Of No Divide

While waiting to board a flight home from Beijing airport I struck a conversation with a Chinese National,  a lady in her late thirties who was returning to Singapore where she has worked for more than a decade. She is not a permanent resident yet and is hesitating whether to become one though she likes working and living in Singapore. She speaks well of Singapore and its efficient and corruption free government. However she points out there is one shortcoming even while I corrected her that there is certainly more than one. From her interaction with her Singaporean colleagues she observed that their main complain seems to be the progressive deferment of getting their CPF money, the inadequacy of the annual payout and the inability to draw out all of the  money which belongs to them. I get the impression she is some sort of supervisor of a team of blue collar workers. She also spoke of ex colleagues who though retired at 65 have to work odd jobs to sustain a livelihood because of the high costs of living. At times she looked at me strangely when I appeared surprised at what she was sharing. I also felt slightly embarrassed learning more about what's happening in my home country from a foreigner.

In an article "Class divide: S'pore in danger of becoming academic aristocracy", Chua Mui Hoong talks about 2 Singapores, one that lives in a 'condo-and-car bubble' and another where life is a constant struggle. How do I really feel being one of those living in the bubble? To be freaking honest, I feel abundantly relieved and grateful, just by the luck of being a bit more academically inclined (even though my IQ score is at the lower borderline of average). As the writer puts it if the society had valued and paid highly for motor skills I would have been the one struggling for a living.

I also agree with Chua Mui Hoong when she thinks a 'compassionate meritocracy' (where those who have the means help out those who are disadvantaged) may give rise to another class divide. In her words "the academic aristocracy, already imbued with a sense of entitlement and privilege, may then feel morally justified to feel like benefactors in the system, bestowing on lesser creatures the largesse of their generous assistance. Any system that pits one group as benefactor and another as recipient remains an unequal one." Even when I give a bigger ang pow during Chinese New Year to the road sweeper in charge of my estate or forgo the money the garang guni man pays me for my newspaper, don't I have a bit of that 'bestowing feeling' which the writer describes?

The only solution as I see it is to cultivate a respect for all jobs and vocations very much like what is happening in Japan, where the pride in each job is its contribution to the collective good. We  also have to raise the minimum salary and close the wage gap between different job types. Above all our young must be taught to appreciate that people are endowed with various skills, all of equal value to society, of no divide.