The fruits of labor. No pain, no gain. Those are the "so-called" wise words from the past, yet the easily forgotten in the present day. It is after listening to life back in Singapore that enforces the view of myopia in life.
Leaderships should always have a vision, one for the welfare of the country. In the US, a president takes office for only 4 years a term, 2 terms max for each person. To be remembered as a good president, each has done all they can to instill wealth in people, wealth that can be felt but adds no value to the person involved. An example from Srinidhi, giving a million dollar estate to the common folk does not add any value to the person or his productivity in society other than the person has a million dollar estate. Big house, trucks, whatever there is, it drills down to the same issue. How to satisfy greed in the short term while keeping one's political career? That is what I fear about Obama's presidency.
But, that is not why I wrote this post. Discussing on the real estate bubble across the world, I heard that there was once that the Singapore government stepped in to apply downward pressure to housing prices by enforcing a down payment of 20% among other safety checks around 1997. Of course, that meant that less people can speculate and would in turn bring housing prices down. It is like purposefully bursting the real estate bubble, albeit a small one. But now, the government has not taken any steps to keep prices from going through the roof. The condo prices have come down, but the HDB prices are going up. Of course, lending is tighter due to the natural forces of the market, but it is only affecting the private housing sector. I may be wrong, but I think the zero (or low) down policy is still unchanged.
That doesn't sound very different from USA, does it?
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