Singapore state propaganda media ChannelNewsAsia (CNA) yesterday (Dec 5) published a straight propaganda lie claiming that Singapore’s wealth gap is narrower than United States, Sweden and Switzerland.
CNA claimed that Singapore have a narrower wealth gap without providing any statistics to back up its claim:
“Singapore’s wealth gap is relatively narrow compared to other advanced economies. According to Credit Suisse’s 2015 report, the US, which is the world’s wealthiest country, has a wealth gap of 1 is to 7.09. Scandinavian countries such as Sweden and Denmark have ratios of 5.42x and 4.85x respectively. Countries with wealth gaps narrower than Singapore’s include Australia and Japan, whose ratios are around 1 is to 2.”
You may read the propaganda article here.
A quick check on Gini coefficient, the internationally-accepted standard for measuring income gap, revealed that Singapore’s Gini coefficient is at 0.463 in 2015. This figure is only below Chile, and would have been the second highest had Singapore being an OECD country. Gini coefficients for US barely touches 0.4, while Sweden and Switzerland are a far cry from 0.3.
Income inequality is rising in Singapore as the country favours the rich by giving generous tax breaks and business tax cuts while taxes for the average man in the street has been indirectly increased through the Central Provident Fund (CPF) retirement fund.
Just last week, the Ministry of Health admitted that it over-collected nearly 3 times more in MedhiShield Life premiums and refused to refund the extra amount because the “over payment” is called “pre-funding”. The “pre-funding” result in loss of 4% interest rate generation that would have been generated had Singaporeans kept the extra amount in their CPF MediShield Account.
CNA went on to provide “8 facts” without basis, quoting only statistics from government like Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam who claimed that Singapore has “high” social mobility without evidence.
Singapore media ranks 154th in the world for press accuracy. The Singapore government often employ the government-funded media to publish propaganda and untruth in the name of “social cohesion”. Despite propagating untruth and rumor mongering being a criminal offense in Singapore, the government-backed Singapore Press Holdings and Mediacorp has never been charged.
Last Sunday, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong also told a lie at the PAP conference claiming there are more jobs than job seekers available, when latest government statistics proved otherwise. Just yesterday, the Singapore government published a self-conducted survey claiming Singapore have one of the cheapest public transport fares in the world.