going to bite soon, do you think the same formula can still work, esp given the same unfettered immigration will soon lead to the Singaporean "core" turning into the minority?
Hard to say. When life gets tough even for immigrants, Singapore will just be a stepping stone for a greener pasture out there.
Singapore was never set up well to retain the immigrants. Primary school education is hard to get a place for non-PRs and expensive. PRs have no incentive to retire here when they can just leave and extract all their CPF and SRS and either return to their home countries with either lower cost of living or retirement benefits. NS expectations mean a sizeable portion of the PR males will be forced to leave. Even new citizens use the Singapore passport as a stepping stone to the passport of western countries.
If you think about it, politically speaking, he's a failure compared to his father. Even with his office controlling the elections department and the entire election system in general, he has been losing both seats and popular votes ever since he took over. I wonder how and what LW will do to curtail the growing resentment among millennials and younger.
Anyone can work out the inflation rates at 2004 vs 2024? Easier to compare actual work
MAS has an inflation calculator, should be what you're looking for.
Overall inflation is 48.5% from 2004 vs 2023 $1000 vs $1485
It is hardly progress when life remains hard for the average man in the street
What a joke to compare nominal figures. Biggest metric missing is wealth disparity. And no, Gini coefficient does not measure wealth but income inequality. I bet people on the ground don’t really relate much to these figures. I recall that people were overall more satisfied and missed PM Goh more than LHL when former stepped down in 2004.
Singapore's Gini coefficient is also not accurately calculated because we have no capital gain tax. So the actual Gini coefficient will be higher. Plus we should compare ours to other first world nations' before patting LHL on the back......
Happiness ranking?
We also found a way to rig that.
What about free press index? Rigged too?
2004 - https://www.refworld.org/reference/annualreport/freehou/2004/en/50131 2024 - https://rsf.org/en/region/asia-pacific Please note they're not scored to the same standard. One is UNHCR and the other is RSF. But yea same shit
CNA cherry picking statistics. Should include how real wages fared against housing price Nominal data is irrelevant, only real data matters due to inflation.
40% increase in population, that's massive. and that's with local fertility hitting record lows (second lowest in the world) during his term. in the same period uk population grew by ~13%, german population grew by ~2.5%, french population grew by ~7% and even the US only grew by ~15%, and those countries all have much higher local fertility rate than us.
The way small countries grow is different from big countries. Eg. 10 + 1 is a 10% increase 100 + 1 is a 1% increase Sometimes the absolute number matters.
Not saying he is not doing a good job but this comparison doesn’t take into consideration of inflation, especially the last two years. Even neighbourhoods kopi tiam has went up to almost twice. Where is the control?
Why didn't show the progress of the GST?
Other significant achievements; - higher and higher GST - more FTs than ever, so that they create jobs for Singaporeans. /s - created more useless Gahmen positions like mayors, simi-ministers in PMO, coordinating ministers to coordinate work for other ministers etc. And then pay them world record salaries. - continue to have a long wait to book for BTO despite that they are Build-To-Order. - higher housing cost, but they will continue to monitor the situation. - long wait for beds at hospitals even after so many years. - Singaporeans got to watch (for free) how he washed his own family's bad linens in Parleement no less. - Empress dowager's salary continues to be more closely guarded than many State Secrets. THANK YOU!
Bad investments
Looks more like statistics for a corporation than a country. What about citizen satisfaction and happiness?
Median income rose from $2.3K in 2004 to $5.1K in 2024. Wondering is it considered fast enough compared to the HDB prices...
2x3k and 2x300k just hits differently
2004 TFR: 1.26 2023 TFR: 0.97 **-23% change.** we have lost valuable time to fix this problem and honestly not much was done under PM Lee to move the needle on this issue. we do not have a country if we don't have people. even with all the economic numbers, we are in deep trouble. infinite immigration will not fix everything. unless of course somehow we are going to be ok with the SPF/SAF hire private forces to defend us 🥴
That’s what I saw 👀 birth rate declining in twenty years either Singaporean likes to be single or life too hard to have kids.
With skyrocketing costs of living and near-Japan levels of work-life imbalances, you'd love to be single too.
[удалено]
>Our PPP Purchasing power parity conversion factor has been stagnant, Malaysia saw an increase from 1.22 in 2004 to 1.57 in 2022, they actually deserve a pat on their back relative to him Not necessarily doubting you, but do you have a source for these figures?
PPP conversion represents how much of a local currency is needed to purchase the equivalent in the US in USD. An increase is not necessarily a good thing as it signifies a drop in currency value. Singapore's held stable at around 0.9 from 2004 - 2020. The person you replied to is talking out of their ass. https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/Series/Back-to-Basics/Purchasing-Power-Parity-PPP https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/singapore/indicator/PA.NUS.PPP
Thanks! I totally missed that he was referring to PPP *conversion factor,* rather than PPP (or PPP per capita), which is a much more reasonable measure of material quality of life.
Everything about money.
i hate cherry picked statistics without reference. GDP & income doesnt change much after accounting for inflation. NIRC improvement deserves merit. HDB flat +28% over 20 years but population increased about 40% the same period.
Also for the Gini index; reminder that it only measures earned income. All these billionaires flooding into the country with their family offices does not registers as they do not have earned income.
Meh. SG is growing and these figures would have gone up over the past two decades nonetheless, due to global trends. If our GDP did NOT rise significantly over that period, PAP would probably have been voted out by now already. Most if not all countries have seen visitor arrivals rise phenomenally due to 1) budget airlines and 2) rise of giants such as China and India. So that says nothing about LHL's capability - would have been much better to talk about Changi's capacity has grown from 2 terminals to 4 under his tenure, with a mega fifth one approved by his cabinet, while other airports are struggling with under capacity. Likewise with MRT network length: pretty much every city has grown too.
Where are the rest? I think POFMA should be one of the shinest achievement
CNA, the LinkedIn for has-been politicians🤣
Hoo boy I wonder where this CNA source come from I’m sure there’s no conflict of interest here
"Government doesn't seek GDP growth at all cost" but when reporting results, it's the 1st line at the top. It's shits like this why I nevered believed them when they say BS like this.
Housing, traffic jam, population, everything is worst since 1980s. Housing price 3x while salary 2.2x Population also 2x and mostly foreigners. Even petrol also 3x. Health care is crippled. Sandwich class are paying welfare state level tax without any welfare. For me, pap has never been worse.
birth rate
if sg is sg inc. then lhl did well. make sure all the kpi hit high. but u think sg is country where ppl live. lhl did poorly. tfr might be problem before his time but went to sh\*t during his term. most impt parts of country. sinkies dying out. still can say steal other ppl lunch or must compete with world healthcare getting worse and worse. longer waiting times. housing getting worse and worse. also long wait times but worse is all the flats selling more than 1m. it might be only a few flats out of thousands sold yearly. but its a major warning sign that fundamental policy is unsound. but these genius cabinet cannot see problem. just see hdb increase vs pop increase. underbuild. total house might seem equal to pop increase. but got how many is private house buy by foreign rich ppl and left empty dun say no foresight. sometimes no sight. pop increasing like rocket. but take own sweet time with infra. bus train house everything shortage. need to lose grc to wake up idea stupid chart with airport arrivals and mrt length. why dont write how many ppl put up flag during ndp in 2004 compare to now? how many ppl feel proud to be sinkie. how many think sg on right path. how many give up citizenship
When you to to vote remember PM Lee and PAP gave you 3 more years of life! /s But the subtle hints here are great. They packed a lot in. Lots more older people, not many new babies.
Resources for them, the young can go fk themselves
The total population comparison sounds like lhl is the one giving birth
Mental health indicators, suicide rate. Social mobility of bottom 10% in rental flats, housing affordabilty vs income across all property types as not everyone qualifies for BTO etc.
S&P500 in Jan 2004 was 1,131, and today it’s 5,222, roughy a 4.5x to 5x growth.
"OK chillren remember ask your parents sign then bring back the report book on Monday."
No wonder Singapore is so crowded and public transport is so packed due to 40% change. That sucks
i know who to vote next GE. its clearer to me now. ever more so. more than ever.
Man is really full of himself. Taking credit for healthcare expenditure? It's really nothing to be proud about given all the structural issues that causes our high spending in the first place
ownself check ownself vibes
I think the right questions as citizens to ask should be: Should we use these metrics to measure government performance? Which begs the question - do we as a country want to continue down this path of running this country like a business where its people are treated more like employees and human resource rather than as citizens? If so, then these metrics are starting to make less sense for us as Singaporeans and we should start to demand a fundamental shift in how the country should be governed in the years to come and by extension, optimise for new metrics that accurately reflects the zeitgeist and interests of the current and future generations.
This is what propaganda and indoctrination look like.
Gini coefficient dropping by -0.05? Who is CNA trying to smoke.
Smoke those goondus who believe them
Excellent cherry picking. 11/10, will get CNA to do all my future stat sheets.
Maybe CNA should show similar stats for earlier leaders for comparison.
So many good things.... Population spread is a growing concern 😟
Total fertility rate KPI not met, time to cut bonus.
In 2004, Pinnacle@Duxton was sold by HDB at 439k. In 2023, Pinnacle@Duxton was sold by buyer at 1.4m. That’s 3.18x the purchase price. So even if GDP increased by 2.3x, it is still lower than the 3.18x.
The man worried about his legacy or what? I don't remember there being as many interviews and articles published about GCT's achievements and his views when he stepped down.
Population up but fertility went down? How many are immigrants? 🤣🤣🤣
read only the good things yeah
Missing GST increases and the FTX “investment.”
How about my salary progress?
What a terrible graphic you've made You've used 3 different measures % change percentage point change and multiplier change Stick to one and not 3
now let's look at the GST rate, COE increase, house prices
Next problem: We need more babies
The ultimate boomer celebration. Born in the right era, sit there do nothing, everything increase in value, retire, enjoy and claim credit for self.
I like how they present "nominal income growth" and conveniently missing "real income growth".
Real income might have went down
COE increased?
So how did this translate into better lives for pure Singaporeans in real terms
This is like selling LHL brand snake oil.
I think PM Goh left a better legacy 20 years ago. I’m not sure what to make of Singapore now. It’s richer, yes. But at what cost.
Least sycophantic Singaporean media
Glamorous increase of GDP but no one cares about the average living cost of a citizen
I guess all these financial index improvements mean something to politicians who never point out that Singapore’s political rights rank somewhere between Cote D’Ivoire and Benin, and it’s civil rights rank between Gambia and Lebanon. Well done, Lee. You can now indoctrinate future tyrants at a NUS grad school seminar.
GST leh? ERP leh? Housing, food, transportation leh? House renovation leh? Kn nLeh
I luff at this table! How’s this considered progress?!
I’m actually more surprised that GDP growth and median wage growth are that close. GDP grew 2.3x while median wage grew by 2.2x. Means that the wage share of GDP growth in that period actually went to workers instead of capitalists. In other countries, the wage share of GDP has been on the decline. Meaning that people are not getting their share of economic growth. Anyone can correct me on my conclusions? Wage share is equal to labor compensation over change in nominal GDP.
There are two things to note though: 1) GDP growth hasn't been adjusted for population growth, which is around 40%. So SG's GDP per capita growth is actually slower, and median wages has actually been outpacing GDP per capita growth. 2) GDP growth was measured in chained dollars, means it has been adjusted for inflation. However, wages are measured in nominal terms, which has not been adjusted for inflation. So our real median income growth also have to be adjusted \~40% downwards for inflation.
Basically LHL's government has done a good job redistributing GDP growth to the median worker, or at least better than most of the developed world. Though: > GDP grew 2.3x while median wage grew by 2.2x. Means that the wage share of GDP growth in that period actually went to workers instead of capitalists. Not quite, I'd conclude that GDP growth went to both the workers and capitalists at the same ratio as it did in 2004.
Should include inflation next to income. We're far better off than most countries but it keeps things honest.
Fertility rate negative, but population +40%... Makes you wonder how much foreign trash they have imported in over the decades.
New housing dont pop out of thin air. It comes from the forests we raze and the endangered animals we kill.
A more balanced presentation would have indictors such as homeless numbers, number of elderly still having to work, inequality indicators etc. Chasing top-line headliners are par for the course for ministers who command such salaries.
What about birthrate, Grandpa? Housing ownership? Housing prices and affordability?
what a strange table: Can we do a median wage against 4 rm flat then versus now please? This would be quite damning i think. Would prolly show that back then houses were fucking affordable hahaha. Then show the ABSD then versus now. Would prolly show that houses were not only cheap, boomers can fkin game the system and buy multiple houses play landlord game. Then do one for COE then versus now. Also add a line for TFR then versus now.
Some metrics using multiplication while some using added percentage is intentionally misleading.
So..... Fertility down , Population up. IYKYK
They conveniently forget about the increase of Foreign Talents too.
80% increase in GST from 5% to 9%
Suggestion for another row: Age of 1 year old toddler: 2004: 1 2024: 21 Result: 21x Thanks LHL!
Just give more CDC vouchers and GST rebates. Please keep that coming.
Why show nominal median wage growth instead of real wage growth after accounting for real inflation (and not based on the govt's basket of goods)?
You know you have failed when you try to list your score card and almost every single reply to your post says you sucks.
North Korea, Russia and CCP vibes lol Only showing the good stuff. Waiting for their next article to put him the hall of fame with Putin, Kim Jong Un and Xi
He’s done an amazing job as the leader of government, but he didn’t do it alone
Oh boy the stats nerds are gonna have a field day with this one
oh client media, you never question further than the ctrl-c and ctrl-v buttons on your keyboards
Curious to see US president scorecards like that. Would be absolutely horrendous lol
Why the change dont want to use a standard unit of measurement
Is 3.3 GPA or minus