High cost of living is here to stay. Lowering costs is not the
answer, espacially for Singapore if we are to maintain our
standards of living.
To lower would be the decimation of our poor, down to a
population size of 1.5million. The other 2million will have to
starve and die out. It will be a majority of the poor and middle
classes who will suffer, the very those who cannot afford to leave
the island.
Our economy is fully integrated to the world, from the mama shop
at the HBD void deck to Bill Gates' Microsoft. To lower costs, it
will have to be a chain reaction from the top to the bottom in our
world.
Take for a simple example of a taxi company. The company can
lower their rental of a taxi by a few hundred dollars, but if they
were to lower the rental for an entire fleet, it would be hundreds
of thousands of dollars.
The company needs every dollar to service their loans, and
provide the necessary infrastructure to support the taxis -
building, maintenance, staff, etc.
When they lower the rental of taxi, they would not be able to
service their loans, as well as to build up reserves to buy a new
fleet when the current fleet of taxis are worned out.
The taxi company will then fold, and thousands of taxi drivers
will be out of job and starve to death. Extrapoliate that onto the
entire economy, we will all be swatting flies and dying by the
roadsides, akin to failed African states.
Our govt can attempt to lower costs and cuts taxes, cut down on
social spending, depriving funding for sectors such as
education and healthcare, and don't earn
revenues from property prices, rents, land sales,
utilities, etc, etc, but can there be any assurance that private
operators will not pocket the differences instead of using it to
build up their private companies and keep people hired?
Lowering costs is not the answer, for money is growing and
printed at a tremendous rate each time a resource is harvested.
Improved fertilization. Modern land efficient use and resource
processing methods. Double, triple yielding crops. Renewable
agri-fuel. Sustainable environment friendly recyled plastics
instead of wood, recyclable ferrous oxides, etc, etc, etc.There are
more money in this world today then 10 years ago.
It is only natural companies grow to earn such money. And based
on market theory of supply and demand, people and growing
population growth will pay more for exclusive and critical goods,
and the cycle of high costs will continue to spiral.
But there are ways for companies to beat high costs or high
operating costs. Quality or Quantity is the solution.
For example, a hawker must serve exceptionally good food, so
good that he can price it at $12 for a plate of fried rice, and
people will willingly pay for it, even if his target market is
small. He will still survive. This is quality.
Or he can sell his fried rice at $1.50, and i am sure people
will queue up to buy it, and he will survive too. This is
quantity.
Our population was 1.5million in 1965, Today it is 3.5million
exclulding 1.5million foreigners. There are many ways to earn
money from this increase of pop growth, example-KFC's $888 ang pow
promotion, etc.
Demand will offset highcosts. But if there is no demand, low
costs will not help anyway. It will only be a lingering death for
companies. Thus the need to spend. People are hoarding money, and
not a case of no money.
As for workers who face high costs of living, due to
competition, raising salaries is not a solution. Nor is the
lowering of business costs another solution for it will only
destroy business enterprises and creates more unemployment.
Working in companies or public sector assures one of an assured
paycheque every month. Thus, the worker must either upgrade to earn
more, or be satisfied with the amount and live within his
means.
The other solution would be to become an entreprenuer, or learn
to be one, to beat high costs of living. Complaining is no use.
Solutions and actions are needed.
High costs of living will never end, but it can be beaten and
kept in check.
Sorry for the bad writing. Had to make a complex
issue simple and short.
High costs of doing business to be kept in check
or raised by increasing electricity by 21%
There is no way to trust the dishonorable despots
out to maximise their own profits at the expense of the economy and
so Singaporeans have to do it themselves... and send the email...
so that...
sellers will have to lower price to move sales if buyers
are not biting
"sellers will
have to lower price to move sales if buyers are not
biting"
...and unless they also let go of their foreign
workers and cut head count or they close shop; or unless the
business costs come down... which the despots will be forced to do,
like cut rentals on JTC and HDB and costs of land if they do not
want to see businesses close down right and left... since they are
so dishonorable, the would let businesses close down then to forgo
the benefits of high costs to their cronies, relatives and ass-licking-dogs.
