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Will Singaporeans be happy living in a country comprised of economic ghettoes? That was my enduring thought as I reviewed the animated rebuttals, common and official, to last week’s revelation by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU, my former employer) that Singapore is the world’s most expensive city.

These sorts of surveys should be taken with a pinch of salt. Many subjective decisions influence the methodology. So it shouldn’t really matter that much who is Number 1, 2 or 5. Rather, they should be seen simply as indicative of a larger issue.

However, as we nationalistic Singaporeans tend to do, rather than asking “How can we raise wages (and hence spending power)?” or “How can we make Singapore more affordable?”, many rose in a spirited defence of our apparent affordability, seeking to poke holes in a survey that approximates and compares middle- to upper-income price baskets across major cities.

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