Saturday, January 12, 2019

Thoughts #12: Is the World a Better Place?

WSJ published an interesting article titled "The World is Getting Quietly, Relentlessly Better" sometime back arguing that the number of people living under extreme poverty conditions had decreased. The global middle income group is now nearly 50% and many diseases no longer posed threats to lives.



On many counts that is true, but living in Singapore we tend to feel that life didn't get better, don't we? Maybe we started out in Middle Class (defined as earning $10-100 per day) and not enough of us are in the Rich category (only 2.7% of world's population). But even if we are in Rich, we not are necessarily happier.

Singapore passed the generation when children would do better than their parents and progress brought about happiness. This is a developed world problem. Now that we have enough food, good shelter, basic education, healthcare and most of us have some money, what is that makes life fulfilling? It's a tough question.

One possible answer could be sharing and giving. Giving.sg might be a good place to start. When we huat, we should also help others huat too! Huat Ah!

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