[Ericongy]

Why do some Singaporeans have a

[Hydrocarbon]

Hmm, I think there is a middle ground here.

 

If one pays for food in a restaurant, it doesn't mean he can automatically verbally or physically abuse the staff. Paying for the food and the service entitles you to the food and service, nothing more.

 

What I took away from the article is that, looking around me in Singapore, I do feel we lead a decent life, with a lot of amenities that people from other countries don't get. We like to compare our car prices to US or Aussie prices, our food courts to Malaysia, our home prices to wherever is cheaper than ours (Kenya maybe?), and everything else. But sometimes, we should just be thankful with what we have.

 

Give a man a million dollars and he will be happy, give him 2 million and take away one, and he will be very unhappy.

[Viceroymenthol]

http://www.businesstimes.com.sg/archive/sa...tagram-20130608

 

Published June 08, 2013

 

SATURDAY SOAPBOX

 

The economic faultline of Instagram

 

By Joyce Hooi

 

Correspondent ([email protected])

 

 

THERE is a saying that will resonate in this city, where a frustrated middle class lives Chery-to-Jaguar with the rich: "What keeps the people from burning down the country club is the hope of joining it."

 

There is a remarkably instantaneous way of finding out whether you're closer to burning or joining this country club. Simply visit the Rich Kids of Instagram Tumblr blog. In the blog, photos posted by the uber-rich's offspring on Instagram are collated under the indignant subtitle: "They have more money than you and this is what they do."

 

Most of them are in their 20s and one of them is named Remington, the (figuratively) poor thing. He has an Instagram of his receipt from a hotel on Palm Beach where he spent US$32,951 in a night and left a US$3,000 tip. Kristal champagne features heavily across the photos. It drenches these kids' shirts, soaks the floors of their yachts, sprays the vaulted ceilings of their private jets - it goes everywhere except into their mouths.

 

There is one picture that will stay with me for a while. In it, only the gold bracelet-wearing hand of the poster, who goes by the Instagram handle "onepercent", can be seen. And in this hand is a bottle of bubbly that this class act is emptying into a marble-lined bathtub.

 

How is it that social media, the great leveller of societies, can make people feel so poor? Never before have the middle class had so much in common with the rich, technology-wise, sharing Apples and Samsungs. Now, both groups look out the same window but into starkly different worlds.

 

On Instagram, the rich use the same filters that the rest of us do, but their best foot forward does not need as much soft focus to be as appealing. As we peer into their sparkling lives, we are forced to confront the jagged edges of our own. No wonder the 99 per cent hate the 1 per cent so much. But how we react to this inequity says more about us than it does about the 1 per cent. The more embittered you are over this blog, the slimmer the odds are in your mind that you will join their ranks.

 

As I surveyed these ovarian lottery-winners lounging in the Hamptons with chiselled cheekbones inherited from supermodel mothers, I assessed my life as I stood two years shy of turning 30.

 

This has been a terrible decade to be in your 20s. When we were growing up, Wall Street was a place to work at, not occupy. But as we graduated in 2008-2009, we looked up from our books to find that the milestones of adulthood had been moved beyond our reach overnight by the invisible hand.

 

Cars, houses, signing bonuses, job security - these things became academic concepts; ironic, given how the world had turned into Billy Joel's Allentown, in which Our graduations hang on the wall/But they never really helped us at all.

 

In the five years since, I watched as my cohort mates' shiny and expectant faces grew worn by a world so distracted by the subprime crisis, that it cared little for how much they knew or how hard they were prepared to work. So, we became the first wave of the downwardly mobile generation, the anticlimax of our parents' hopes.

 

Being born in the wrong year dogs you. A study by the US National Bureau of Economic Research found that graduating in a recession takes a 9 per cent toll on annual earnings, which takes 10 years to dissipate.

 

It is the thin end of the wedge, and your average upstanding netizen blames the government, foreign workers and big corporations for where he is in these blighted times. It is hard to know if netizens form the majority view, or if they are right.

 

I am as terrified about my future as the next 20-something. Blessedly, I am in a position to fear underachievement more than poverty, and I know better than to speak for people who know hunger and powerlessness like I never will.

 

Is it the government's job to grant people at least the illusion that they have a chance of joining the country club? Maybe, but in bankrupt nations like Greece, it is a laughable priority. In ours, it might be a luxury even in the best of times - and this doesn't feel like such a time.

 

In the darkest moments of self-doubt, I take comfort from the fact that David Sedaris was first published when he was 36 and that Sam Walton started Walmart at the age of 44. (So I have eight years to embarrass my family in prose and 16 to pioneer retail at knockdown prices.)

 

The point is, I choose to believe that I can still join that country club, having been placed in decent proximity by the sweat of my father and those who went before him. Any failure to gain admission will be my own, and I will not insult my ancestors by accepting the facts of Allentown.

 

The problem is, people in less privileged situations do not have a choice about what they believe. As the Internet rubs this unrelenting inequity in their faces, there will be a readying of flaming torches as they stop believing that Every child had a pretty good shot/To get at least as far as their old man got.

 

With the country club razed down, we will all be on the outside.

Edited June 12, 2013 by Viceroymenthol

[OmOm]

I think the situation in Singapore is the man has a million dollars but he feels upset because he sees someone else with 2 million.

 

Hmm, I think there is a middle ground here.

 

If one pays for food in a restaurant, it doesn't mean he can automatically verbally or physically abuse the staff. Paying for the food and the service entitles you to the food and service, nothing more.

 

What I took away from the article is that, looking around me in Singapore, I do feel we lead a decent life, with a lot of amenities that people from other countries don't get. We like to compare our car prices to US or Aussie prices, our food courts to Malaysia, our home prices to wherever is cheaper than ours (Kenya maybe?), and everything else. But sometimes, we should just be thankful with what we have.

 

Give a man a million dollars and he will be happy, give him 2 million and take away one, and he will be very unhappy.

 

[Viceroymenthol]

this is my favourite!

 

http://instagram.com/p/OZo-N8yL6Z/#

[Hydrocarbon]

I think the situation in Singapore is the man has a million dollars but he feels upset because he sees someone else with 2 million.

 

Either way, it illustrates the individual's discontent with what they have. I don't mean to say don't strive for your goals, but one should always be content with what one has. If the person with a million is discontent with what he has because someone else has 2 million, then there would be no limits to what he would be content with. Even with 1 billion, he will still have the other hundreds of billionaires to compare with..

[OmOm]

Jealousy comes more easily than a strong drive fueled by admiration or desire to emulate.

 

Stress + Anger + Jealousy + Frustration. All of these conspire to become a very negative set of glasses to look at the world through.

 

The end result is a society that looks down on those that fall behind (it thinks that those who fall behind are lazy or are not trying hard enough) and views those who are ahead with envy/jealousy (it thinks those who are ahead have got ahead because of some unfair advantage).

 

Either way, it illustrates the individual's discontent with what they have. I don't mean to say don't strive for your goals, but one should always be content with what one has. If the person with a million is discontent with what he has because someone else has 2 million, then there would be no limits to what he would be content with. Even with 1 billion, he will still have the other hundreds of billionaires to compare with..

 

[Shull]

Why do some Singaporeans have a

[Hydrocarbon]

Jealousy comes more easily than a strong drive fueled by admiration or desire to emulate.

 

Stress + Anger + Jealousy + Frustration. All of these conspire to become a very negative set of glasses to look at the world through.

 

The end result is a society that looks down on those that fall behind (it thinks that those who fall behind are lazy or are not trying hard enough) and views those who are ahead with envy/jealousy (it thinks those who are ahead have got ahead because of some unfair advantage).

 

But jealousy alone wouldn't bring in the wealth. Jealousy alone, I would consider a bad trait. But hunger for success, while some might see as jealousy, I would see as a positive trait, especially if the hunger for success is followed by action.

 

I just hope that society could look beyond material possessions, even though I find it hard to do so myself. I see a guy driving a Lamborghini, I envy him, and then try to make money so that I could be that guy too. Haha, quite contradictory la me..

[Throttle2]

this is my favourite!

 

http://instagram.com/p/OZo-N8yL6Z/#

 

But this one , you can easily replicate leh, bro

[Throttle2]

But jealousy alone wouldn't bring in the wealth. Jealousy alone, I would consider a bad trait. But hunger for success, while some might see as jealousy, I would see as a positive trait, especially if the hunger for success is followed by action.

 

I just hope that society could look beyond material possessions, even though I find it hard to do so myself. I see a guy driving a Lamborghini, I envy him, and then try to make money so that I could be that guy too. Haha, quite contradictory la me..

 

I will never be like that.

If i reach for the stars, it is because of my family and myself, not becos of what someone else has.

I never get jealous, its a waste of time.

I prefer to mock , try it , it's more fun.

But i can take it as good as i give.

Edited June 12, 2013 by Throttle2

[OmOm]

This is because modern day society extols materialism and advocates capitalism. Greed is good. Humility and contentment are for losers.

 

But jealousy alone wouldn't bring in the wealth. Jealousy alone, I would consider a bad trait. But hunger for success, while some might see as jealousy, I would see as a positive trait, especially if the hunger for success is followed by action.

 

I just hope that society could look beyond material possessions, even though I find it hard to do so myself. I see a guy driving a Lamborghini, I envy him, and then try to make money so that I could be that guy too. Haha, quite contradictory la me..

 

[Hydrocarbon]

I will never be like that.

If i reach for the stars, it is because of my family and myself, not becos of what someone else has.

I never get jealous, its a waste of time.

I prefer to mock , try it , it's more fun.

But i can take it as good as i give.

 

Hmm, I don't mean be jealous of others, but see them as motivation. Like, if other people can do it, why not me? In that sense, I take it to be a positive trait.

 

This is because modern day society extols materialism and advocates capitalism. Greed is good. Humility and contentment are for losers.

 

True, advertising has us working like dogs, to buy things we don't need, to impress people we don't like. Therefore, what Throttle2 said, I do agree, if we do something, it's because of our family and our self, not just to impress others.

[OmOm]

Well many people do think that they are working like dogs for their families and loved ones. That does not help them feel better. In fact in many cases this feeling becomes a bigger ball-and-chain for them.

 

Hmm, I don't mean be jealous of others, but see them as motivation. Like, if other people can do it, why not me? In that sense, I take it to be a positive trait.

 

 

 

True, advertising has us working like dogs, to buy things we don't need, to impress people we don't like. Therefore, what Throttle2 said, I do agree, if we do something, it's because of our family and our self, not just to impress others.

 

[Throttle2]

Well many people do think that they are working like dogs for their families and loved ones. That does not help them feel better. In fact in many cases this feeling becomes a bigger ball-and-chain for them.

 

Thats sad.

It may be becos these people whom they are working for did not reciprocate their love by not sharing the burden. Everyone has a role and part to play, not just making money.

 

Like me, i work for thr money, my wife takes care of the family. Both of us have equally important roles and cannot do without the other.

Edited June 12, 2013 by Throttle2

[Bobby_tan]

I just leave this one down here.

 

[Hydrocarbon]

Well many people do think that they are working like dogs for their families and loved ones. That does not help them feel better. In fact in many cases this feeling becomes a bigger ball-and-chain for them.

 

A lot of times, people are working to indulge themselves with the latest techno gadgets and toys, and share those with their family. They might think that it's loving their family, but if they have to spend more time working to fund those toys, I guess it will be a vicious cycle kinda thing.

 

Some of my friends, just want to spend time with their families, but instead papa mama working long hours, only know how to give the children money / material stuff, so in the end, the kids also .. Reminds me of the game Cashflow 101 / 202 by Robert Kiyosaki. Buying doodads instead of assets.

 

I just leave this one down here.

 

[thumbsup]