Seah Chiang Ngee said:

In a two-storey home, I saw various family members watching cable television on five 37-inch LCD sets in their own rooms. One was attached next to the dining table so that none needed to miss any programme while eating. In front of the house were parked two cars.

Recommended by Anonymous Coward: "Malaysian writer comments on Singaporean middle class."

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Seah Chiang Nee said:

Years later, if writers looked back at the current severe downturn to ask what lasting impact the global crisis had on this society, one answer would be the erosion of the middle class...

The theory, known as the M-shaped society, was enunciated by Japanese strategist Kenichi Ohmae. He observed that in Japan’s “M-shape” class distribution, very few middle-class people may climb up the ladder into the upper class, while the others gradually sank to the lower classes.

These people suffered a deterioration in living standards, faced the threat of unemployment, or their average salary was dropping...

Kenichi said all this might take place while the economy enjoyed remarkable growth and overall wages rose. However, the wealth increase may concentrate in the pockets of the very few rich people in society.

The masses cannot benefit from the growth, and their living standard goes into decline. For many middle-class Singaporeans, these sound uncomfortably like home. ...

Singapore has the second-highest income gap with a Gini score of 42.5 among developed economies after Hong Kong

Recommended by at82: "New millionaires will emerge from the ashes, but a bit of the middle class will disappear."

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meowberry is upset after hearing (via The Unofficial Cat Welfare Society Diary) that Class 95 DJs Glenn Ong and Flying Dutchman called for fines to be imposed on cat feeders.

It doesn't take a fool to realise that we shouldn't feed the monkeys because they are meant to live as wild animals in the nature reserves, where they should get their sustenance from. Our stray cats are not wild animals, they're domestic cats, many of which have been abandoned by irresponsible people. The cats live among us in our urban jungle.. If you see a stray cat looking in a rubbish bin, it's because it's hungry and has no where else to get food..

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Seah Chiang Nee said:

IN THE face of a foreigner influx, a question that government officials are not rushing to answer is: “Who is a Singaporean?”

Strictly speaking, the Singaporean doesn’t exist in many official references, and has been displaced by ''the Singaporean resident.''

The Singapore resident has become a special category that officials generally use when talking about population and manpower.

Lumped together in this category are Singaporeans born and naturalised and foreigners who have been offered permanent residence (PR) before they apply for or are granted citizenship.

For some time now, the Statistics Department – in line with Manpower and other Ministries – has stopped classifying population the way other countries do, i.e. between citizens and foreigners.

Instead they are either “Singaporean residents” or “foreigners” (those on work passes as professionals, workers and students plus family members).

The word ‘Singaporean’ to refer to true-blue citizens is rarely, if at all, used – especially when talking about jobs.

So when the government announces that that the majority of new jobs had gone to locals, it is referring to Singaporean residents, which, of course, include foreign-born PRs.

Recommended by Anonymous Coward: "Please don't fudge the statistics, we are not idiots."

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Zuco said:

In Singapore's context, the PSC scholarship is most probably intended to spot, train and nurture a talented individual for a career in the civil service. It does not intentionally discriminate according to family background. However, it is a fact that scions of wealthy families will inevitably have a leg up over those who come from a more humble background. It may be nature or nurture, it may be that the wealthier families are the ones that can afford the money to cram their kids full with tuition and whatever they can come up with, it may be that the wealthier families believe that the way to success in life is through a successful and secure civil service career whereas the more impoverished ones believes that the hustle and bustle of the open market is more suitable to their efforts in making more money.

Interesting entry about the aim of PSC scholarship in Singapore.

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