[Clewza313]

It's nice to read a capsule history of Singapore's history that doesn't toe the official line, but this is still laying it on a little too thick. For example, the supposedly "crash-prone trains" that carry some 3.3 million people on an average day have actually had a grand total of two (2) accidents since 1987, resulting in precisely zero (0) fatalities, and the "destitution of its underclass" is a bit much in a country where essentially everybody is entitled to a tiny but nearly-free rental flat.

[djrobstep]

> essentially everybody is entitled to a tiny but nearly-free rental flat

That is straight out wrong. Migrant workers are forced to live in terrible, cramped conditions (a big contributor to the spread of covid in singapore): https://www.latrobe.edu.au/news/articles/2020/opinion/why-si...

[Clewza313]

We're talking about different things here.

You're talking about non-Singaporean migrant workers, who are poor but not "destitute", since they have paid jobs, food and shelter.

I'm talking about the poorest Singaporeans, often unemployed and/or elderly who are entitled to meager but survivable benefits, including cash handouts and heavily subsidized housing. It's not an enviable life, and SG could and should do better, but neither is it "destitution" on the scale of street beggars in (say) India or Indonesia.

[hnick]

One thing that is striking when visiting Singapore is the number of elderly people working basic jobs in fast food, street stalls, and similar roles. I don't know enough to judge their financial well-being, but it's very different to what we see here in Australia. Without more information I can't even say if it's mainly because over here we are reluctant to employ the elderly at all, I'm sure some Australians need the money too. It's just different.

[Clewza313]

The main driver here (IMHO) is that Singapore's pay-as-you-go pension system is/was quite patchy, particularly for the self-employed, who were exempted a long time and even today only need to contribute to their health insurance. Many of the elderly workers never accumulated a pension, so they need to work in menial jobs to support themselves.

In 2014 and 2018, the government finally introduced a set of meager benefits for those born in the 1940s and 1950s, but it's almost entirely focused on medical expenses and far from a "real" state pension.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_Generation_Package

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merdeka_Generation_Package

[refurb]

Yup. Many of the folks in their 70s and 80’s were in their prime working years when Singapore was far from as wealthy as it is today and before a lot of the forced savings programs (CPF). Many aren’t destitute, they have an HDB that’s worth a lot, they have healthcare that is heavily subsidized, but not much else for daily expenses.

[hnick]

> they have an HDB that’s worth a lot

That got my interest. Apparently there's a HDB lease buyback scheme, basically a reverse mortgage I guess? Though with stronger family ties over there I'm not sure how popular that would be when considering children, inheritance, and all that.

[BelenusMordred]

Many people really forget how brutally poor Singapore was not long ago. After being kicked out of Malaysia for wanting equal racial rights they had no land, resources, army or wealth. Any reasonable assessment would project them staying third world for a long time.

As boomers were entering adulthood in 1970, the GDP per capita in Singapore was US$900, in Australia it was $26,000.

Australian pensioners are the wealthiest of that cohort on the planet. Due to rampant property gains and incredibly favourable tax laws, technically you can live in a $10M mansion and still collect a full pension + benefits.

The two countries took wildly different trajectories and as such have very different attitudes by the generations that grew up in that time.

For a thousand dollars or so you can get setup and run your own hawker stall a couple hours a day in Singapore, lower that cost to a few hundred if selling sundries. The only equivalent I could think of for Australians is weekend markets which are full of oldies, but those are transient tents on some grass which are usually quite competitive to get and are once a week/month things.

Undoubtedly there's many who do need the income even in old age, but there's also a big cultural difference and many don't really consider retirement a thing. They may work a lot less, but have no plans to stop until physically unable, this is pretty common attitude to see.

[Clewza313]

Actually, the "Singapore was a third world fishing village" trope is mostly PAP propaganda. Singapore was very successful economically before WW2, and ranked second behind Tokyo or Shanghai as the wealthiest city in Asia by most measures.

Also, you're off by a factor of around 20x on your estimate of the costs of setting up a hawker stall: https://blog.seedly.sg/how-much-to-be-hawker-singapore/

[BelenusMordred]

Singapore was a British colony before WWII, not a nation state though. All the Straits Settlements accumulated that wealth on the back of colonial England, and before that it was part of the Johor Sultanate but was just some jungle that no one cared about, not even the Sultan himself who gave it to the British.

After leaving Malaysia it ranked right down the bottom on basically every economic and social measure, unemployment was at 10% and many lived in slums. Plenty of third world countries had better GDP per capita numbers.

Also my estimates are just fine according to that clickbaity link and a minute of research:

Upfront:

    $10 tender application
    $39 three year hawker license
    $321 Basic Food Hygiene Course
    $260 Stainless steel cart + delivery From JB [1]

Ongoing:

    $49 a month for a stall at Mei Chin Road
    $600 a month in cleaning/service fees
    $1000 a month in raw materials for say 100 chickens + everything else. Serves 1000 dishes.

It's certainly possible. That rental isn't common but certainly not out of the ordinary, you can get cooking stalls for ridiculously cheap.

[1] https://www.carousell.com.my/p/second-hand-stall-stainless-s...

[AussieWog93]

It's definitely starting to happen in Melbourne. Go to Red Rooster at Southern Cross and try to spot the non-pensioner.

I think too many young people are quick to forget that there are many boomers who didn't get the opportunity to own property back in the day, and they're fucked over by the bubble even harder than we are.

[djrobstep]

I didn't mention destitution. I simply pointed out that you are very badly informed about the reality of housing in Singapore, or flat out making things up.

[roenxi]

You raise the interesting question of why would someone travel long distances to live in terrible cramped conditions.

[ValentineC]

> You raise the interesting question of why would someone travel long distances to live in terrible cramped conditions.

I found this [1]:

> Before he left home, friends and relatives who had worked in Singapore told of a dream city where the roads were clean, people were friendly, and everyone followed the law.

[1] https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/cnainsider/singapore-mu...

[djrobstep]

A question with a very obvious answer: Desperation and exploitation.

[pydry]

Desperation, usually.

[borepop]

Singapore has no minimum wage. If its underclass were not destitute, I would think that would be rather surprising.

[anchpop]

Without commenting on Singapore, many countries have no minimum wage without negative consequence. It can be substituted with strong unions or social programs. In fact minimum wage is kind of a blunt instrument. People often say that everyone should be paid a living wage, but a living wage for a single mom with four kids is much higher than a living wage for a highschooler who lives with his parents. A minimum wage high enough to guarantee the mom a living wage would almost certainly make illegal many job opportunities the highschooler would love to have. I would prefer the government guarantee everyone a dignified life rather than try to use the minimum wage (which fundamentally only affects working people, not everyone)

[ajdlinux]

Indeed, in some places (eg Nordic countries) the union movement opposes any introduction of a national minimum wage as it could potentially undercut their own role in setting the effective minimum wage - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/12/nordic-countri...

Singapore, of course, is nothing like this.

[thisrod]

This is indeed a problem, but there is a very simple and effective solution that Australians call "youth wages".

[logicchains]

It's not very effective if you look at youth unemployement compared to a country like Singapore. Young adults who miss out the chance to get work experience when they're younger get completely shafted, because employers demand experience but nobody wants to give them the chance to gain that experience because of how much it costs.

[pydry]

>It can be substituted with strong unions

When the bus drivers tried to strike against explicitly racist pay policies they imprisoned and beat them: https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-SEAB-2274

They don't substitute. Unions are basically illegal.

There are people earning ridiculously low wages.

[Clewza313]

The unemployed (short or long term) with no assets or family assistance are entitled to ComCare subsidies, which are designed specifically to stop people from falling into destitution:

https://msf.gov.sg/Comcare/Pages/Short-to-Medium-Term-Assist...

https://msf.gov.sg/Comcare/Pages/Public-Assistance.aspx

Here's the BBC on what this looks like in practice:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-26349689

[logicchains]

Denmark has no minimum wage.

[jesterson]

> essentially everybody is entitled to a tiny but nearly-free rental flat

It's been pointed out already, but pretty much every word in this part of sentence is wrong. You may want to learn a bit more about Singapore HDB. Ah, I beg your pardon, you're absolutely right about tiny part.

Short answer: not everybody, not entitled, not anywhere nearly free (where is this even comes from?).

[refurb]

Overly broad and vague, but not that far off the mark. If you're a citizen or PR you are entitled to an HDB if your income isn't too high. If you can't afford to buy an HDB (with many gov't grants), you can rent an HDB. If you're really low income, the rent can be very low (ten's of SGD per month).

So basically if you're a SC/PR, you won't go without decent housing in Singapore. That's actually quite impressive for countries in SE Asia.

[pydry]

I saw a good number of homeless camping in, for instance, East Coast park.

[Clewza313]

Yes, there are an estimated 1,000 people sleeping rough. The study below determined that 40% of them actually own/rent housing, but don't use it because of eg. family conflicts, while the remainder either choose not to apply or have somehow fallen through the cracks of the system.

https://lkyspp.nus.edu.sg/gia/article/singapore's-hidden-hom...

[qsi]

Erhm, if you want to camp in East Coast Park (or anywhere on public land in Singapore), you need to apply for a permit and it's only allowed at designated camping grounds. The campers you saw were recreational, and seldom stay for more than one night. On most weekdays you won't see any tents at East Coast.

[pydry]

That's what I thought initially. My curiosity was piqued because they were in a non designated area and I thought it was weird that the police weren't making an effort to get rid of them.

A friend of mine said it was coz they were homeless and the police were aware.

In other countries they'd probably be moved on by police trying to make them some other department's problem. This could be the place where they ended up where they caused the least headache coz they did somewhat blend in.

It wasn't just east coast park either. There were several who slept on benches outside of my HDB in Clementi and Tiong Bahru. They tended to wake up early.

[qsi]

Oh, that's interesting. I had not heard of such cases, nor have I seen them. Do you remember which part of the park this was? I'll keep an eye out next time I am there.