“In Singapore, people of different ethnicities feel they belong and fit in” Huh?

An unknown American author says S’pore is the happiest place in Asia. I won’t go throuhg his detailed analysis, you can read it in SunT.

But I cannot understand how he could come to the view that, “In Singapore, people of different ethnicities feel they belong and fit in”, given the feelings of S’poreans of all races and religions about the growing gap in income and the very liberal immigration policy.

The govmin’s policy of preferring growth over narrowing the income gap is in itself not destabilising nor will it lead to general unhappiness. “A lack of social cohesion and abundance of socio-political stability does tend to coincide with a high level of inequality. But that’s because a high level of inequality is generally the result of one group of people dominating and marginalising another, which is not a recipe for widespread amity and fellow-feeling.” (extract from  an Economist blog)

So by itself growing wealth disparity does not inevitably lead to social discontent or unhappiness. Phew! After all MightMind has told us that weath disparity will grow.

But throw into the simmering water of income inequality, the fact that one out of two people here, may on present trends, be foreigners (at present it’s about one FT to two residents, the latter term includes PRs), and a reasonable person can reasonably conclude that we will have problems.

Many more S’poreans will feel marginalised by the increasing income gap; and by the presence of FTs who the govmin uses to hot-house economic growth, be the S’poreans be prostitutes, service staff or executives, poor, or middle class, Chinee, Indian or Malay. E.G, how will true blue S’porean Tamils feel when asked their caste by self-styled high caste, fair-skinned Aryans? Believe me this has happened at SPH.

I’ve written before, I’m an quitter-in-residence. I have not quit physically for two reasons. One is that hotel services are pretty decent, even if I can find better value elsewhere.

And Lucky Tan, gives the other reason: There is a reason why all of us haven’t left and are still staying put … We like living among other Singaporeans, people speak the same language (Singlish) as us, people who have gone through the same good and bad times as ourselves, people who can understand us. ….we, Singaporeans, have a unique identity something that you can never remove from a true-blue Singaporean.

This communal feeling arose because our ancestors decided to make S’pore their home, not a stepping stone to the US, Europe or the Antipodes; and dare I say it, of govmin policies, post- 1965, of trying to build a community of stayers. The government cannot now say “move on” from this sense of identity.

If every other person is a foreigner here, then we (who can) might as well “move on” and find happiness in the authentic foreign experience, rather than the kitsch, “neither fish nor fowl” experience here. And who knows? We might find the authentic S’porean experience and happiness in Perth?

Seriously, going back to his view that,”In Singapore, people of different ethnicities feel they belong and fit in”, maybe he is referring to the immigrants, not the native S’poreans? Or was he visiting S’pore in Bizzaro World.