Culture and Privilege in Capitalist Asia - Jurusan Antropologi ...

148 CHUA BENG HUAT AND TAN JOO EAN
Table 5.6 Married couples by monthly income from work and working status, 1990*
Source: Dept of Statistics (1992:15, table 16).
Notes:
*For 11.7 % of married couples, neither spouse was working.
**Denotes no median estimate.
satisfy demands for private property, the government has reduced its earlier plan
to house 90 per cent of the population in public housing to about 70 per cent. This
is to be achieved by auctioning off state land to private developers who not only
provide more private housing but are also expected to stabilise property prices,
which had seen astronomical inflation in the early 1990s. Second, there has been
no more prominent middle-class issue in Singapore since the mid-1980s than the
prices of cars. In general, there is agreement among the population that there
should be limits on the number of cars in Singapore because traffic congestion is
antithetical to economic production and efficiency. A survey among university
students shows this general agreement; nevertheless, most students still aspire to
own cars (Straits Times, 9 March 1996). 7 Consequently, car ownership has become
a ‘scarce resource’ whose allocation has become a major social issue. Public
debate and government deliberations led to the institutionalisation of the certificate
of entitlement (COE) in 1990. In order to purchase one of the new cars which is to
be added to the road each month, aspiring car owners have to bid successfully for
a COE in monthly auctions. The cost of the COE is to be added to the
approximately 200 per cent tariff that is already imposed on a car’s actual market
value. By December 1994, within four years of its introduction, the price of a COE
for large-sized cars escalated rapidly from $1,000 to $100,000. Subsequent public
outcry led to some fine-tuning of the allocation system which brought down the
prices. Nevertheless, people have come to accept that COE prices are determined
by market demand and the cost of a car would be about four times its price
elsewhere.
If life for those who are anxiety-laden seems to be centred on juggling trade-offs
around private housing and car, the burden is lifted and contentment found as soon
as one decides to live within the not uncomfortable material conditions of the high
end of public-housing flats and use the MRT.