Lawrence Wong (LW) was doing what he does best: spreading disinformation and falsehoods in Parliament on Monday. He claimed that Singapore under the PAP would never succumb to populism and “welfareism”. As I have said countless times, the PAP leadership are still stuck in the 1970s and 80s, and cannot think of any new new policies or mantras. I remember elections back then when the PAP or LKY claimed that the Opposition, which at that time was basically my father’s Workers Party, were planning to give everything away free. A documentary from the 1990s carried an interview with Goh Chok Tong (GCT). When he was asked why the Government was so worried about JBJ, GCT said that my father was a socialist who would ruin the country and therefore had to be stopped by any means necessary.

Since my father was ejected by Low Thia Kiang, the Workers Party has of course been tamed and become fairly toothless under its new leaders. It now says, most recently by Pritam Singh, that an Opposition Government, like commercial fusion power, is always fifty years away and sometimes claims that it is in partnership with the PAP, as Sylvia, Pritam and Leon did in 2018 in Armenia. In fact LW praises them for broadly agreeing with the PAP on everything, except for a vague wish that the government should do more.

I have done it countless times already but let me dispel yet again the falsehoods peddled by LW and his master LHL. Income tax rates may be much higher in the Nordic countries, Europe and the UK than in Singapore but their citizens enjoy income support measures, disability benefits, unemployment insurance and free healthcare. In any case at Singaporean levels of median income their citizens would receive much more in benefits than they pay in tax which is borne overwhelmingly by the high earners. In the US rates of income tax would not be much different from Singapore even though their citizens receive a much better social safety net than Singaporeans.

LW conveniently omits to mention that Singaporeans have to pay 20% of their incomes into CPF. He has recently raised the income cap from $6,000 per month to $8,000. This is a highly regressive tax since if your income is above this level your additional income is free of CPF. If you are a foreigner on an Employment Pass you are not even liable to pay CPF which gives them an advantage over Singaporeans since their employer does not have to pay an additional 17%. The fact that the majority of CPF can only be used for housing raises its price and benefits the Government which owns 90% of the land and restricts supply to keep prices high. To help push up prices further the Government “subsidises” your HDB purchase with money from the Budget which could be spent on improving your welfare but instead goes directly to the reserves which remain a black hole, sucking money in from you constantly while none escapes. Then the PAP use these fake “subsidies” to argue that you receive

Singaporean men also have to do NS for nearly two years and during this period are paid a fraction of what they could earn if they were not required to do forced labour. Conveniently new citizens and even children of PRs and citizens are not required to do NS and are often surreptitiously allowed back into Singapore. to work. LW conveniently forgets that NS is a tax, even though it is not levied in money, and deprives Singaporean men of 2 years of potential earnings at their highest earning rate.

LW also tries to deceive Singaporeans by claiming that GST is much lower than in other countries. The headline rate may be lower but most countries, like the UK exempt many categories of essential goods e.g. food, medicine and children’s clothing from sales taxes. The US has no national sales tax. Most states levy sales taxes but they are much lower than Singapore’s rate.

The principal beneficiaries of Singapore’s low rates of tax and absence of taxes on capital and investment income are high earners, including the expatriates who view Singapore, like former colonial empires, as a great place to accumulate wealth and exploit cheaper labour.

LW goes on to claim:

“Singapore is also one of the few advanced countries where the broad middle has seen large increases in income over the past 20 years

Income for this group is today higher than in the United States and most European countries, and well above advanced Asian societies such as Japan, Hong Kong and South Korea.”

He presents no statistics to back his claim in the same arrogant manner as his unfortunate predecessor Heng Swee Keat POFMA’ed those who reproduced the Taiwanese claim that Ho Ching was paid US$100 million a year but refused to tell us what she was in fact paid (it could be US$99 million a year!). LW does not define what he means by broad middle nor does he specify whether this is income per household, per household member or per full-time employed worker. Including Employer CPF in his calculation is misleading since in many countries employers contribute to pension schemes and provide health insurance which may not be included in income. Also in the UK employers pay National Insurance contributions which are supposed to cover free health care and other welfare benefits including an old age pension of over Singaporeans can generally only use CPF for medical expenditures and housing which is overpriced. Using median incomes per household member is also misleading since Singaporean households often include several members in full time employment because the cost and scarcity of housing forces many single people to live with their parents. If we remove the Employer CPF component then there a UK worker on median income appears to earn slightly more and a US worker a lot more. But comparisons should be made with earnings in New York and London. I did a comparison of the costs of essential foodstuffs between Singapore and the UK and items like chicken, bread and even rice are more expensive in Singapore. Fresh chicken is up to three times as expensive in Singapore as it is in the UK.

Also LW flatters Singaporeans’ incomes by not normalising them by hours worked. Singaporeans work the longest hours of any nation in the developed world. The UK minimum wage is now about $17 an hour but the PAP’s Progressive Wage Model, which they want to trick you into thinking that it shows the government’s concern for those on low incomes, is only $7-10 an hour. I did a comparison of wages per hour in 2020 which showed that the median Singapore wage was about $19 an hour while that in London was more than double that and New York was three times as much.

Once you exclude NS men from the calculation, the labour force participation rate for Singaporeans over 16 appears to be below 60% which is low by developed country standards. Of course LW and his master LHL try to disguise this fact by bundling together citizens and PRs, who will usually be younger and more likely to have jobs. (Bundling PRs with citizens also helps to flatter the household income figures). The PAP are so keen to push the idea of SkillsFuture courses of questionable value on you because it helps to disguise unemployment. Due to their desire to make use of cheap foreign labour, the wages for many jobs have fallen below the amount needed to live on. It appears that more than 40% of Singaporean citizens are not working despite the Government claiming that unemployment is low.

LW wants you to believe his lies about running a balanced Budget and that Singapore cannot afford even the most basic benefits for its citizens otherwise it will succumb to “welfareism” and become a basket case like Sri Lanka. Before you swallow his lies you need to make him answer the following fundamental questions:

1. Since 2004 the accumulated cash surplus of the Government has been about $400 billion. Including surpluses of Temasek, GIC, MAS, Changi Airport Group, MOH Holdings etc. the combined surplus must be over $1 trillion. Where has this gone? Why is the Government in desperate need of money and needs to keep putting up GST?
2. You claim that you are subsidising Singaporeans to buy housing at inflated prices from your monopoly and include these fake figures to gull Singaporeans into thinking they are getting a good deal. But isn’t this just a clever way of secretly transferring revenues which should be spent on Singaporeans’ welfare to the reserves?
3. Why do you go through the farce of pretending that the Net Investment Returns Contributions from Temasek, GIC and MAS are spent on SIngaporeans when in the past you have transferred most of it into long term funds and endowments? Is this not transferring money from one pocket to the other with no actual money coming out?\
4. Similarly why are you asking Parliament to approve $20 billion of spending on health each year (and asserting that this will rise to $60 billion by 2030) without showing the revenue collected from Singaporeans who are required to pay for most of their health costs and are severely restricted even from using Medisave (whose balances are now over $110 billion and rising) and coverage by Medishield is patchy and inadequate? Why are the accounts of MOH Holdings hidden behind a paywall? Is this money being transferred directly to Temasek and GIC?
5. With probably at least $3 trillion of reserves please explain why we cannot spend $80-$120 billion extra a year on our citizens? Why are you pretending that Singapore will be bankrupt without an extra $3-4 billion from the GST increase? Or maybe you are not pretending and the financial situation really is parlous? In any case you and your boss LHL need to come clean.

If you are happy and contented with the way things are, think LHL and his acolytes are doing a great job ( certainly of paying themselves and their spouses and relatives from state funds) and willing to accept what may be the biggest swindle in history, then continue to vote PAP. Or if you really like the PAP but feel they should do a bit more then vote for the tame Opposition MPs currently enjoying their generous salaries and who say the PAP must remain in charge for the next fifty to a hundred years. If you want to find out what is really going on then you are going to need to pluck up your courage and elect some real Opposition in the coming election.

Published by kjeyaretnam

I'm a Singaporean economist who became an opposition activist. I blog to provide an alternative to the porkies that the Pinkies tell. It just so happens that my alternative is the truth. That's why I've never been sued in any civil or criminal court no matter how hard hitting my criticism. I'm quoted and interviewed and asked to speak across the world but largely censored in Singapore in an effort to silence my political opinions. The left hate me because they think I split their vote and because I eschew their outmoded economic models. Models that don't work. The Right and the Conservatives hate me because I'm a liberal. I'm not sure what the middle think of me. I don't think there are more than a handful of people in the middle, here in Singapore. I'm a Singaporean born and bred, dual heritage, my parents Singaporean established here before the State of Singapore was created. I'm not Eurasian. I read economics at Cambridge and could be broadly described as from the Keynesian school but I believe in interventions. I was formerly a successful hedge fund manager. After economics and politics my greatest interests are history, film and Makan. I run but I run so I can eat like a Singaporean. View all posts by kjeyaretnam