Email to Dr Lee Wei Ling

To : Dr Lee Wei Ling
c/o Sim Hwee Peng [ hwee_peng_sim@nni.com.sg ]

Dear Dr Lee

I had a hard time trying to find your email address. I gave up eventually and decided just to send my mail to you through your staff. Unfortunately, I have a feeling that Ms Sim will automatically block things that she feels are irrelevant to your work, and protect you from unnecessary disturbances.

I read your article titled “Why compare? Work together instead” featured in the Think-Tank column of The Straits Time today. You believe that people are gloomy because Singaporeans are comparing their wealth and income today to what they had in 2008. Also, the more unfortunate sub group is resentful that there is another group that is “luckier”.

Dr Lee, because I am not a monkey but in fact, someone who believes in a Supreme Being that will one day come and judge me for all the things that I have done on earth, please allow me to share with you my perspective.

We are born who we are and we should learn to live with it. Some people are born pretty and some ugly. Some are born rich and some poor. That is okay with me, because I know if I work hard, network with people, I might be able to improve my situation.

Therefore, if I am ugly, I don’t resent those who are pretty. If I am poor, I don’t resent those who are rich. You might be rich, and I might be poor. That does not matter to me, as long as it does not matter to you. I know of some rich people who are very nice. I also know of some poor people that I would want to stay far far away from.

To some of us, it is not about the poor being unhappy with the rich. Money is all relative and transient. One can be rich today and poor tomorrow. Or poor today and rich tomorrow.

Some of us are gloomy (in fact out right p***ed ) not because of income inequality. It is because we think our government has not exercised leadership, transparency and accountability. All our politicians try to do is to remain in power. There is nothing wrong with that. They should try their best to keep their jobs, and I would do the same thing if I were them too.

The issue here is, while trying to keep their jobs, the politicians and their friends become extremely rich because their pay are linked to “performance”. And now we are asking: Who should be accountable for the economy, loss of reserves, competition of low skill jobs by cheap foreigners, etc?

That is why some of us despair for Singapore.

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