In 2010, Singapore has been ranked the 9th most expensive Asia city. In 2011, our little island has jumped 6 places and now proudly stands in the third rank!! As a nation who always thrive to be the top in almost everything, I think we are not doing too bad jumping 6 ranks in the span of a short 1 year! Top spot goes to Tokyo and following closely behind, is Hong Kong. Singapore, with such a short history in her treasure chest, takes one of the top 3 spot. I think we did quite well.
In order to push us up to the top rank, our garmen has been pain-stickingly thinking of various ways to increase cost while maintaining our salary at its present level. Why is that so? Well, if our salary increase proportionately with the cost of living, then we won't see products and services as expensive and thus, the whole works for helping us to reach the top of the charts will not relevant. Moreover, increasing both cost and income at the same time might cause hyper-inflation. Then again, there's a minority chosen few who will not be affected because they have been receiving good basic salary on top of their bonuses. In addition, they are always able to find reasons for justifying their pay increment...something like, you need to pay more to get good people...you know what I mean.
Of course, with cost increase...we need to sympathize with these chosen ones because they too need to pay more for first class airfares, top notch restaurants dining, a few more houses in different countries, private jet maybe? So how are they going to survive when everything increases and not their salary! And because the amount increased in one person's salary might equal to the salary of about 270 low income folks, I might be able to conclude that these chosen lot causes inflation! And since most of our services are Monopolized, I can also deduce that we are in the whirlpool of cost-push inflation. I'm afraid that I might not be able to afford a can of coke in future!
Inflation and unemployment has always been very good friends. Infact, they are so close that everytime inflation visits, unemployment would drop by and stay for a while...just to visit a good friend. We are no longer looking at seasonal unemployment but cyclical! That is because our very friendly garmen loves foreign friends and invited them in hoards to come in and train us to be more competitive! Yes, I'm talking about 60 people fighting for one job. Don't mistaken my intention, I have no objection to having good talents to exchange pointers. But there are just some who can't really make it. You watch them work, you know they come from another planet...somewhere far far away in outer space! They are not here to give, they are here to take. Thank goodness, our garmen woke up from their deep slumber and decided that enough is enough.
The higher cost of living still worries me a fair bit. The recent wayang comes from the taxi companies increasing fares. Just like what happen back in 2007, Comfort Delgro is the first to lead with the increase. They state that this increase will help the cabbies take home more income. I seriously don't see how that would help since an increase in fare (AGAIN) would deter consumers from using its services. Those big guys said that they would not increase rental of the taxis...they forgot to add the word 'YET'. In a recent media release, Comfort Delgro (with presence in Singapore, UK, Ireland, 14 cities in China, Australia, Vietnam and Malaysia) reported that the Q3 (ending September 2011) net profit attributable to shareholders increased by 12.5% to $69.1 million, bringing the net profit attributable to shareholders for the year-to-date to $179.1 million. I think a small 12.5% increase is insufficient to satisfy the appetite of the big brothers.
This little balloon will burst one day if more pressure is continually being pumped in!
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