hurry, property prices shooting up!

Boomtown Charlie, Property prices on the rise Everyone in the business is using his loud hailer shouting that property prices are shooting to the sky. Quick, quick, go out and grab one before it is too late. My rich neighbour already bought 4 properties, one for son, one for daughter and two for suckers. Where are the suckers coming from? Most heartlanders have one or two children who would probably inherit the little flat they have bought. The rich, like my neighbour, have already bought all they wanted, and in excess, and waiting. Sure there will be a few young couples who have made it and wanted a place of their own. And these will have to play catch up if they can afford it. But many young people will not have enough, with the kind of pay they are getting, to buy those skyrocketing price private properties. Where is the demand coming from? Maybe some foreigners going for the top end. What about the general market, the HDB market? Is there really a demand to chase prices up? The memory of the balloon bursting is still deeply etched in the minds of many who have been made bankrupt. Bang, bang, bang, propery prices going up!

kopitiam up prices

My cuppa of kopi up by 10c! This is outrageous. How can the kopitiams increase my kopi by so much, more than 10%? We must protest to bring down the unjust increase. My pay has not increased and they are already increasing my kopi. But I would like to offer my secret formula to the kopitiams, at a fee of course, so that when they increase their prices, no one can complain that it is not justified. All they need to do is to peg it to some bankers or top income earners' salary. So when their income goes up, automatically the price of the kopi must go up. Objective and transparent.

myth 129

Singapore mentality not the same as Malaysians It was reported that 800,000 of 2.1 million Malaysian civil servants moonlight to earn extra income. And they took on extra jobs like taxi drivers, cashiers, gardeners as well. And these less talented workers choose to do it the hard way instead of resorting to corruption. Corruption only happens in high places where people earn more than RM$5,00 pm, so the papers reported. Now this is very difficult to understand. In Singapore, the higher people are paid, the lesser they are corrupt. In Malaysia, it seems that the higher you pay them the more they are corrupt. It is indeed a big contradiction. Are we made differently?

myth 128

Is there a value to a job? The traditional method of evaluation the worth of a job and how much it should be paid is no longer relevant in the modern context, or at least in the Singapore context. In the past, a job is carefully evaluated with relevant factors to determine how much it is worth. It is quite a tedious and complicated process. Today, the determination of the value of a job is so much easier. Just peg it to somebody's income. In fact the value of all the jobs in Singapore can be done that way. And whether the value of the job increases or decreases will be determined by the income of the top eight lawyers, accountants, bankers, CEOs of MNCs and local enterprises, and engineers. And workers can likewise peg their pay to them. And when these people earn a lot of money, their pay can likewise be adjusted accordingly. The process is clean, transparent, objective and clinical. No need to argue about how much is a job worth anymore. No need to go for collective negotiation with management. Afterall the value of a job is only relative, relative to whoever one chooses to peg it with.

The irony of it all

The irony of it all The people who are struggling to make ends meet and slogging away are all silent while the fat cows are screaming for more. In a society like ours, those who are earning less than $3k a month, not to mention those earning less than $1k, are just living from hand to mouth. Anyone who earns $20k a month are very comfortable. Anything more than that will either go to their savings or for more luxury. And it is this latter group that keeps saying 'I want more and more and more.' It is so distasteful. Oops, I am wrong. I have lost touch with reality, with the people's aspiration, and the brutal truth.