Opinion | In a Singapore full of crazy rich foreigners, inequality is becoming ingrained
Judith Huang says Singapore has become a haven for the 1 per cent, but is facing a widening socio-economic gap. Can the ruling party really say it is fulfilling the national pledge, to build a democratic society, based on justice and equality?
The movie is opening in Singapore at a time when the hottest topic on the island is inequality. Kwan’s trilogy tops the fiction bestseller lists, but the unexpected sleeper hit on the non-fiction lists is sociologist Teo You Yenn’s This is What Inequality Looks Like, a book of lucid, compassionate essays distilling a three-year ethnographic survey of families with monthly incomes of S$1,500 (US$1,100) or less living in rental flats – Singaporeans on the completely opposite end of the socio-economic spectrum from those satirised in Kwan’s novel.
Singapore’s People’s Action Party is one of the longest-ruling political parties in the world today, behind the Workers’ Party of North Korea and the Communist Party of China. The belief that meritocracy is operating well in our society is a large factor in the PAP’s continued success and legitimacy. However, widening inequality as a result of a particular brand of neoliberal economics may be its greatest challenge yet, and Crazy Rich Asians is just its latest manifestation.