sadly it is the govt that started it:
The Hawker and the Banker
A Singaporean student on home leave writes about what he sees as a
society dividing rich and poor. Oikono.
Jan 7, 2007
(Geoffrey (Kok Heng) who is studying at Wharton School, University
of Pennsylvania, runs Oikono weblog)
Having last visited Singapore two years ago, I expected the city to
be radically different.
However, the area where my family stays hardly changed and even
Orchard Road looks the same. City Hall appears different, but it is
in the prices that I observed the biggest change.
What struck me in particular was not so much the increase in
prices, but how uneven the price changes have been.
This uneven price changes has distributional impacts on what I see
as two diverging segments of society.
Singapore is increasingly populated by two groups of people: the
Hawker and the Banker.
In Singapore, hawkers refer to the people who work in large food
centers selling food or drinks. A few strike it rich but most are
typically uneducated and belong to the poorer segment of
society.
I know this because my father is one of them, selling drinks in one
of the large outdoor food centers that populate the island.
But the Hawker I use in this analysis is a larger segment of
society: the Singaporeans who lack the education to be globally
mobile and benefit from global wage levels.
This group is larger than you think. It includes many local
graduates who accept stagnant local wage structures, and compete
with educated immigrants from China, India or Nepal for
white-collar jobs.
On the side of the divide are the Bankers, not just people in the
financial industry, but people who have a world-class education
(often international) that gives them opportunities to pursue jobs
as consultants, investment bankers, traders
etc.
These jobs pay a globally competitive wage a premium often
reaching two or three times the average wage of a local
graduate.
What struck me about prices when I returned was how the food sold
by hawkers around the area I lived has barely budged.
I do not know if this phenomenon is island-wide, but it was
surprising to see a plate of Char Kway Teow still at the $2 or $3 I
paid when I left.
I met my former boss, a distinguished economist, and he felt the
same way about the unequal prices.
Are the Hawkers competing in a different world? One where being
local meant facing competition that erodes pricing power and
depresses wages?
I talked to my mother, a nurse, and she said that wages have not
risen in line with inflation over the past two years.
While these prices have remained stagnant, I noticed that it was
not so in the city area. What I though of as a fancy night out at
Crystal Jade La Mian Xiao Long Bao now came with fancier
prices.
I went to look at cufflinks at Alain Figaret as I liked to do. They
are now 20 percent pricier.
Another night, I was at a dinner hosted by one of Banker-type
firms. It was for students studying at overseas university. All of
the Bankers hosting us were from distinguished American and British
universities.
A Singaporean student at the table flew with her family to exotic
locations every holiday, sometimes over weekends, dined frequently
at expensive restaurants in Singapore whose fancy names I never
heard of, and could hardly pronounce.
One of the Banker-types was born in Singapore, grew up in the
US/UK, and never ate in a food centre in Singapore. They earned the
global wage, one most Singaporean undergraduates dream off.
They lived in another world beyond the sight of most ordinary
Singaporeans; one I did not know existed until I left
Singapore.
The Economist (Economics Focus Dec 22, 2007) observed that rising
income inequality in modern societies does not result in a large
difference in material comforts.
However, I worry about what this gap means for a society in terms
of power inequality and shared experiences.
Can the Banker understand the life of a Hawker? Can he empathise
with their difficulties or being so far removed from them, he
wonders why anyone would need social security, handouts or
subsidized healthcare?
Will inequality mean that we have two groups living in two
Singapores: one where fine dining, exotic holidays, and posh cars
define a Singaporean experience, another where hawker food, trips
to Johor Bahru, and SBS dominates?
Walking around Bugis, I glimpsed people sleeping on the sidewalks
and I wonder. - Posted by Oikono