{"id":17647,"date":"2018-05-15T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-05-14T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fass.nus.edu.sg\/srn\/2018\/05\/15\/poverty-in-singapore-not-a-financial-issue-but-an-ideological-one\/"},"modified":"2020-09-28T23:57:15","modified_gmt":"2020-09-28T15:57:15","slug":"poverty-in-singapore-not-a-financial-issue-but-an-ideological-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fass.nus.edu.sg\/srn\/2018\/05\/15\/poverty-in-singapore-not-a-financial-issue-but-an-ideological-one\/","title":{"rendered":"Poverty in Singapore: Not a Financial Issue, but an Ideological One"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_58028\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-58028\" style=\"width: 584px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-58028 size-large\" src=\"http:\/\/www.fas.nus.edu.sg\/srn\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Two-legs-showing-the-difference-between-rich-and-poor_erllre_istockphoto-1024x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"584\" height=\"584\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-58028\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">&#8220;Two legs showing the difference between rich and poor&#8221; from erllre, iStock Photo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Singapore&#8217;s government has denied providing social welfare for a long time, but is this ideological resistance taking a toll on society?<\/p>\n<p>NUS Provost\u2019s Chair Professor of Sociology Chua Beng Huat tells The Straits Times that poverty in Singapore is not only a financial issue, but an ideological one. Singapore&#8217;s capitalist economy causes an unavoidable income inequality. Yet, poverty cannot be thought of as synonymous with inequality. Given Singapore&#8217;s status as one of the wealthiest capitalist nations in the world, Professor Chua suggests that it has the financial means to eliminate poverty. What remains is executing a feasible solution to the problem.<\/p>\n<p>Universal minimum income might be the answer for Singapore, he argues, though this is still being debated and experimented on. About 20 percent of workers from a family of four have a minimum income of $2,500 per month. Therefore the total cost is only a small fraction of the annual national budget in Singapore. The only barrier of resistance remains to be the Government&#8217;s stance on social welfarism.<\/p>\n<p>Read the full article <a href=\"https:\/\/www.straitstimes.com\/opinion\/tackling-inequality-vigorously\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Singapore&#8217;s government has denied providing social welfare for a long time, but is this ideological resistance taking a toll on society? NUS Provost\u2019s Chair Professor of Sociology Chua Beng Huat tells The Straits Times that poverty in Singapore is not only a financial issue, but an ideological one. Singapore&#8217;s capitalist economy causes an unavoidable income [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":247,"featured_media":17648,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[4529],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fass.nus.edu.sg\/srn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fass.nus.edu.sg\/srn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fass.nus.edu.sg\/srn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fass.nus.edu.sg\/srn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/247"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fass.nus.edu.sg\/srn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17647"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fass.nus.edu.sg\/srn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26352,"href":"https:\/\/fass.nus.edu.sg\/srn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17647\/revisions\/26352"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fass.nus.edu.sg\/srn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fass.nus.edu.sg\/srn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fass.nus.edu.sg\/srn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fass.nus.edu.sg\/srn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}