from sammyboy coffeeshop talk:
Spore ranks 36h in global wage index!
From: Bright90
To: ALL
140600.1
Lower income taxes
The government always emphasizes to its people that we, the
citizens of Singapore, pay much less tax than citizens of other
high income cities. Tharman in fact said during Budget 2007 that we
paid less tax than our counterparts from Dublin, Sydney and Tokyo
but comparable to what citizens of Hong Kong pay.
Here's a list of wage indexes of the most highly paid cities in the
world taken from
http://www.citymayors.com/economics/richest_cities.html. The
indexes are net of taxes so tax rate has already been factored
in.
Rank Cities Wage index
1 Zurich 124.2
2 Geneva 115.4
3 Oslo 110.8
4 Dublin 104.6
5 New York 100
6 Luxembourg 98.1
7 Los Angeles 97
8 London 96
9 Copenhagen 95.7
10 Chicago 94.7
11 Helsinki 89.1
12 Tokyo 87.4
13 Frankfurt 85.5
14 Munich 84.5
15 Berlin 82.1
16 Vienna 81.2
17 Toronto 80.4
18 Sydney 79.6
19 Brussels 78.2
20 Montreal 77.3
21 Stockholm 77
22 Miami 74
23 Auckland 73.4
24 Amsterdam 72.7
25 Lyon 70.5
26 Nicosia 69.5
27 Paris 68.8
28 Barcelona 66.6
29 Madrid 64.3
30 Milan 59.9
31 Dubai 57.8
32 Rome 49.7
33 Athens 48.6
34 Seoul 48.2
35 Taipei 43.3
36 Singapore 38.9
37 Lisbon 38.6
38 Johannesburg 37.3
39 Manama 36.6
40 Hong Kong 34.9
We can see that, even after factoring in their high tax rates,
citizens of Dublin, Tokyo and Sydney take home 2.7, 2.2 and 2 times
the amount of salary that we take home.
So never be fooled by politicians when they say they tax us lower
because they don't pay us quite as much to begin with. This is to
be expected because of the nature of our economy. Manufacturing
still comprises a large segment of our economy and unless we are
reasonably cheap, no MNCs would set up shop here, hence the lower
wages.
MM likes to compare us with New York and London. Looking at the
list, I think we're better off comparing ourselves with Athens or
Madrid for New York and London are way above our league.
