Monday, June 15, 2015

Using GDP to calculate Singapore's average salary

Reference: How much do you need to earn to be above Singapore’s “average”?

Read an article on Yahoo Singapore that tried to calculate Singapore's salary using GDP.

Some points to take away.

The high income earners are earning a whole lot more skewing the average upwards. One can only imagine how much they are earning to be able to skew the numbers that high, making the average $9,207 after discounting those who are unemployed.

I was back from Hong Kong a few weeks ago and food there on average cost two times that of Singapore. Hong Kong has roughly the same GDP as Singapore, but has 7.2 million in population vs Singapore's 5.4 million.

What's more interesting would be how the purchasing power of dollar has faded over the years. Or how many years you have to work before you can pay off the loan to your property.

As you can see, it's a very flawed way to calculate GDP. An article written to get eyeballs.

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