While Professor Linda Lim offered interesting insights in her commentary, I cannot help but wonder if all the focus on indicators like the Gini coefficient is missing the point (Psychological factors may explain resistance to more redistribution; Nov 6).
Indeed, could income inequality be a red herring?
The poor do not care about income inequality. They care about affording basic necessities and having a chance to provide a better life for themselves and their families.
Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam has put it very well. What we need to ensure is that everyone is on an ever-ascending escalator (To tackle inequality, ensure everyone is progressing: Tharman; Oct 26). So long as lives are substantially improving, no one really cares about inequality.
In fact, inequality is beneficial in that it motivates one to work harder to achieve higher incomes.
It is all right if someone else can skip a step up the escalator as that also creates more room for others to ascend.
Yet some have fallen off the escalator while others have remained stationary. These are the real problems we need to focus on.
Globalisation brings about winners and losers. We need to do more to help the losers and, in fact, avoid having anyone lose out.
I suggest that we should regularly review and tweak our foreign worker and immigration policies. While they have helped to speed up the escalator, they have also resulted in a far more crowded escalator.
Where training and education are concerned, we also need to be more aggressive in giving a leg-up to those from low-income families.
It is not just direct training and education costs but also the opportunity costs - for example, in terms of loss of income - that can be a major hindrance in improving skills and education.
The Government should pledge that no Singaporean who is willing and able to improve his skills will be denied the opportunity to do so as a result of socio-economic circumstances. Community development councils should also play a role to ensure this.
Kelvin Hong
