How many % of Singaporeans are “POOR” in Singapore?

Recently, I saw a piece of news titled “GOVT SLAMS PROF KOH'S 30% POVERTY REVELATION BUT PROF KOH ASKS GOVT TO STOP DENYING”. 

You can read the details at this URL...

So, are there really 30% of Singaporeans who are really “POOR” and living in poverty in Singapore? 

The news said the government denied this. 

Also, recently, I saw news about this “Community Health Assist Scheme (CHAS)” being expanded and you can apply for this card to get additional subsidy for medical services/medicine etc if you are “poor” enough.  Obviously, if you are NOT POOR then you should NOT be eligible for subsidy!  After all, the subsidy is paid using tax-payers money and the government should not be providing subsidy to people who are not poor, not the middle-income families as well right? 

So, I checked what is the eligibility for obtaining this CHAS additional subsidy, and this accordingto this URL... 

“Singapore Citizens of all ages are eligible for CHAS if they meet the following criterion:

§ Household monthly income per person of $1,800 and below; OR

§ Annual Value (AV) of residence as reflected on the NRICs of $21,000 and below for households with no income.

Members of the public who are on Public Assistance (PA) scheme do not need to apply as they are already eligible for CHAS.”

Ok, so to be eligible for CHAS card, you must have household monthly income per person of $1800 and below.  Assuming the average of 4 people in a family, that means household monthly income of $7200 per month.  Wow!  $7200 per month household income is still considered “poor” enough to be eligible for additional medical subsidies from the government! 

So how many percentage of the households in Singapore are earning $7200 per month and below? 

I did a search and found at this URL... which says that:

“According to a release by the Department of Statistics, among resident employed households, median monthly household income from work increased from $7,570 in 2012 to $7,870 in 2013…”.

So, 40% or more of Singapore households are earning below $7200 per month and they are eligible for CHAS medical subsidies!  That is even more than the 30% poverty rate mentioned in the news article!  If these people are not “poor” (according to Singapore’s living costs’ standard), why should they be eligible for more subsidies?  Isn’t that a waste of tax-payers money on people who don’t deserve it? 

I leave it to all of you to think about the 2 scenarios that are contradictory:

(a) Either 40% or more of the Singaporeans are really “POOR” in Singapore that the Singapore Government deemed it necessary to provide more subsidies to them via CHAS subsidy scheme using tax-payers’ money OR:

(b) The Government is providing UNNECESSARY subsidy to people who don’t deserve such subsidy and wasting tax-payers’ money? 

Which is true? 

Why you work so hard but you are still poor?

When I was young, I have seen really hard working people, some even doing 2 jobs and working through week-end!  We would want to think such hard working people would be rich sooner or later, but the facts tell us otherwise.  In real life, many of such people are working hard to make ends meet, and they are still rather poor at the end of the day, having to work until they die to survive in Singapore!  Why is this so? 

I have come to the conclusion that hard-working is no longer the solution to getting rich because of the following global political and economic trend:

1) When a country's economy is in recession, their Central Bank now have a tendency to PRINT MONEY.

2) When money is printed, currency deflation/depreciation occurs.  That is, your paper money CASH is worth much less than they normally are.

3) When currency deflation occurs, living cost inflation happened.  The person can afford less and less or have to pay more and more for a living.

4) Currency deflation also suppresses interest rate, and your paper money CASH do not get much return in terms of interest earned (negligible compared to living cost inflation). 

5) People who resort to working hard (and not smart) tend to be doing jobs that do not get much salary appreciation in this new world knowledge-based economy (not even fresh graduates in Singapore!).  Their wage increase cannot catch up with living cost inflation. 

6) People are living a longer life, and yet without being able to make much more and save much more for comfortable retirement (vs the escalating cost of living)! 

7) When taxes have been tweaked and/or new taxes implemented by the Government, we are seeing more and more of such taxes in the form of Goods and Services Tax (GST) or other form of "wealth tax".  For example, recently Malaysia just introduced GST.  On the surface, we were told that these are "wealth tax" that only taxes the people who are "rich", but really what you are seeing is that such taxes, instead of taxing the genuinely rich (the top 1% income earners and rich businessmen), these "wealth taxes" are targeted at the majority of the population and middle-income families so that they do not tax the genuinely rich so much. 

8) The above vicious cycle continues!