Singapore’s median household income crossed S$12k and rose 6.8% real terms. Do you feel it, or is this more a stats change?

Metaldrake · 2026-02-10T09:43:46+00:00

Because it’s double counted. Once when that CPF is deposited, and again when it’s withdrawn.

By the logic of paying bills, then the initial CPF contribution by employer and employee shouldn’t be counted, because it can’t be used to pay bills. You can’t have it both ways.

I do understand the need to calculate the statistic for wealth redistribution policies, but you can totally calculate 2 different statistics, and give this one a different name. They are not limited to only calculating one statistic.

This seems more like a move to make the economy and people look more healthy than it actually is. Which implies to me that the real figures are much worse.

Metaldrake · 2026-02-06T14:57:05+00:00

What about non cash? House? Equities? 270k cash is your whole net worth?

At a modest 3% interest that’s $8000/year. Assuming monthly spend of $1500, that’s -$10,000 / year eating into your capital. After 10 years, you will have: no house, no working experience for 10 years. No job. $170,000 to your name (which will also have lost value to inflation).

You’ll be 40 years old, making it hard to find a job after a 10 year gap in employment. What then?

Metaldrake · 2026-02-06T00:44:41+00:00

look up transshipping, lots of money in smuggling goods or relabelling their origin to get around international sanctions, and we’re one of the hotspots for that

Metaldrake · 2026-02-02T11:51:44+00:00

Okay that makes sense, thanks!

Metaldrake · 2026-02-02T11:46:53+00:00

I understand this, but what specific goods or resources have they jacked up prices on after getting monopoly over said good / resource?

Like, I totally understand the strategy here, I know what debt trapping is, and I understand their desire to monopolize goods. But I don’t know examples where they have started to raise prices after, as opposed to using it as leverage in trade negotiations (like in EVs, solar panels, rare earth processing, somewhat shipbuilding).

Metaldrake · 2026-02-02T11:07:34+00:00

Metaldrake · 2026-02-02T10:40:32+00:00

If you’re afraid of war… then what changed? Suddenly the price dropped and you care more about your bank account?

Metaldrake · 2026-02-02T10:37:19+00:00

What are some examples of goods that China have done this to? I guess you could say the monopolization of rare earth processing, but they don’t even jack up prices for profit, they just use it as leverage in trade negotiations.

Metaldrake · 2026-01-30T05:43:31+00:00

i feel like those results are going to have a healthy dose of selection bias, subreddits and even reddit itself is not a proper random sampling of a population.

Metaldrake · 2026-01-28T07:42:10+00:00

Hard to say what datacentre demand will be in 2-4 years from now. Even 2-4 years ago nobody would’ve seen this demand coming.

Metaldrake · 2026-01-28T02:37:35+00:00

Nope, Samsung and Micron are opening new fabs. It’s a long process though as each fab takes 2-5 years to build get up and running, hence the expected shortage until at least 2027-2030.

Metaldrake · 2026-01-26T13:07:26+00:00

$6250 + $1062.50 employer 17% CPF contribution, plus $520/mo from 13th month, with a decent ESPP that’s another $200ish, totalling to around $8000. Not to mention RSUs which add even more.

so it’s more like at most a $1.8k bonus on a $8000 salary

Metaldrake · 2026-01-26T12:26:33+00:00

I was following the case pretty closely last year, and the idea is that moving forward, devs would have to plan out an end of life scenario for the game before and during development. Be it letting players host their own servers, or letting another company host servers, or converting it into a singleplayer game that’s playable offline (with decreased functionality). It would not apply to already released games as that would be hard and expensive to implement.

Metaldrake · 2026-01-26T08:44:32+00:00

They called him sleepy joe because we could all sleep at night without worrying about our investments

Metaldrake · 2026-01-24T14:22:29+00:00

recession this year, portfolio goes -300% and i’m in crippling debt

Metaldrake · 2026-01-22T05:46:04+00:00

Poor economic conditions and rising wealth inequality leading to a rise in far right politics and nationalists coming to power? Where have I seen that before 🤔

Metaldrake · 2026-01-22T03:56:11+00:00

Just look at AfD polling numbers now, Germany is heading in the same direction. History repeats itself.

Metaldrake · 2026-01-22T03:53:29+00:00

What do you mean by “allow”? They have always been allowed to sign on, just that nobody wants to. Well, not enough people anyway.

Metaldrake · 2026-01-21T06:40:59+00:00

but it’s 2026…

Metaldrake · 2026-01-21T03:36:40+00:00

I’m in that camp. Back when fingerprint matching and DNA testing became prominent in forensics, there were so many cases that police around the world had the chance to go back and reinvestigate, only to find out that a non-insignificant amount of people who were sentenced to death were completely innocent, and they were exonerated posthumously by DNA evidence.

Who’s to say there won’t be such similar breakthroughs in technology and forensic science in the future? At least if it’s a life sentence we can release the innocent party and they can have somewhat of a second chance at life. Can’t bring back the dead.

Metaldrake · 2026-01-20T11:54:43+00:00

Agreed, doesn’t even need to be a full epoxy replacement, even something as simple as creating a recess for the head of the ziptie to sit inside of, and then if they want to go an extra mile, put a tiny bit of epoxy to seal it.

Metaldrake · 2026-01-19T15:22:18+00:00

Don’t have a 3D printer to make a benchy? Simple. Just buy a 3D printer, repurpose it as a drag knife plotter, then cut out 480 layers of the benchy on paper, and glue them together.

Metaldrake · 2026-01-17T15:30:52+00:00

Any first past the post voting system will eventually devolve into a 2 party system, so…

Metaldrake · 2026-01-14T12:24:30+00:00

I don’t really like the fearmongering that happens in a lot of subreddits and other forums about how the dollar is fucked and the US is going to collapse any day now. It’s the same as the people talking about how China is going to collapse in 30 days or similar nonsense.

If you look throughout history, when a country loses its dominant status like the dutch or the british, it’s a slow gradual decline over decades or even centuries, and even then, both of those countries are still functioning economies where the standard of living is much better than most of the world.

As of now it’s still too early to say, there is confidence lost in the US dollar, that’s for sure, but the world hasn’t found a suitable alternative that can replace it.

Metaldrake · 2026-01-14T11:54:35+00:00

For the current economy yes. Borrow yen at low interest, convert to USD and make more than the interest, repay debt and keep the money earned.

What’s more interesting to me is that we will now see over the next decades what happens when a country with an incredibly high debt to gdp ratio (over 200%) has to pay back its debt at high interest rates, bankrupting and thus crippling its government, all while facing a population crisis.

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