26
April
2008
April
2008
0
“Many people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so.”
–Bertrand Russell
21
April
2008
April
2008
Elections0
Just occurred to me that elections in the US is still 6 months away, and yet the debates about left vs right, foreign policy vs domestic economy, liberal vs conservative, have been going on for the whole of last year. Yes Americans do talk more and louder than most.
Compare that to the chatter and circus during the last Singapore election and the contrast is striking. Given that the Singaporean government is more right winged and conservative than most others, think Singapore Inc and Penal Code 377A, it is shocking that there were not more debates on social welfare, civil liberties, personal freedoms or even the “privatisation” of public goods.
Forget about foreign policy in Singapore, everything is domestic. Don’t even think about green issues.
Is it because most Singaporeans are right winged conservatives, that measure everything in terms of profitability, and thus are in complete agreement with the government?
Or are we just too uneducated in social and geopolitical issues to even be able to form a view?
Or because most Singaporeans are too busy making ends meet that they can’t raise their heads above water long enough to look around?
I mean yes, the state media does suppress most debates and censor discourage any discussion of it’s more “sensitive” issues, but surely that can’t be the reason for Singaporeans to not have any political views or outlooks.
14
April
2008
April
2008
Headline Income and Inflation0
According to the department of statistics in Singapore, average household income in 2007 was SGD 6,280 and that was a 9.7% increase from the year before. Given that headline inflation is at 6.7%, it looks like the average household was better off.
The median income from work per household was SGD4,870, up 8.2%, so the most households should be better off as well.
Now the number of members in a household is of course variable from year to year. So whether the household is actually better of or not, after taking inflation is subjective.
In the top 10 decile household, the income per member is SGD 7940, assuming a typical dual income family, that would make the household income close to SGD16k, up 13.5% from the year before.
Is that the reason why orchard road is so packed on weekends? Or the cause for there being so many more flashy cars on the road these days?
Makes you wonder what everyone everyone was winching about.
Sure the Gini coefficient (income inequality) is at an all time high, but hey, real income, according to the government, is still rising, ok? Especially after the GST offset ( read free money) from the government to help the poorer households.
Somehow I get the feeling the statistics makes better reading if you’re a foreigner than if you’re local.
9
April
2008
April
2008
Petrol Price0
Yes we know that the price of petrol is rocketing globally. We hear the americans screaming about not being able to get to work, american politicians are complaining about all manner of hardships and inventory levels are watched so closely that small changes results in huge moves markets. You would think that US has the highest oil price in the world, and that the spike in price is only an american phenomenon.
But did you know that it is in fact Singapore that is close to the top of the list when it comes to petrol price?
A quick check online reveals that Singapore’s tax on petrol at 29% is not much higher than that of other countries. Although unlike in the US and Japan, there is no stated specific use for the tax revenue from petrol.
We can make exceptions for most of the other asian countries because a lot of them have outright fuel subsidies.
So why is the price in Singapore double of that in the US? Removing taxes and subsidies as price distorting factors, we are left only with market mechanisms.
Given that Singapore is one of the major refinaries in the world and along a major shipping route, distribution cost cannot be a factor. Price of the input, crude oil, is a global commodity, and thus uniform.
The only factor left is the profit margin, and for the profit margin to be that much higher here can only mean that the suppliers have extreme pricing power. The only way the big suppliers can achieve that is by collusion.
The fact that large suppliers would come together to price fix is not really a suprising one, what is suprising to me is that our government does not seem to be concerned about it.
Despite Case having made a complain against the rate of price adjustment,http://www.straitstimes.com/Free/Story/STIStory_206282.html, no official action seem to have been taken to look in the pricing policies of the suppliers. Although arguments that Case is putting forward are valid, strength of singapore dollar and fall in crude prices, it is understandable that prices are sticky downwards.
Case, in it’s rush to confront the oil suppliers, seemed to have missed the point, and that is, why do oil suppliers have so much power to determine price in the first place.
It is a clear sign of monopoly power. Maybe in Singapore where monopolies are common place, people have stopped noticing that it is wrong and exploiltative, and thus have stopped reacting strongly against them. Maybe the ideas of free markets and competition are so alien that, people neither expect nor demand for them.
Taking the argument one step further, monopoly power on such a scale is extremely difficult to achieve, and in most cases can only be granted by the government. In this case, I cannot see any other way that oil companies in Singapore could have gotten it without the blessing of our all powerful bureaucracy.
Why then would the government allow foreign companies to knowingly exploit it’s own citizens? Do ministers not drive cars? Here, I see only two possible answers, excluding complete incompetence, both of which are not too appealing.
First, we only have to look to Jurong Island, to know that the government is at the mercy of the large oil companies. The revenues from the refinary operations, the government would weigh, is far more important to the GDP of the country than the wallets of it’s citizens. Thus in order to apease the oil producers, they would turn a blind eye to it’s pricing policies domestically.
Second, the bureaucracy is somehow benefitting from by granting the companies the pricing power. And that is an even uglier conclusion.
9
April
2008
April
2008
Why0
Over the pass few months, the idea of starting a site has popped up with increasing frequency. Which is a strange thing for me, given that I’m never one for writing, or keeping with trends and fads.
It might be that the debacle of the election last year first sparked it off, and the subsequent price and tax increases, not to mention the ministerial pay hikes, just added to my sense of injustice.
However, even when I discarded the governmental and civic elements, there was still a lot nagging at me. After all a lot of people grumble or complain about governments, some rightly, some wrongly, depending on your leanings
What bothered me more, was the fact that there was so much going on around me that I could not make sense of, so much that was contradictory and sometimes outright idiotic. I’ve been told often that I’m not completely in touch with the masses because I do not watch the mass market TV programmes or stay in neighbourhoods that are typical or shop and eat at places that most people go to.
I’ll admit that I’m never one to follow trends nor am I interested in local celebrity scenes, but somethings are supposed to make sense, regardless of what the latest buzz is.
So this site is a way I guess for me to set my thoughts down, to try to work out through some of the anomalies that I see around me, and to chronicle them for future references.
