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Saturday, Nov 16, 2013 - 17:49 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

The Mismeasure Of Ham

Near forgot this Dragonlance tribute:



This might in part be down to it not being among my favourite Nightwish songs - always felt that it could do to have a few more informative verses about the subject matter.

Mr. Ham: *appears* Human, you have no taste. It's near the top of my all-time list, simply for acknowledging the primacy of our august species.

Me: I don't recall...

Mr. Ham: Man, it's repeated so many times in the lyrics - "Hamster, a dentist, hard pr0n, Steven Seagal".

Me: *covers face* No, no, it's "Master, apprentice, heartbourne, sylvan seeker"!

*very awkward silence*

Mr. Ham: *mutters softly* I should have known that the dentist and Steven Seagal didn't quite fit into the theme.

Me: Um, how about we change the subject and I'll pretend I didn't hear anything. Oh, there goes Esquire Pants... why, in the name of all that is holy, is he going bare-bottomed?!

Mr. Ham: *philosophically* You win some, you lose some. We were getting along famously over tea, and I proposed we deal a few hands of whist, trifling stakes, just to pass the time. With my cards. He's a great sport, our dear friend Esq. Pants.

Me: You know that's not right.

Mr. Ham: Ah, come on, you know he'll be swimming in slacks once he gets back to the Bailey, given all his prosecutorial talent. Anyway, he told that he had just made a pile earlier yesterday. Apparently, there's a betting pool going on among his colleagues in his chambers. All hush-hush and on the down low, it goes without saying.

Me: I'm not sure, he doesn't seem the type to be interested in football.


And Statistics

Mr. Ham: Nah, nothing so plebian. What they do is, they predict which local official makes the most perplexing pronouncement of the week. The Minister for Transport won the latest edition, despite being a dark horse, with this gem:

"Since 2005, wages have risen by about 30 per cent. Over the same period, public transport fares have increased by 2.7 per cent cumulatively... Public transport fares for the average commuter have become more affordable, not less."


Me: Now that's a red flag.

Mr. Ham: I know, right? Maybe not exactly in the same class as the Minister for National Development's eyebrow-raising warning against comparing studio flat (over-)prices by stating that it would be like "comparing apples against lemons", a Freudian slip if I ever saw one; that one's among the frontrunners for Meaningful Statement of the Year.

But back to cumulatively - according to the dictionary, it's "increasing or enlarging by successive addition". I suppose he certainly didn't try to claim that fares have risen by just 2.7% since 2005, so the question is, cumulatively what? Annually? Biannually? Monthly?

Me: Well, unprocessed statistics are hard to come by, but I would gather it probably being annually - but if so, he could have just said "about 21 to 24 percent" instead, depending on whether the yearly increase is compounded, right? It's still lower than the 30 percent total wage increase claim.

Mr. Ham: Ah, about that. As a new-age businessham, I felt it important to get a handle on the actual state of the economy, and to that end set my devoted assistant research assistant on the case. *claps hands* Mr. Robo, any findings yet?

Mr. Robo: Reporting, sir! Uh, it didn't go too well. You asked me to answer the question, "what is the distribution of income in Singapore", which I took to mean a histogram of some sort, over all citizens or residents.

On the surface, there is a surfeit of stats from the official bureau - you have previously referenced Key Household Income Trends 2012 (KHIT), of course, and I quickly also found relevant reports such as the Report on Wage Practices, 2012 (ROWP), Labour Force in Singapore, 2012 (LFIS) and Report on Wages in Singapore, 2011 (ROWIS).

But, um, the difficulties began.

First, KHIT has the average monthly income from work divided among ten percentile ranges, but only for households and per household member - we therefore need the number of actual workers per household to estimate the histogram over the population. Fair enough, it's a household report after all.

ROWP is a relatively short report most focused on the year-on-year developments between 2011 and 2012, but page five does have a table on real total wages from 2000 to 2012:

2000200120022003200420052006
6.8%4.2%0.4%0.3%-0.1%3.8%3.5%
200720082009201020112012
4.5%-1.7%-1.0%2.9%0.9%-0.4%

From this, the total increase in real wages from 2005 to 2012 is about 13%.

Mr. Ham: *impatiently* Yes, but he wasn't talking about real wages when the 30% figure came up.

Mr. Robo: Keep that in mind for now, it's like a jigsaw puzzle. On to LFIS, it's certainly fat at 242 pages, but somehow manages to not have this fundamental aggregate statistic either, instead slicing it by countless criteria such as age, gender and industry. The closest thing I found was on pages 24 and 25, where we can get two data points - the median (50th percentile), and the 20th percentile.

From here, the median wage increased a total of 46.2% between 2002 and 2012, while the 20th percentile wage increased 29.3% in the same time period. Given that wages were basically stagnant from 2002-04, this should be comparable to figures stated from 2005 onwards. However, in real terms, the figures are 13.9% and 0.7% respectively.

Me: Huh. If this is true, I would expect average nominal wages to have risen by far more than 30% in the same period, given that all indications point to wages at the higher end increasing at a faster pace.

Mr. Robo: It's much the same story for ROWIS. You can at least get the 25th, 50th and 75th percentile wages for just about any occupation you can dream of, but again no aggregate statistics over all workers are given. Best I could find was the median gross monthly income chart on T185, which shows an increase from S$2320 to S$3000 from 2001 to 2011, or S$2260 from 2004/6, which is indeed about the 30% stated, or almost 35% if we consider only full-time employees.

Me: So, you're saying it all adds up?

Mr. Robo: *wretchedly* I'm saying that I have no grounds to be confident that I've gotten the right picture. Recall that there's still an 11% gap between that and LFIS's claim of 46.2% on exactly the same metric; the only discrepancies I can detect are the difference of one year in the considered range - 2012 for 2001 - and that ROWIS includes only workers aged fifteen or over only, but given that ROWP has us at a 4% increase in total wages in 2012, versus 5.2% in 2001, and that the proportion of the workforce aged 14 or under is almost certainly miniscule, I cannot figure out how these factors can possibly explain the difference, which is about one-third of the figures bandied.


An Alternative Interpretation

Mr. Ham: *pats Mr. Robo on the back* Well done, Mr. Robo. Good job. Have the rest of the day off on me.

Mr. Robo: Gee, thanks! *leaves*

*Mr. Ham starts puffing on a cigar*

Me: So?

Mr. Ham: So? What does it look like? I put my best analyst on the job, and he can't even tell me what the approximate distribution of wages in Singapore is, after beating his head against the wall. Not that I blame him, though; I did some research of my own, and this government source has the change in real gross montly income for the bottom 20th percentile being -3.7% and 4.4% from 2002-2007 and 2007-2012 respectively, compared to -4.8% and 5.7% on page 25 of LFIS. It appears that one can make the numbers jump about just by tweaking some assumptions in the footnotes.

But never mind, I now feel justified in making some assumptions of my own. As the Household Income Trends report is the only one with a percentile breakdown, let us work from there. Supposedly, the average monthly household income increase from 2005 to 2012 is 30% for the lowest tenth percentile, 70% for the top tenth percentile, and about 45%-52% for everyone else in between.

Given the state of the source statistics, I won't claim any precise calculations, but if wages have indeed risen about 30% since 2005, it would then be like 18% for the bottom tenth percentile, and 42% for the top tenth, and possibly worse if average wages are considered, since any increase at the top end would be magnified.

Indeed, the fare review formula uses average monthly earnings, which becomes increasingly questionable as the income gap widens. Let us say the top 20 percent make about as much as the bottom 80 percent - which is, in fact, the case - and that the top 20 percent sees a wage rise of 10%, while the bottom 80 percent have their wages rise by just 2%, which is again not too far from what's going on. The average increase could then be 6%... but it's overwhelmingly the bottom 80 percent who will be taking public transport!

Me: Surely it's not that bad?

Mr. Ham: It could be worse. If you read the fine print on page 53, the change in monthly average earnings of industry can supposedly be used as a proxy for household income.

*shakes ash off cigar*

What we have here, my friend, is a classic slow squeeze of the voiceless bottom. They're not big fish like Google, up there want to anyhow hamtam them, they lan lan keep quiet and take it what. Oh, it's all technically following the rules, except that the rules too slowly get shifted in favour of entrenched interests. Yes, there are the token handouts, but most of it is transparent bullshit such as hailing the number of Employment Passes that are not renewed, when it is the total number handed out that is relevant. You can make a big show of helping out on rare occasions, but eventually others will wonder why they keep falling down when you approach.

Me: Isn't that harsh? The guy in charge of the labour hot potato may be trying very hard, you know.

Mr. Ham: Nah, he's just putting on a show too lah.

Me: Why do you say that?

Mr. Ham: It's right there in his title - Acting Minister of Manpower.

In any case, human, you get me wrong. I attempt no moral judgment. I am a businessham. This is not even new. It has happened before so many times, and will happen again. Our kind has been around for a long time. They ran in Rome as Nero fiddled, and beneath Byzantium as the courtiers lazed; they fled the Forbidden Palace to the tromp of incoming jackboots, they gnawed the manes of deposed aristocrats on the Champs-Élysées, they drank their fill of spilt wine in the mansions of the great during the Gilded Age. We see.

Me: I thought you don't identify yourself with rats?

Mr. Ham: *ignores comment* Still, it's hardly all attributable to the incumbents. In the end, the nature of a government is a reflection upon its people. They can't be held wholly responsible if residents expect perpetual asset appreciation either, and they sure as hell aren't gonna say that. Perhaps it's not really anybody's fault. It just happens.

Me: You may be exaggerating a little here.

*Mr. Ham puffs away silently*

Me: Then again, come to think of it, frustration may indeed be rising given what I found on the cubicle wall at university...



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