So there has been some discussion on topics that are “close to our hearts”, such as HDB prices.<\/p>\n
Wife read a site\/blog that claims that HDB flats are leased to us, so why do the prices go up instead of down as the flats age?<\/p>\n
Simply put, it’s inflation. But why inflation?<\/p>\n
So let’s start from the root of the problem. Singapore’s economy is highly dependent on her workforce. Unlike the middle east, we have no natural resources. So we LPPL<\/em>.<\/p>\n (We’re also lucky in that aspect, otherwise we may be at war.)<\/p>\n We also suffer from an aging population. This is not uncommon – most developed countries have this problem. We will need to fill up the jobs that our parents used to fill to keep the economy going.<\/p>\n So it’s quite clear now that to grow our economy and to maintain our standard of living we’ll need to grow our population. And so the government has started to “import” population as a desperate measure, otherwise our economy will go downhill – which will actually be worse.<\/p>\n What happens when we have “imports”? They need a place to stay. Since they can’t buy new flats (which doesn’t make sense anyway — new flats take time to build, and they need a place to stay IMMEDIATELY), they’ll buy resale.<\/p>\n And with a small plot of land, a shortage in supply of flats and a strong demand from our imports, HDB prices will naturally go up. 99 year lease term? Doesn’t matter. Arboh you want the imports to sleep on the streets?<\/p>\n So why can’t the government build more flats? OK, let’s turn that question around. Who’s going to build more flats? Ah-ha! We need more imports.<\/p>\n Get the idea now?<\/p>\n Economic growth is a cycle. You can’t break it. Too bad… the world works this way – even before money was invented!<\/p>\n IMHO, we are here in a developed country. We have our problems. Whether we like it or not, we either suck it up and make the best of it so you can live a better life here, or think about how you can get away if you can find a greener pasture elsewhere.<\/p>\n BTW, don’t get me wrong. I’m not in favor of any political party. Actually I’m interested to see what the opposition has to say. Most have a lot of rubbish to say but no solution yet. We shall see!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So there has been some discussion on topics that are “close to our hearts”, such as HDB prices. Wife read a site\/blog that claims that HDB flats are leased to us, so why do the prices go up instead of… Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[182],"tags":[284],"class_list":["post-1252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-singapore-general-election-2011"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tzlee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tzlee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tzlee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tzlee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tzlee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1252"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/tzlee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1252\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1254,"href":"https:\/\/tzlee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1252\/revisions\/1254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tzlee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tzlee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tzlee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}