In Singapore, it is not sustainable for the government to provide social wealth fair fund for all. However, they should help those that really with financial difficulties. We don't product oil or natural minerals.
You just got to do yourself a favour and work hard to save for the raining years. Sped wisely and you are unlikely to be cleaning tables at 70, maybe.
However, the lower income gap is just too big. However hard they try, they will never make it. We need to close this gap somehow. The big squeeze in the middle need some pressure releasing valves. Well, we did paid top $$$, fire them if they have not solution. Didn't I hear we run our government like in a cooperation?
Actually, it's not that the government cannot provide social welfare. This government, as you know, is blardy rich. If not, how can they be the world's most expensive paid politicians? And in addition, they gave the excuse that they need to tag their salaries close to the top earners in private firms.
Not forgetting, so much money was spent on questionable stuffs, like over-budget by millions of $ for Youth Olympics. Think how much they earn from HDB flats. Till today, they won't want to release the cost of building a flat. Instead, they allowed the HDB prices to increase to the prices of condos not too long ago, tell us they have no control as it is due to "market forces", and have us believe these $600k and above HDB flats are still "affordable". ($600k+ cos for several years, there was a lack of BTO flats and they did nothing much then. Thanks to the sudden huge increase in the new immigrants who were given PR and Singaporean status.) How not to be filthy rich?
As Yutaka Go rightly pointed out, when one buys HDB flat, they are using their (hard-earned) CPF money to pay for the over-priced flats, for like what, 25 to 30 years?! So money goes back to the government, in that sense, via their CPF.
It's just that this government doesn't want to take care of problems next time, should one need to. We pay low taxes anyway. So they expect every citizen to take care of themselves as a first step.
Actually, it is also not the lower income people who are unhappy or suffering. I think the ones most unhappy are the middle income ones too. You may be a uni grad, serve your NS, being called back every darn year for training for more than 10 years, take on a professional job, but in the end, work till your butt off, work till 7 or 8pm every day (even though HR told you your work officially ends at 5.30pm and PM Lee says we must strive for work-family balance), in the end, you earn like $4 or 5k only, and the ministers tell you to manage your expectations. Times have changed!
But come to think of it, based on the high cost of living here, I don't even know if $5k monthly salary can be classified "middle income" now. I would put it as middle of the low income group. The real "middle income" citizen should at the very least, be earning more than $10k a month.