8/13/2007
Sin of Waste
Singapore will pay for its sin of waste one day. We are getting more like the Americans, wasting precious resources without a care as to how resources could be used more efficiently. We discard our cars after 10 years, some even less.
Now we are tearing down buildings that are in good conditions, millions to build and millions added on by their owners. Tearing down some low rise houses for highrise is a necessity. But tearing down highrise to add on a few more floors and to charge the buyers more, all for more profits, well, it is a different ballgame. It is greed and waste with total disregard to the destruction of mother earth. More bricks and mortars, iron and steel, aluminium and plastics and mother earth will be used in the process.
The immediate impact is to drive property prices up. And more people will end up having to pay more. The people who benefitted from en bloc sales will use the new cash to pay more by downgrading. This will in turn push up prices in the sector that they downgraded to. When property prices keep going up and income does not keep pace, many will end up chasing a fleeting dream. And when the bubble bursts, often it does, many will end up with valueless properties either people do not want or cannot afford to buy.
The American subprime loan crisis is a good reminder of what could happened or had happened here before. When property prices were driven to ridiculous levels and the developers and all their cheer leaders and pom pom girls keep cheering that it is a good thing, prices will go higher. Now a HDB flat cost more than half a million, back to the pre crash prices of $600k and $700k. These are ridiculous prices, excessive for their real values.
It will come tumbling down again. There will be no buyers to pay for them except the few who made easy gains from en bloc sales. The normal buyers, people who earned their money the proper ways, the hard ways, cannot afford to waste on such extravagant prices. Keep cheering and be irresponsible. The crash will come again.
We will have our own subprime loan in over lending to the property market one more time. Non performing loan crisis. Our economy and income level cannot sustain an ever rising property prices.
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5 comments:
Singapore got GST ambitions... So must giveaway millions of citizenships to whoever willing to take, the more wealthy the better the GST returns.... But singapore lacks space, so boh pian must tear down the buildings one.
So be it. In case no one is noticed: the city state is being re-modeled, as the "speculation" is that 6 million people might inhabit the small island in the near future.
Of course profits are to be made in the process. When values (or utility) increases, some people get rich.
What's wrong with that?
After 6 million, the next guy to want promotion may suggests 10 million becos
4 million more X GST = genius returns.
So easy their jobs.
We will sure have more asthma cases and staring incidents but no money in return for our nobel sacrifice..
We came into this world empty- handed and we will leave this world empty-handed.
We can accummulate as much as we want in life but in the end we realise we actually have nothing to take along.
anon 4:35
With that kind of thinking, you will probably have a fucked up life ;-)
The key is to be ABUNDANT—create as much as possible... and leave it for someone else when you depart.
Great civilizations are built over time—each individual, each generation does his bit to play a part in building the wealth, so all may benefit.
Don't be such a stingy lazy dickhead lah!
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