Sg now 42% more expensive than New York
-
http://blogs.wsj.com/searealtime/2012/02/14/singapore-among-worlds-most-expensive-cities/ Well done Singapore.
-
No wonder birth rate so low. PAP made Singapore in world's top 10 most expensive city don't come and talk cock about low birth rate.
Singapore Among World’s Most Expensive Cities
Moving to Singapore? Start saving: The city-state is one of most expensive cities in the world – 42% more expensive than New York – topping London, Frankfurt and Hong Kong.
The Southeast Asian city joins Tokyo, Osaka and Kobe as one of the world’s top ten most expensive cities, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit’s annual cost-of-living survey, increasingly proving that Asian cities are no longer just a cheaper outpost for expats and multinationals. Though a European city – Zurich – is still the world’s most expensive, Tokyo was the runner up, with Singapore now listed as the world’s 9th most expensive city. Singapore was listed as the 6th most expensive last year, but remarkably was ranked 97th in 2001.
The survey uses prices of goods and services such as food, transportation, housing, utilities, private schools and domestic help to calculate scores for each city, using New York as its base with a score of 100. Zurich and Tokyo scored 170 and 166, respectively, indicating that they are about 70% and 66% more expensive to live in than New York.
Australian cites, too, were well-represented on the list by Sydney (No. 7) and Melbourne (No. 8, though at least it can claim it makes up for the cost in livability). While Japan has long been known as an expensive place to live — Tokyo’s gas prices are 71% higher than New York’s — the emergence of Australia and Singapore on the list is a more recent phenomenon.
Singapore’s rise is notable, since less than a decade ago it was considered a cheap city by Western standards. Just last year, a kilo of bread would have cost US$2.86, according to the Economist’s data, but now costs US$3.19 – an 11% increase from the year before.
The rise of home prices and basic goods in the city-state has for years been a sticking point for many disgruntled Singaporeans, many of whom say government policies to allow more rich expatriates to move to the city has helped push up the cost of living. In recent months, the government has put in place various cooling measures to address high property prices, which are slowly coming down.
Jon Copestake, editor of the survey, cited exchange-rate movement as “the main driver of cost-of-living growth in Singapore, relative to other cities.”
The Australian cities rose for the same reason: The Australian dollar rose sharply in value last year, which helped push its two biggest cities up the charts.
Asia is also home to the world’s cheapest places to live, particularly in South Asia. Karachi, Pakistan, came in 131st out of 131 cities, with a score of 46. This makes it three times cheaper than Singapore.
Also in the bottom 10: Mumbai; New Delhi; Kathmandu, Nepal; and Dhaka, Bangladesh. India and Pakistan’s cheap labor and land costs are making the area “attractive to those bargain-hungry visitors or investors willing to brave some of the security risks that accompany such low prices,” the survey said.
http://blogs.wsj.com/searealtime/2012/02/14/singapore-among-worlds-most-expensive-cities/
Singapore was listed as the 6th most expensive last year, but remarkably was ranked 97th in 2001.
-
They are not worried about any birth rate.
They can alway open their flood gate for more people to come in.
But, it is their "reason" forever to increase price and blame the local for causing all the crap that they have created for their lack of ideas and foresight.
-
up and up...
until the top.
-
6th is not good enough. we want to be no 1 in everything.
-
May 02, 2000 atimes.com Desperate for a baby boom
By Kalinga Seneviratne
SINGAPORE - Alarmed by a falling birth rate and its impact on the economy, Singapore badly wants its well-educated, career-oriented women to have more babies.
Already, the government of this affluent city state has set up a high-powered committee to study ways of encouraging Singaporean couples to have at least two children. The 11-member committee, headed by top civil servant Eddie Teo, permanent secretary to the Prime Minister's Office, will look into the reasons and attitudes that hold Singaporeans back from marraige and childbirth - and ways to reverse this trend. ''The committee is in the process of gathering feedback from young people through focus group sessions to get a feel of their aspirations and problems,'' Teo told The Straits Times this week.
In the last decade as Singapore's economy grew and the people became more affluent, the country's birth rate has fallen from 1.92 in 1990 to 1.48 last year. The total fertility rate needs to reach about 2 for a population to replace itself, experts here say.At today's rate, Singapore's population is expected to peak at 3.3 million in 2025, and then start to drop.
Currently, the 620 square-kilometer island republic has a population of just over 3 million, and another 1 million foreign expatriates and guest workers.
National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan said recently that Singapore was planning for a long-term population of 5.5. million by 2040 to keep economic growth ticking.
During a parliamentary debate in March on fertility rates, Community Development Minister Abdullah Tarmugi warned that if Singaporeans have fewer babies, the country will have to rely even more on immigrants. Government MP Dr Wang Kai Yuen went even further. ''A nation that cannot revert its declining birth rate is effectively committing collective suicide,'' he warned. The root of the problem lies in the perceptions of young women toward family life, he argued.
Ironically, the dilemma facing Singapore is a vindication of the arguments put forward by many non-governmental organizations from the developing world at the Cairo population conference in 1994. There, they complained that the conference concentrated too much on birth control methods, rather than on giving women greater access to educational and employment opportunties. Many NGOs argued that if women are better educated and employed, birth rates will naturally come down.
For many young Singaporeans with well-paid professional jobs and career ambitions, child rearing, and even marriage, takes lower priority. ''Generally, Asians keep longer hours at work. If a woman has a successful career, it is likely that her job is demanding and stressful. After a long day's work she wouldn't like to start another job when she steps into the home,'' said Tang Lai-Chee, a single 40-year-old regional financial controller for a multinational media company.
''As a working mother, I always find it tough to get adequate time to sit down and just chat or play with my kids,'' complained Loganthan Rajeswari, a full-time secretary with two school-going children. ''The amount of stress and commitments required in marriage and having children can put off modern Singaporean women from wanting these,'' she added. ''Also importantly, we are living in a very fast-paced lifestyle where there are too many materialistic wants. Starting a family may mean compromising such wants.''
Tang believes that the declining birth rates are due to the high cost of living in Singapore and its demanding education system. ''I have often heard my yuppie friends saying that life will be tough for children at school and even tougher when they grow up, so why bring them to this world?'' she said.
It is widely believed here that the government-appointed committee, which is to finish work by mid-June, will have a tough time framing a soft message to the community to have more babies - without fermenting resentment among 21st century Singaporean womanhood.
Dana Lam-Teo, president of the women's NGO Aware, argues that the root of the problem is societal values and attitudes and the decision to have a baby is a private one between two people. ''Their values and expectations from life come into play,'' she said in an interview. ''The national environment equally plays a part in that decision.''
Lam-Teo argues that the government must come up with more pro-family policies such as a five-day week in the public service, so couples have more time with children; more family-oriented workplace policies such as longer maternity leave and sick-child leave, and quality childcare at the workplace.
Currently, a Singaporean mother is entitled to two months' maternity leave with full pay after childbirth. There are no leave entitlements for the father.
Singapore has been worried about its lowering birth rates since 1983, when then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew drew attention to the increasing number of single graduate women. A slew of pro-baby incentives followed, aimed mainly at graduate women, but with little effect.Then between 1987 to 1990 under the slogan of ''Have Three or More, If You Can Afford It'', a number of budget measures were introduced to induce mothers to have more babies. Yet, it didn't work.
Tang says that what would encourage her to marry and have children is ''if the government changes the educational system and encourages a more creative environment, if Singapore is a more gracious and open-minded society''.
Sociologist Dr Paulin Tay Straughan argues that Singapore's mindset about work and family time needs to change before the downward trend of fertility rates can be reversed. ''Society must recognise the importance of family time,'' she said. ''It cannot be seen as surplus work time.''
Added Dr Straughan: ''While doing overtime at work or working weekends may be productive for the organization, it is depriving the family of the limited time they have together.''
(Inter Press Service)http://www.atimes.com/se-asia/BE02Ae02.html
Mah Bow Tan said recently that Singapore was planning for a long-term population of 5.5. million by 2040 to keep economic growth ticking.
Government MP Dr Wang Kai Yuen went even further. ''A nation that cannot revert its declining birth rate is effectively committing collective suicide,'' he warned.
Population control in Singapore
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_control_in_Singapore
The Population Bomb
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb
The Limits to Growth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth
POPULATION
Scapegoat of the ’70s
The rate of world population growth peaked at some point around the middle of last decade and has since stalled. Latest estimates from the UN Population Division suggest that total world population, which now stands at just over 4 billion, will touch 6 billion by the end of the century.
At the very beginning of the 70s it was widely believed that rapid population growth in the developing world was the most important cause of continuing poverty.
The population ‘explosion’, it was argued, was wiping out any economic development which the developing countries managed to achieve. ‘No other problem casts a darker shadow over the prospects for international development than the staggering growth of population,’ said the Pearson Commission Report on ‘Co-operation for Development’, published in 1970.
But as the decade progressed this view began to give ground under repeated attacks from a Third World which was profoundly suspicious of the convenient Western argument which laid the blame for poverty at the feet of the improvident poor.
The counter-argument ran like this. Large families and rapid population growth are in themselves a result of poverty. In the absence of social security, unemployment pay, sickness benefits and old age pensions, poor people need children to look after them when they are out of work, sick or old.
Secondly, the millions of poor people who live in the rural areas of the Third World need children to help with the daily ‘survival’ jobs of collecting wood and water and looking after animals, which commonly take up to twelve hours a day every day and which children can and do perform throughout the developing world...
http://www.newint.org/features/1980/01/01/development/
-
PAP, don't try to sell me bull.
I won't buy.
You know, if you want to sell bull, you must choose the right customer. Some people you try to sell bull to them, they will slap you across the face.
-
can sell bulls in a country auction.
-
Congratulations to PAP for making Singapore better than New York.
But how does Singaporean wages compare to New Yorkers?
-
Originally posted by βÎτά:
Congratulations to PAP for making Singapore better than New York.
But how does Singaporean wages compare to New Yorkers?
Most likely 42% lower for the Lesser Mortals and 420% higher for the elites. -
We can only whine here
they will not care at all
-
How to increase the birth rate :
1. Maids hiring should be encouraged. It should be subsidized. Maybe even free.
2. Property speculation is strictly prohibited.
3. Stop blaming the women.
-
this piece of news justifies why singaporeans keep whining and complaining about its high costs...and for good....
wouldn't you?
-
Originally posted by dragg:
6th is not good enough.
we want to be no 1 in everything.No 1 for.....
-
Originally posted by Fcukpap:
this piece of news justifies why singaporeans keep whining and complaining about its high costs...and for good....
wouldn't you?
As least we are justified to complain now...
-
Originally posted by βÎτά:
Congratulations to PAP for making Singapore better than New York.
But how does Singaporean wages compare to New Yorkers?
congratulations!TAKE YOUR MEDS!u will feel like a new yorker again!
-
ahem
-
Originally posted by Mr Milo:
We can only whine here
they will not care at all
Times are bad.
-
Since plp also interest in the wage in SG. Can read the report from UBS lar, compare the cost of living, wage, and then they will use the both to see the purchasing power. https://www.ubs.com/global/en/wealth_management/wealth_management_research/prices_earnings.html
-
If you earn a million dollars a year, this report will not make you worry about anything.
-
Originally posted by βÎτά:
Congratulations to PAP for making Singapore better than New York.
But how does Singaporean wages compare to New Yorkers?
Elite salaries will pwn them deep deep.