Singapore elderly can only afford $1 porridge a day

Translated from Channel 8 News:

Stalls selling economic rice at Toa Payoh Lorong 7 had seen an increase in business lately by slashing the price to $2.20 for 2 meat and 2 vegetables. Their customers are mostly from the lower-income group.

One stallholder said: “I feel very sad. Recently there was aa regular customer who didn’t turn up for a few days. The volunteers told me he had no money to eat and might have fallen to his death. Everytime he patronized my stall, he ordered only one bowl of porridge and one plate of vegetables at $1.”

 

EDITORS’ NOTE:

Why do we have so many poor, pitiful elderly who cannot fend for themselves and died penniless? Why are we Singaporeans paupers a country which has billions of dollars of reserves?

Because of this:

“Mr Lee compared this to state-funded welfare administered by officials which could be easily taken for granted. It could also end up being considered as an entitlement, leading people to lose motivation to do their best.”

- Channelnewsasia, 7 March 2009

Being taken care of by the state when one is old and jobless is an entitlement. Otherwise, why should we vote for the PAP?

Did we vote for a government to lose billions of our precious reserves to bail out ailing overseas banks?

Is it an entitlement for some individuals to do as they like with our country without being made accountable for it ?

Also read what Singapore Cafe says:

I wonder, is he right on this? Lets compare to other 1st world countries. Are they slacking because they have state-funded welfare? Did the people, say, the Americans lose motivation to do their best?

I think Lee is WRONG AGAIN. In fact, Singapore, with its minimal state-funded welfare, it doesn’t has higher motivation to do their best compare to other developed countries.

How do we measure who’s faring well then? One of it is the Human Development Index.

“The Human Development Index (HDI) is an index used to rank countries by level of “human development”, which usually also implies to determine whether a country is a developed, developing, or underdeveloped country.” –Wikipedia

Now, according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index, out of top 30 developed countries, where do we rank? We Singapore ranked 28th.

So, can we say that, with lesser state-funded welfare among the countries, that doesn’t really give us higher motivaton to do our best??