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Your figures show that Singapore has high output and a tight labour market. They don't by themselves tell us how the gains are distributed or whether median hou
by jdw64 9d ago
Your figures show that Singapore has high output and a tight labour market. They don't by themselves tell us how the gains are distributed or whether median households face affordability pressure.
Here's my view. There are many points where the current economy doesn't feel all that good to me.
Because of you, I got curious and looked into it, and Singapore's income has risen, but consumer prices and especially housing asset prices have also risen sharply.
And this is only Singapore being strong in macroeconomics and export employment; I don't think this means the global economy is good.
Strictly speaking, I think this is because of our particular situation and the fact that we are knowledge workers. Of course, I'm not saying you're wrong. In your situation, you're right, but I think my view is more general. In other words, I don't think it's a case of the global economic situation being good, nor is it easy to say that China's economic situation is booming. I have Chinese friends, and while I don't know China as well as you do, since you're ethnically Chinese, I do know that the number of people who can leave China for abroad is very small in class terms, and I can also argue that China's statistics do not indicate such a good economic situation.
- eru 8d agoThanks for engaging productively. So I actually wanted to make a narrower point initially, but that got widened as I was arguing: The narrower point is that eg 2008 or 2020 were genuinely tough for the global economy (and for many local economies). But I hear people complaining about 'hard times' all the time, even when things are going rather well. I wasn't trying to make an argument about times being hard or easy in some absolute sense, just that you can't have harder than average times all the time. > Because of you, I got curious and looked into it, and Singapore's income has risen, but consumer prices and especially housing asset prices have also risen sharply. I suspect housing asset prices rose as a consequences of incomes rising: people have more money to bid up real estate.