There are reasons why Singapore has the highest property. Her elites are not productive. Their wealth are not through creative output that benefits everyone. But from inheritance or property that effectively make you contribute 1/3 salary to their coffer.

Besides, our government is BIGGEST LANDLORD.

Singapore’s Tycoon And What They Are Busy In

1 Ng Teng Fong (Property, Self-Made)
2 Khoo Family (Hospitality,Property, Banking/Finance, Inheritance )
3 Kuok Khoon Hong (Agriculture, Inheritance)
4 Kwee Brothers (Property)
5 Wee Cho Yaw (Property, Banking/Finance)
6 Zhong Sheng Jian (Property)
7 Peter Lim (Investment, Agriculture, Self-Made)
8 Kwek Leng Beng (Property, Banking/Finance,Inheritance)
9 Lee Seng Wee (Banking/Finance, Inheritance)
10 Ong Beng Seng (Property, Inheritance)

Many US Billionaires Are Truely Extraordinary Individuals

1 William Gates III (Technology, Self-Made)
2 Warren Buffett (Investment, Self-Made)
3 Lawrence Ellison (Technology, Self-Made)
4 Christy Walton (Retail, Inheritance)
5 Jim C. Walton (Retail, Inheritance)
6 Alice Walton (Retail, Inheritance)
7 S. Robson Walton (Retail, Inheritance)
8 Michael Bloomberg (News, Self-Made)
9 Charles Koch (Chemical, Self-Made)
9 David Koch (Chemical, Self-Made)

So much losses outside, they need to recover locally. Instead of making life easier with investment, we are compelled to pay for their mishaps. The investment companies have been playing hide and seek on numbers, you expect this hole is larger than what we imagine.

But we are asked to go for cheaper (accept LOW pay), better, faster economy?

First of all, CPF returns and funds are targeted, this brings about the high and higher prices for flats. ERP will go higher, Electricity, Transport, Rental, Business Cost etc…. and Ministers’ pay will escalate further.

In my interactions and interviews with foreign workers who work in construction, they’re paid $2 per hour for their work. For working overtime, they’re paid $3 per hour. This is for doing heavy manual work under extreme conditions (just take a walk around S’pore and you can feel the intensity of the heat, for example.)

They typically work 15 to 18 hours a day. Some work on rotating 24-hour shifts. Even some work 72-hour non-stop shifts, such as some workers in the IRs’ construction sites.

All this makes you wonder, nah, lets you know, that the only people reaping the obscene profits from such flats are the govt, the property developer and those looking to make a quick profit.

The average Singaporean and the foreign workers are just tools and consumers who are exploited to the fullest.

I think the list left out those two live on taxpayers monies by paying themselves millionair salaries & perks and continue to do so by making the poor poorer. They even deprive the taxpayers of LUP in certain towns.

“In my interactions and interviews with foreign workers who work in construction, they’re paid $2 per hour for their work. For working overtime, they’re paid $3 per hour.”

From what I am aware, a sub-contracting agent normally gets paid by the main contractor around S$6~S$7.50 per hour depending on the skills of the worker. Out of this payment, I suppose a large portion will have to be paid monthly as a levy to the Ministry of Manpower while the remaining balance will be the costs to the sub-contracting agent for bringing the foreign worker which includes his profit.

This levy can be considered as a form of direct tax for employing the foreign worker which should be rightfully form part of foreign worker remuneration if there had been no such levy. At current levels, it varies from S$150 to S$300 or S$470 per month depending on the skills of the worker.

Say, if the average worker gets a net pay of S$600 per month and if the levy is S$150 per month. Then the average tax rate for this foreign worker would actually be paying a whopping min. 20% (S$150 / S$750) or 33% (S$300 / S$900) for those without MYE.

Just imagine this, the foreign workers (including the maids) are actually paying a higher tax rate than most Singaporeans. So who is the culprit behind the ever increasing construction costs for both HDB & private property.

So we Singaporeans should just stop complaining about our maids or foreign workers. They are paying a much higher tax rate than most of us !

@Von Hayek: All of this is premised on economic growth. When that stops, it becomes a zero-sum game between the parasitic “elites” and every one else.

There’s gotta be a point where their elites themselves are tempted to take their remaining equity and run to some other tax haven. When we get there then we’re all in a real pickle. Its really another sub prime crisis in the making. And its going to be hard to get out of the modus operandi now that everyone’s gotten into the collective hysteria of property – there’s already too much vested interest.

Propping up house prices by immigration just passes the hot potato into the future. And we still haven’t figured out what happens when HDB reaches the 99
year point. Are the children of the original owners going to get kicked out of their flats?

What short term thinking we have. Or maybe, there really is no incentive to think long term anyway.

@Ian Choo 6)

I wish to add also that there is NO CASE for PAP to benchmark market rate for HDB.

First, through land acquisition act, PAP robbed the plebian’s property citing reasons of public interest. The ideology is communism.

Next come PAP cook up with their market base rhetoric that government needs to maximise gain in selling HDB. The ideology is now change to capitalism.

Basically PAP practice none but robberism.

If there is no land Acq act, all of the Singaporean will be rich by now. Who needs market subsidy? All of us will be sitting on property of millions of dollars.

GIVE ME MY MONIES.

Only time will tell where this bunch of millionaire politicians will end up. I watch with bated breath as I prepare to leave hotel Singapura next year.

#7
First, through land acquisition act, PAP robbed the plebian’s property citing reasons of public interest. The ideology is communism.

#7, agreed, this is the most unfair act. Like those developers in China, forced the farmers to sell their land cheaply in the name they have connections with the supreme communists.

In Singapore, they use the compulsory acquisition act in the name of rules of the laws. It has been too long that we let them to do what they like. It a real mistake all Singaporean have made, do something in the next election my dear fellow Singaporeans. Do you want a government who made policies that go against their own fellow Singaporean? Think again.

All the bad policies they have passed through right now because they control the parliament. The effect of the bad policies will not be felt now but our next generations and generations.

Sad that our country might fall like bricks. Our next generations will become maids in other countries, there goes the saying of MM and it is because of their doing now. The elites will not stay in Singapore and die with us, their next generation will not be in Singapore, so they have no problem.

HDB should publish the following based on a 99 year lease.

5 room with a 30 year payment scheme and how much is the total cost over the 30 year window

like wise for 4 rooms and 3 rooms.

it would be good to see how much we are paying to lease the HDB flats…… including interest……….this way we can see whether we are paying skyhigh to rent something that has no RETURNS in the ENd……

Read Chris Tremewan’s book “The political economy of social control in Singapore” for a view of why the citizenry has been moved out of villages and to HDB estates (“working class barracks”).

Social control: Through taking away land and thus the means of subsistence, the citizenry is forced to work for wages instead of being able to grow their own food. Through a home ownership programme with long term mortgages, the citizenry is forced to continue working for life and thus be subject to social control.

Anyone want to see how deep and shitty this rabbit hole goes?

HDB flats are proclaimed affordable!

It is your own fault for being too choosy and fussy!

Now, shut up and pay up into my profits!

For years… 20 years or more, I have been a proud Singaporean telling my overseas friends visiting me here the outstanding achievements of HDB in housing the population. I would even bring them for a mrt ride that passes through the heartland.. But, NO MORE, for HDB has now turned itself into a money generator and has lost its social mission. In the process building a new generation of HDB-flat slaves… it’s ‘affordable’, rite? But, misssion unaccomplished.

Just learnt that HDB has a ‘7 BILLION’ medium tern notes program and had just launched a new 500 million issue. That seems quite akin to a rich mega corporation.

5) Alan Wong on October 19th, 2009 11.25 am

you should study more deeper rather then bluttering your words. if you were in public , singaporeans will kick your as@ for sure

5)Alan Wong
I agree with you,even they will kick my as@ in public.
Singaporean flat buyer are also indirectly profiteering from the flat because of the cheap labour cost,but are unaware .