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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
But yeah, you basically sell whatever years of your 99 year lease you don’t need (calculated off the youngest occupant, so a 40 year old only needs 50 years of housing). Government gives you lump sum for your CPF, which you convert to an annuity at retirement for an income stream.
But you’re right, with family, typically the kids take over the HDB and living expenses for their parent. They get the HDB when the parent passes.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.