Social Welfare?

was reading SBP and came across this post, which triggered some thoughts.

i agree that we have to do something to help those who cannot afford even a minimum standard of living. by which we mean that this person ought to have a roof over his head, enough food with sufficient nutrition. should it include having a housephone? internet access? perhaps. but perhaps no handphone. tv also optional. i do agree that this person ought to also be given the opportunity to improve himself and given upward mobility.

i do agree that the state ought to help. and i think it is already doing so, to a certain extent. various schemes under ComCare are in place.

of course, many who have commented, including the author of the post, would like more. let's ask ourselves then, where are we going to get the money to finance your social welfare programmes? taxes? while IRAS has indeed gotten a record haul of $10 billion, do we really want to spend that money on a social welfare system?

of course, one might say that that's a better way of spending our money than letting Temasek not so well manage it. however, then we get to the other 2 questions.

firstly, would having a social welfare programme really solve the problem? or would it only perpetuate it? the chronic poor in Singapore is, i feel, symptomatic of 2 deeper social problems. firstly, there is a group of people who are not equipped for the knowledge based economy. compounding this problem is the second problem of a generation which consumes more and does not save as much as the previous generation. the latter problem results in people spending more than they should, landing themselves into debt and thus becoming poor.
can we solve these 2 problems by a social welfare programme? depends. it's hard to speculate, and i shan't attempt to do so here.

the final question that i would like to ask... why should we wait for/depend on the government to do something to help these chronically poor? why can't we do it ourselves? i give private tuition to this kid from a single parent family in financial difficulty (my 'market value' is easily $300 a month for private tuition). that's my way of aiding to the social welfare programme. and i take care of my own parents. i find gigs for a group of breakdancers, most of whom are from poor families, so that they can earn a bit of cash doing what they like to do. i'm sure that if all you people who commented here really care about the poor, you should think of what you can do to help them. watch one less movie a week, buy one less item of clothing a month, talk less on your mobile phone, drive around less, all that would let you save up enough to help one chronically poor person. then start a movement. get more people involved. and that's where you get your social welfare.

it's the gotong royong spirit. we help our neighbours ourselves. not divest this responsibility to the government, and only complain when the government is not doing it.

finally, the author of the post also talks about increasing divorce rates. social welfare isn't the way to solve the problem. the problem we should solve is not of either divorcee not having enough money, but rather that people are getting divorced, that family networks are failing. those are the real problems that we have to solve. implementing a social welfare system not only does not help, it worsens the problem by lulling us into thinking that we are solving the problem, when in actual fact, we are solving the wrong problems.

on a side, but related, note. friend's MSN nick says "one's riches is not measured by how much he possesses, but how few he wants". so perhaps Singapore's 'poor' are only 'poor' because they want too much.