5 on demon rocks

https://youtu.be/FgXRSrBun20?si=xV6Y88CzuySCqLSo

borrow non stop

China is a nation of savers. The Chinese government wants its people to spend more and save less. It also wants them to take on more debt, all for the sake of saving the economy from a four-year slump.

The national financial regulator urged banks in March to expand consumer lending and offer more flexible repayment terms. In July, policymakers promised to provide “innovative” financial services to boost consumption.

Yet many Chinese consumers are wary. An alarming number of them are already defaulting on their debt.

From 2021 to 2024, China’s total household savings grew 50 per cent as people scared off by a big decline in housing values stuffed their money in banks. During the same period, the number of loans that households could not afford to pay back nearly doubled.

For China, expanding access to credit may seem like a quick way to stimulate the economy. But this push for consumers to borrow risks deepening a growing personal debt crisis. Many borrowers, particularly young people, are caught in cycles of debt, driven by poor financial literacy, high youth unemployment and stagnant wages.

Those caught in the cycle run the gamut – from factory workers to young professionals and gig economy workers. They are people who barely make ends meet while living in fear of default, calls from debt collectors and an overwhelming sense of shame.

One person I interviewed, a 27-year-old tech worker in Shanghai, said he often borrowed from one online consumer finance app to repay what he owed to another one. He said the anxiety was overwhelming. “I feel trapped in an endless loop,” he said, asking me to use only his surname, Xia.

There is a growing split in the Chinese economy. The better-offs are saving more for rainy days. The worse-offs have little choice but to take on debt.

A recent quarterly survey by China’s central bank with 20,000 respondents across 50 cities showed that consumers were increasingly pessimistic. Their perception of job security is at record lows. Their willingness to spend has dropped to levels unseen since the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Last year, an estimated 25 million to 34 million people defaulted on personal loans, twice the number in 2019, including loans that were overdue, but not yet in default. The number of risky borrowers has surged to between 61 million and 83 million. That amounts to between 5 and 7 per cent of the total population aged 15 and older.

As in the United States, defaults wreck personal credit records in China, locking people out of future borrowing and significantly limiting their upward mobility. But the punitive effect could be aggravated because China lacks a formal bankruptcy system to allow individuals to erase their debts.

For many indebted individuals, taking on more loans is a means of survival, not consumption.

Mr Xia, the tech professional in Shanghai, said he had begun borrowing small sums through Alipay’s Huabei payments service during college to cover basic expenses. After graduating in 2019, his debt ballooned, peaking at over US$7,000 (S$9,000), an amount that would be manageable if he had stable employment. But he said he had been unemployed half the time since graduation.

It’s easy to get consumer loans online in China, probably more so than it is in other countries, said economist Victor Shih from the University of California, San Diego.

China’s biggest internet platforms, with huge user bases, all have loan portals. They work with state-owned banks, which are eager to lend to consumers since the housing crash ate into their business. Online loans’ interest rates are usually higher than credit cards, and online payments are much more widely used than credit cards in China.

The loan offers are everywhere on the internet. When ordering a takeout meal on a delivery app, users are asked if they want to borrow money to pay for the meal.

Obtaining a loan, Mr Xia said, often requires providing only basic identity and employment information, and the money is disbursed nearly instantly.

Despite being in debt since 2018, Mr Xia said he had little knowledge about how interest or credit scores worked. None of the four borrowers I interviewed could tell me the interest rates or service charges on their loans.

But they all said they had anxiety, depression or insomnia. One of them, a 26-year-old meal delivery person in Chongqing, e-mailed me at 4am because he was too stressed to sleep.

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Another man, burdened with US$220,000 in debt after several business failures and long stretches of unemployment, told me he had considered jumping off a building. He and his wife, both in their mid-30s, have had nearly no income for the past two years and no luck finding jobs since they have been told they were too old.

The man, whose surname is Shao, said he missed a loan payment on June 10. At 9am the next day, collectors started calling incessantly. “The calls are designed to intimidate and insult,” he said. “They want to pressure you into finding a way to repay, whether it’s taking on other loans or borrowing from friends and families.”

He had prepared himself by reading about the experiences of others like him on online forums and speaking to friends who work at debt collection companies. Still, the pressure was unbearable.

Mr Shao has yet to experience what many consider the worst part: the public shaming. Collectors will start calling family and friends from a borrower’s phone contact list, a tactic banned in principle but still widely used.

Many borrowers feel that shame long before they default on a debt. Although societal values are shifting, older Chinese people who have lived through hard times tend to judge the young harshly.

But others pushed back on blaming the debtors, arguing that the problem is China’s credit system.

“The lending mechanism is a honey trap,” one podcast listener commented, “designed precisely to catch ordinary people at their weakest moments.”

Another comment, using a Chinese idiom, likened China’s consumer loan push to “drinking poison to quench thirst”, arguing that it does nothing to tackle the underlying causes of weak consumption – economic hardship and an inadequate social safety net – and merely delays the inevitable by encouraging borrowing against the future.

Policymakers have floated proposals like a “credit repair” programme to help people who default reclaim access to loans, but analysts say that could take time to establish. The authorities also limit debt collectors to no more than three calls a day per person and prohibit calls during off hours. Still, complaints against debt collectors are soaring, suggesting that enforcement is weak.

And without a personal bankruptcy system in China, there are few ways to discharge debt. Defaulting on a loan can leave a permanent mark.

The feeling of desperation over consumer debt is widespread.

On the video site Bilibili, an account called Quitting Society functions like an online support meeting room for debtors. During livestreaming sessions, the 30-year-old host reads out confessions from people who say they’re addicted to online borrowing. His most important advice: Tell your parents, and seek help immediately.

The account has more than one million followers. A hashtag urging all online borrowers to watch the videos has drawn 170 million views and over 70,000 comments on the social media site Weibo. NYTIMES

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china future

Mr Chu Xin’s search for work has taken him on a journey this summer. First he travelled some 1,500km from his home in China’s deep south-west to Shenzhen, a bustling manufacturing hub across from Hong Kong. Next was a bus another 1,500km north to Kunshan, which churns out electronics, where he twisted tiny screws into phone parts for 10 hours a day. That was mind-numbingly dull; by day five he had had enough. So he grabbed his few belongings and headed south – ready for the next stage in his odyssey.

Mr Chu’s story is in some senses extraordinary. But in others it is very ordinary. He is one of 200 million-odd people in China whom the state considers to be “flexible workers”, a broad category that includes all those who fall outside standard forms of employment.

The group makes up what is called the “gig economy”. Its members do not have formal contracts, and yet they have become a crucial part of China’s labour supply, accounting for a quarter of the total workforce and two-fifths of it in cities.

Although some of the group have moved from formal jobs to informal ones as they have aged, many are young, unattached men with dim economic prospects. Their progress, or lack of it, will set the terms for China’s future.

If they are able to settle down, buy homes and start families, they will help ease the country’s economic malaise. If not, they will cause problems for the Communist Party. They are China’s “make-or-break” workers.

The stakes are particularly high owing to China’s economic difficulties. Consumer demand remains bleak, with retail sales growth slowing in August to its lowest rate in 2025. Property sales and prices continue to fall, dragging down sentiment. Urban unemployment has ticked up. Population decline has forced the country’s leaders to establish subsidies to encourage childbirth. The recent spate of gloomy official data has convinced some analysts that year-on-year gross domestic product growth could fall to as low as 3 per cent in the third quarter of 2025.

Unlike the West’s gig economy, which is almost entirely focused on services, roughly 40 million of the make-or-break workers are paid by the day or week to work in factories. In China’s largest manufacturing complexes they can at times make up 80 per cent of the workforce, according to a survey by Professor Zhang Dandan of Peking University.

Meanwhile, semi-official estimates suggest that 84 million people work for online firms, delivering food and parcels or driving ride-share taxis. Many more are thought to do freelance internet marketing or work odd jobs in construction and restaurants. Although factory workers tend to be in their 20s, delivery drivers can be older.

Gig workers’ lives are tough. So why do it rather than finding formal employment?

The workers who powered China’s economic boom in the 2000s often laboured in large factories that were akin to mini-cities, and which offered services ranging from room and board to weddings. Many would leave only when returning to their home towns. Contracts became common after 2008 and offered scant-but-improved benefits, such as injury insurance. The work was often tedious in the extreme, involving long hours on production lines and sometimes just one day off a month.

China’s make-or-break workers have consciously rejected such a life. They value freedom and flexibility above the stability prized by previous generations of workers, many of whom grew up in poverty. When factories require make-or-breakers to do menial jobs, they want to be able to leave.

Many we spoke to noted the importance of being able to make decisions on their own behalf. Ms Li Meng, a Shanghai resident in her 40s, worked in state schools for years before deciding to become a yoga teacher. She does not have a contract with her studio and it does not contribute to her pension. But the freedom to set her own schedule every week is worth it, she says.

These workers are also becoming adept at using China’s vast platform economy to their advantage. Short-term jobs in factories and in services including delivery, taxi driving and social-media marketing can all be sourced online. Workers can move from job to job seamlessly, often paying little attention to the company for which they work.

Mr Wang Shi, a driver in the south-western city of Lijiang, says he routinely switches between a number of ride-hailing apps in order to maximise his income. Professor Lu Ming of Shanghai Jiao Tong University says this mastery of internet platforms is helping many gig workers make more money than contracted ones. They can also take time off whenever they like.

Such freedoms are reflected in popular culture. An online trope has emerged from a recruiting centre in Shenzhen called Sanhe. The workers here, referred to as the “Gods of Sanhe”, are said to work only as long as it takes to pay for a few days’ room and board. After that, according to popular perception, they lounge about, playing on their phones and enjoying life. They are portrayed as shiftless masters of their own destiny, a portrayal that contrasts sharply with labourers of decades past, who were seen as hard workers attuned to the needs of their bosses.

However, as the gig economy grows, so do worries about its future. Since gig workers avoid formal employment and its contracts, they do not pay into their own pensions. This results in bigger pay cheques at the end of the day, and suits employers who are more than happy not to have to pay the extra costs.

Most flexible workers come from rural areas, meaning that they also lack an urban hukou, or residency permit, and therefore access to associated benefits such as urban pensions, as well as healthcare and schooling. In many cities they are unable to buy flats, too.

Other risks are more insidious, and will become evident only over time. Economists worry about the impact an enormous gig economy will have on China’s human capital. Companies have little incentive to train workers. Factories are increasingly automated, which makes them safer but even more monotonous. Workers usually specialise in “micro tasks” that require them to repeat a particular hand motion for hours on end, day after day. Mr Chu says that the worst of these are assembling phone covers or affixing labels to products. Prof Zhang fears many workers are “deskilling” when they do this kind of work.

What matters is not just what make-or-breakers can supply, but what they can eventually buy, too.

Earlier waves of workers from the countryside were largely ignored as consumers; many failed to benefit from China’s economic rise. Can gig workers buy homes and start families? If they manage to, says economist Zhang Ning from UBS, a bank, the shift would have a huge overall impact on consumption. Junhui Wang of the Southwestern University of Finance and Economics in Chengdu and co-authors find that when rural households become urban ones, they consume 2.4 per cent more.

In August, China’s Supreme Court ruled that workers can claim compensation from employers that have denied them benefits. This came as a shock to the myriad of small companies that use gig workers and can hardly afford the extra costs. But it is not clear how the ruling will be enforced. And the bigger question is what happens to the hukou, which China’s leaders have used for decades to control the movement of people. Although recent reforms make it easier for formal workers to settle in cities, they do nothing for gig workers.

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Their parklife

Unless changes are made to the hukou, many make-or-breakers face a darker future. The average age of factory gig workers is 26. About 80 per cent are male; 75-80 per cent are single and childless. In manufacturing hubs increasing numbers of young workers sleep in parks and under overpasses. Until recently, dozens could be seen snoozing in one of Kunshan’s biggest parks after they finished work, many with luggage in tow. (They have since been cleared by police.)

Large crowds gather in so-called labour markets, where intermediary agencies hire people for temporary construction or factory work. In Shenzhen’s biggest market, your correspondent was told by locals to take care, since many labourers were said to be alcoholics or drug addicts.

This is hardly conducive to the stability and calm the Communist Party aims to foster. Moreover, the new generation of workers is better connected than previous ones. They are armed with smartphones and spend hours a day scrolling social media.

Mr Dexter Roberts, author of The Myth Of Chinese Capitalism, says that young gig workers seem less deferential to the Communist Party than their predecessors. It is not a stretch to imagine a growing cohort of homeless, disgruntled and hopelessly bored workers causing ever greater disruptions to China’s peaceful urban veneer. The country’s leaders, then, have reason to help workers find their own homes to sleep in, rather than parks.© 2025 THE ECONOMIST NEWSPAPER LIMITED. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

dark politics

Sometimes when I have nothing better to do, I think back on the US elections we had in the before times – when, say, Mitt Romney ran against Barack Obama or John Kerry ran against George W. Bush. I try to figure out why politics and society in general felt so different then.

It’s not because we didn’t have big disagreements back then. The Iraq War kicked up some pretty vehement arguments. It’s not because we weren’t polarised. Pundits have been writing about political polarisation since at least 2000 and maybe well before.

Politics is different now because something awful has been unleashed. Political theorist William A. Galston defines this awful thing in his fantastic new book, Anger, Fear, Domination: Dark Passions And The Power Of Political Speech. Even before the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, it was obvious that the dark passions now pervade the American psyche, and thus American politics.

A core challenge in life is how do you motivate people to do things – to vote in a certain way, to take a certain kind of action. Good leaders motivate people through what you might call the bright passions – hope, aspiration, an inspiring vision of a better life. But these days, and maybe through all days, leaders across the political spectrum have found that dark passions are much easier to arouse. Evolution has wired us to be extremely sensitive to threat, which psychologists call negativity bias.

US President Donald Trump is a man almost entirely motivated by dark passions – hatred, anger, resentment, fear, the urge to dominate – and he stirs those passions to get people to support him. Speaking before a Conservative Political Action Conference in 2023, he warned of “sinister forces trying to kill America”, by turning the nation into a “socialist dumping ground for criminals, junkies, Marxists, thugs, radicals and dangerous refugees that no other country wants”.

Mr Trump is a master of this dark art, but I wouldn’t say my Trump-supporting friends have darker personalities than my Trump-opposing ones. Progressives also appeal to dark passions. A decade or so ago, I had a poignant conversation with a Democratic ad-maker who was anguished because, to help his candidates, nearly every advertisement he made was designed to arouse fear and animosity.

“The thing people forget is that the political left were really the ones who perfected the politics of anger,” left-wing social organiser Marshall Ganz told journalist Charles Duhigg for an essay in The Atlantic in 2019. “It’s the progressives who figured out that by helping people see injustice, rather than just economics, we become strong.” Political theorist Michael Walzer, the eminent co-editor emeritus of the progressive magazine Dissent, put it clearly: “Fear has to be our starting point, even though it is a passion most easily exploited by the right.”

We in the media appeal to those passions too. One of our jobs is to motivate you to click on our headlines. A team of researchers from New Zealand looked at headlines from 47 US publications. They found that between 2000 and 2019, the share of headlines meant to evoke anger more than doubled. The prevalence of headlines meant to evoke fear rose by 150 per cent.

I want to understand how dark passions are ruling us, so let’s take a quick look at each one:

Anger: Anger rises when somebody has damaged something you care about. Anger can be noble when directed at injustice. But the seductive thing about anger is that it feels perversely good. It makes you feel strong, self-respecting and in control. Expressing anger is a dense form of communication. It lets people know, quite clearly, that you want something to change. The problem is that these days we don’t have just bursts of anger in our public life. Anger has become a permanent condition in many of our lives.

Hatred: You can be angry at someone you love. Hatred, on the other hand, is pervasive. As Dr Galston writes, “We feel anger because of what someone has done, hatred because of who someone is.” The person who hates you wants to destroy you. Anti-Semites hate Jews. During the Rwandan genocide, the Hutus hated the Tutsis. “Hatred cannot be appeased,” Dr Galston continues, “it can only be opposed.”

Resentment: Resentment is about social standing. Someone makes you feel inferior to them. Someone doesn’t offer you recognition and respect. Resentful people are curled in on themselves. They can’t stop thinking about and resenting the people who are so lofty that those other people may not even know they exist. Anger is often expressed, but resentment is often bottled up because the person in its grip feels powerless, socially inferior.

Fear: Fear is healthy when it alerts you to some real threat. But as sociologist Zygmunt Bauman has noted: “Fear is at its most fearsome when it is diffuse, scattered, unclear, unattached, unanchored, free-floating, with no clear address or cause.” When that happens, fear turns into a feeling of existential menace that doesn’t lead to any clear course of action. When fear turns into terror, it makes rational deliberation almost impossible. When people can’t locate the source of their fear, you never know who they will lash out at and blame; you just know that a scapegoat will be found.

The urge to dominate: This is the one we talk about least, but it is the darkest of the dark passions, the most omnipresent and the most destructive. St Augustine called it libido dominandi. It’s the urge to control, to wield power over someone, to make yourself into a god. It is often driven by repressed anxiety, insecurity and a fear of abandonment that causes people to want to establish their power in every situation. It exists in personal life and causes some people to try to manipulate you, interrupt and talk over you. In families, it leads to overbearing parenting, conditional love, boundary violations and isolation tactics – cutting someone off.

In intellectual life, it causes some people to want to dominate reality, to impose their own false view of the truth on everyone around them. People with a strong urge to dominate can’t stand the condition of doubt. They want to impose brutal certainties and crude simplifications.

Politics is about power, so of course it attracts people with a strong libido dominandi. When that urge is combined with what psychologists call a “dark triad” personality type (Machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy), you wind up with some pretty brutal characters – Hitler, Mao, Stalin.

In public life, the urge to dominate can take brutal forms. When you see cops beating a man who is on the ground and barely conscious, that’s the urge to dominate. It can also take more subtle forms. I’m struck by how powerful the human urge to segregate and exclude is. For example, once left-leaning people established a dominant position in academia, the media and non-profit sector, they mostly excluded conservative and working-class voices. They wanted control.

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Keys on a piano

Dark passions are part of our nature, like keys on a piano. If we’re bombarded with speech that presses the dark keys, antipathy will rise. When people consume communication that demonstrates respect, curiosity, communion and hope, antipathy falls. The problem is that dark passions are imperial. Once they get in your body, they tend to spread. Dark passions drive out the good ones.

Today, US politics is driven by duelling fears, hatreds, resentments. If liberal democracy fails, it will be because a variety of forces have undermined the emotional foundations on which liberalism depends. Dark passions lead to heartlessness, cruelty, violence, distrust. Sticks and stones can break your bones, but words that arouse the dark passions can kill you.

America’s founding fathers spent a lot of time thinking about dark passions. Samuel Adams declared that humans are driven by “ambitions and lust for power”. Patrick Henry confessed that he had come to “dread the depravity of human nature”. John Jay declared: “The mass of men are neither wise nor good.”

They preferred democracy because they didn’t trust one man or one small group of people to hold power. They thought it more prudent to spread power around, and then in the Constitution, imposed all sorts of ways to check human desire.

Since then, and especially over the past 60 years, there has been a great loss of moral knowledge, a naivete about and ignorance of dark passions. “Sinful” used to be a powerful, resonant, soul-shaking word. Now it is mostly used in reference to desserts. “When I think back to my years of growing up in the 1950s,” literary scholar Andrew Delbanco once wrote, “I realise that this process of unnaming evil, though it began centuries ago, has accelerated enormously during my lifetime.”

How did we get so ignorant about the struggle between light and dark forces within us? Well, religion is all about that struggle, and religion plays a smaller role in public life.

After World War II, an array of thinkers, including those in the self-esteem movement, argued that human nature is essentially good. If there’s evil in the world, it’s out there in social structures, not in ourselves. In the 1950s and 1960s, psychology became the primary way people understood themselves. The psyche replaced the soul and symptoms replaced sin.

Then we privatised morality. Schools, for example, got out of the moral-formation business and into the career prep business. We told successive generations to find your own values, find your own truth. That’s like telling someone to find your own astrophysics. If we don’t have teachers and leaders guiding us through the long human tradition of moral knowledge, we’re going to wind up pretty damned ignorant.

The power of humiliation

There is one force above all others that arouses dark passions, and we possess it in abundance: humiliation. People feel humiliated when they are not granted equal standing and when they have been deprived of something they think is their right. And as we all know, pain that is not transformed gets transmitted. Humiliated people eventually lash out.

Humiliation drives world events. Germany was humiliated at the end of World War I. The Arab world was humiliated after its defeat in the Six Day War. Russia was humiliated by its defeat in the Cold War. China scholar William Callahan wrote: “The master narrative of modern Chinese history is the discourse of the century of national humiliation.”

Humiliation produces horrors in the US. Since the Columbine shooting, we’ve had a long string of humiliated and solitary men brooding over their insults and then finding a psychic solution through the gun.

Over the past 60 years the educated elite has created a meritocracy, an economic system and a cultural atmosphere that serves itself and leaves everybody else feeling excluded and humiliated. Over the past 30 years the richest, whitest and best-educated members of our society have become the most extreme people on the right and the left and began a war on each other that leaves all sides feeling furious and fearful. I’m not the only one to wonder if history would have been different if then President Obama hadn’t humiliated Mr Trump at a White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.

So to return to my original question: Why does politics feel so different now than in times past?

My short answer is that over these years, demagogues in politics, in the media and online have exploited common feelings of humiliation to arouse dark passions, and those dark passions are dehumanising our culture and undermining liberal democracy. My intuition is that we’re only at the beginning of this spiral, and that it will only get worse.

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Breaking the doom loop

How can we reverse our downward trajectory? First, let me tell you how not to reverse it. There is a tendency in these circumstances to think that the other side is so awful that we need a monster on our side to beat it. That’s the decision Republicans made in nominating Mr Trump.

Democrats are moving in that direction too. Back in 2016, Mrs Michelle Obama asserted that Democrats to go high when Republicans go low, but the vibe quickly shifted. As former attorney-general Eric Holder put it in 2018: “When they go low, we kick ’em. That’s what this new Democratic Party is about.”

The problem with fighting fire with fire is that you’re throwing yourself into the cesspool of dark passions. Do we really think we won’t be corrupted by them?

History provides clear examples of how to halt the dark passion doom loop. It starts when a leader, or a group of people, who have every right to feel humiliated, decide to interrupt the process. They simply refuse to be swallowed by the bitterness, and they work – laboriously over years or decades – to cultivate the bright passions in themselves – to be motivated by hope, care and some brighter vision of the good, and to show those passions to others, especially their enemies.

Former Czech president Vaclav Havel did this. Former US president Abraham Lincoln did this in his second inaugural address. French army officer Alfred Dreyfus did this after his false conviction and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl did this after the Holocaust. You may believe Jesus is the messiah or not, but what gives his life moral grandeur was his ability to meet hatred with love. These leaders displayed astounding forbearance. They did not seek payback and revenge.

Obviously, civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr comes to mind: “To our most bitter opponents we say: We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws, because non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. Throw us in jail, and we shall still love you.”

Obviously, South African leader Nelson Mandela comes to mind. Far from succumbing to dark passions, he oriented his life towards a vision of the good. “During my lifetime,” he said near the beginning of his imprisonment, “I have dedicated my life to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony and with equal opportunities.”

This kind of interruption is the most effective way to fight dark passions. Moral life is a struggle over which parts of ourselves we will develop. Political leadership is a struggle over which motivations the society will develop.

Dr Galston, who is a political theorist, revives the ancient tradition that emphasises that speech and rhetoric have tremendous power to arouse or suppress passions. When we choose our leaders, we are not only choosing a set of policies but the moral ecology they create with their words. He also points out that in the early 2000s, as millions of manufacturing jobs went away, the national leadership class barely stopped to notice.

I’d add only that in order to repress dark passions and arouse the good ones, leaders need to create conditions in which people can experience social mobility. As philosophers have long understood, the antidote to fear is not courage; it’s hope. If people feel their lives and their society are stagnant, they will fight like scorpions in a jar. But if they feel that they personally are progressing towards something better, that their society is progressing towards something better, they will have an expanded sense of agency, their motivations will be oriented towards seizing some wonderful opportunity, and those are nice motivations to have.

The dark passions look backwards towards some wrong committed in the past and render people hard-hearted. The bright passions look forward towards some better life and render people tough-minded but tender-hearted. NYTIMES

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25% tariff

It’s hard to say what President Donald Trump’s extraordinary attack on immigration will mean for the future of US tech dominance. What’s clearer, however, is the immediate challenge he has created for his friend Narendra Modi – days after wishing him a happy 75th birthday.

Indians account for more than 70 per cent of all H-1B visas. A steep US$100,000 (S$128,000) entry fee, paid by employers, for every worker entering the US under the programme will effectively gut it, forcing large outsourcing companies such as Bengaluru-based Infosys to rethink their business strategy.

What should worry Prime Minister Modi more is how the new rule is being implemented. Introduced as a travel restriction, it had the appearance of an economic sanction, an escalation of the punishment the US leader has meted out to a staunch ally in recent months. 

First came a 50 per cent duty on merchandise exports: Washington told New Delhi that its 25 per cent reciprocal tariff was being doubled because its purchases of Russian oil were helping to finance President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine. Having effectively lost access to its biggest overseas market for textiles, gems and jewellery, shrimp-farming and other labour-intensive industries, India was hoping to soften the blow with a tax cut for domestic consumers, lined up to coincide with this week’s start of the annual Hindu festive season.

Washington’s curbs on white-collar talent have poured cold water on that mitigation strategy, too.

Mr Trump’s Sept 19 move left many middle-class Indian families facing extreme anxiety over the weekend. H-1B visa holders who are currently overseas on work or holiday were told by their employers to make it back before 12.01am eastern time on Sept 21. Those who failed to beat the deadline could get stranded indefinitely. Or their spouses and children might.

By the time White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt clarified that the entry fee is a one-time payment, which would apply only to the next H-1B lottery and not to current visa holders, the damage was already done.

To immigrant families, an already-arduous pathway to permanent residency in America will look like an impossible dream now. Naturally, even many employees currently in the US would ask companies to move them elsewhere. But where? Canada, Australia, Singapore? Somewhere within India? 

The US tech and finance industries have at least a couple of options besides mass relocation of foreign-born talent. They could challenge the legality of the entry fee. They could also seek carve-outs. Silicon Valley and Wall Street could, for instance, lobby to exempt foreigners with US college degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or Stem. Hospitals that rely on H-1B to ease the shortage of doctors may also make a strong case to retain cost-effective access to foreign-born residents.

Other strategies are also possible. Recent research by management professors at Erasmus University and University of Pennsylvania shows that when faced with shocks to the H-1B programme in the past, employers substituted talent with transactions. They stepped up acquisitions, particularly of small, domestic targets, in places with a high concentration of skilled workers. If visa restrictions prevent a company from hiring the kind of manpower it needs, it can always find similar talent – foreign-born or local – at another business, which it can then acquire. 

For India, the problem is much bigger. By adding services to a trade war that Team Modi didn’t see coming, Mr Trump may have done more than shave off a few percentage points from outsourcing firms’ margins.

A quarter-century of closer political alignment with the US had a solid economic foundation. Just as the likes of Apple helped turn China into the world’s factory, large US firms propelled India’s rise in software services exports. That business model is already facing an existential threat from artificial intelligence (AI).

Generative AI may be making top programmers more productive, but it’s also hacking away at entry-level jobs. At the same time, US lawmakers are considering legislation that would impose a 25 per cent tax on American companies for payments made to foreign workers for services consumed in the US. 

What makes the latest targeted punishment by the Trump administration doubly dangerous for Mr Modi is that it’s taking place against a backdrop of high youth unemployment and unrest in neighbouring countries like Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and now Nepal.

It’s a tricky time for Washington to repel New Delhi from its geopolitical orbit, and to take away opportunities from the world’s biggest cohort of youth – one by one.

In a televised address on Sept 21, Mr Modi struck an optimistic note. The reduction in the goods and services tax from Sept 22 “will accelerate India’s growth story”, he said.

However, with wages under threat for both blue- and white-collar workers, consumers might be wary of big-ticket purchases. Mr Trump’s actions may have made sure of that. BLOOMBERG

Andy Mukherjee is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering industrial companies and financial services in Asia. 

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empathy

For the first time in my life, I froze at the simple act of sitting down.

It was pitch-dark, I couldn’t see the chair, and I was afraid of crashing to the floor instead.

Around me, I could hear my teammates waiting for me to sit so that Dialogue in the Dark Singapore’s workshop could begin.

(Funny how I couldn’t see the people around me, but I still felt the pressure not to fall behind.)

I found the chair, felt it repeatedly to gauge its height, took a deep breath – and finally sat down after a few minutes of bewilderment.

In the past month, I attended two experiential sessions which helped me better understand the lives of persons with disabilities.

The experience of being without sight gave me insight into the grit and perseverance with which blind people navigate daily life.

I had honest chats with some of them and learnt how, like the rest of us, they are doing their best within their limitations. And they don’t want any pity.

Dialogue in the Dark Singapore is a centre that allows participants to experience the challenges blind people face on a daily basis. Its programmes are conducted in complete darkness, and are facilitated by blind guides.

For example, it runs “Tour in the Dark”, where participants navigate everyday scenarios without their sight. 

It also runs corporate programmes like the three-hour-long “Darkness to Light: Illuminating Possibilities” workshop my colleagues and I were hosted to, where we had to tackle challenges as a team.

I also went for a Resilience Trail, designed and led by guides from low-income backgrounds, such as single mothers and persons with disabilities, and run by a social enterprise called Skillseed.

The guides talk about their lives and the community they live in, and share their experiences of social issues such as staying in public rental housing, food insecurity, mental well-being and social isolation.

ST journalists with Dialogue in the Dark Singapore facilitators (front row, from third left) Hidayat Mohamad Yaakob, Sim Kah Yong and Teresa Ng. PHOTO: NGEE ANN POLYTECHNIC

Stumbling in the dark

Being plunged in total darkness for about two hours was an intensely uncomfortable – and even disturbing – experience for me, as I used to be deathly afraid of the dark.  

But as the minutes passed, I learnt to quieten the panic within. I learnt to trust myself and adapt to the tasks asked of us during the session.

Tasks such as finding the table, chair and sitting down. Cutting a slice of cake. Making a cup of tea. 

I poured water from the flask over 10 times before I had some tea to drink. In the process, I poured water all over the table and onto my jeans.

But I did not give up. (To be honest, I was also thirsty and needed a drink quite badly.)

Besides learning to trust myself, I also learnt to place my trust in my teammates.

There were four of us in a group, and we had to assemble an unknown structure together.

Each of us were given two parts of the structure, and we had no idea how they would all fit together. We have to figure it out as a team. 

I realised – to my horror – that I couldn’t think without my sight.

I was so focused on listening to instructions that my brain shut down. Or perhaps I was just too petrified.

But I had no problems trusting my teammates and I was happy to follow their lead.

When the lights came on, we saw we had assembled a rainbow made of wooden blocks.

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Getting rid of assumptions

Dialogue in the Dark Singapore is a collaboration between Ngee Ann Polytechnic (NP) and Dialogue Social Enterprise, a social enterprise founded in Germany that promotes social inclusion of persons with disabilities.

Ms Sandra Toh, director of NP’s School of Humanities and Interdisciplinary Studies, told me that the Dialogue in the Dark sessions force participants to rely on their blind facilitators.

And this role reversal challenges the participants’ assumptions about disability, and highlights the blind facilitator’s strengths and capabilities.

Participants are also made to reflect on their experience and share it, which hopefully would help them to listen better, communicate more clearly and foster more inclusive practices at work, Ms Toh said.

She said: “When people are able to see beyond differences and relate to one another with care and respect, it strengthens the social fabric and supports a more inclusive and resilient society.”

Looking back, I realised that until I started reporting on social issues, I hardly interacted with anyone with a disability.

And that distance bred assumptions and unhelpful stereotypes.

Without first-hand interactions or friendships, it becomes so much easier to see only the disability.

It becomes so much easier to reduce the person to someone who needs help and is dependent on others; to reduce the person to a symbol of pity.

But I realised that while they have their limitations and struggles because of their disability, they also have aptitudes and abilities, strengths and weaknesses – just like the rest of us.

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And persons with disabilities are not a homogenous group.

Each disability is different, and the extent of disability is also different for each individual.

Listening to our facilitators’ stories during the Dialogue in the Dark session, it hit home how much we share in common.

That they too are individuals with hopes and dreams, and are trying to live their lives with love, hope and dignity.

Ms Teresa Ng, who is in her 50s, was diagnosed when she was 10 with a condition where the cells in her optic nerves deteriorate over time.

Ms Ng, who works part-time as a facilitator at Dialogue in the Dark Singapore, describes her vision as “very blurry” now.

From a young age, she was determined to lead an independent life, and made her living as a tutor for many years.

A divorcee with two children, Ms Ng also started travelling alone in her 20s.

She said: “I wanted to prove to my parents that I could do it. I also wanted to train myself to be more independent, and be less introverted. By travelling alone, I have to open up and make the effort to talk to strangers.”

She has travelled to over 20 countries so far, including a three-week solo trekking trip in Nepal.

Or take Mr Hidayat Mohamad Yaakob, 36, who became blind as a teenager after an accident while playing soccer.

It took him a few years to accept the total loss of sight, but he has learnt to live his best life – a life which he now describes as exciting.

He performs in a theatre group for persons with disabilities and is also in a percussion band. Mr Hidayat, who works part-time as a facilitator at Dialogue in the Dark Singapore, is also seeking a life partner.

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Seeing them as individuals, not stereotypes

Like the Dialogue in the Dark sessions, the Resilience Trail also invites participants to interact with people facing various challenges and see them as individuals – instead of a stereotype.

As Skillseed’s senior community builder Sheryl Yue said: “Rather than portraying under-resourced communities as beneficiaries passively receiving aid, we showcase their strengths and grit, especially in how they have risen up to address gaps in their community.”

The Resilience Trail I went on was led by a 59-year-old woman with a bone condition that made walking difficult, and she uses a mobility scooter to get around.

Madam Lim, as she wants to be known, fell into depression after losing much of her mobility – and independence – after the illness struck her in her 40s. 

She also had family problems to contend with.

But a neighbour invited her to feed the cats in the community, and the purpose and joy she found in doing so pulled her out of darkness.

Walking around Ang Mo Kio, where she lives, during the trail, I started noticing accessibility-related issues, such as the absence or presence of ramps in the estate and the amount of space for wheelchair and mobility scooters users to navigate at coffee shops and hawker centres.

I also heard the prejudices and misconceptions persons with disabilities faced. And how little they were understood.

Madam Lim said some seniors threatened to report her to the authorities for using a mobility scooter. Just because she’s younger than them, the seniors felt she must be lazy, not believing that she’s using a scooter due to a medical condition.

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Talking to persons with disabilities, one common refrain I hear is how often they feel they are pitied by others and how much they dislike it.

Pity limits their potential, and closes doors for them. They would prefer you to be empathetic and to learn more about their abilities and limitations instead.

For example, Ms Ng once wanted to help out in her church canteen to cook or sell food, but her church friends stopped her out of fear that she might hurt herself. She knows her church friends are well-meaning. But their reaction also saddened her, as she can cook “quite well” at home.

She said: “I don’t like people to feel that because of my disability, I can’t contribute. I feel that no matter how disabled I am, there’s still something I can contribute.”

Ms Ng is now volunteering, as part of her church group, to befriend marginalised families.

As Mr Hidayat told me, what they need is empathy, not pity. 

He said: “When you sympathise, it’s condescending to us like we have no capabilities of our own. 

“By empathising, you understand that even though we have our limitations, we try our very best like everyone else.”

Theresa Tan is the senior social affairs correspondent at The Straits Times. She covers issues that affect families, youth and vulnerable groups.

property interest declining

Singaporeans’ well-known love affair with real estate appears to show signs of waning, especially when it comes to making bricks and mortar part of their retirement planning.

A recent survey by Manulife Singapore that polled over 1,000 people here on their financial readiness showed the value that they placed on property for retirement preparation has significantly declined over the years. 

It found that only about 35 per cent of the poll participants would now consider property to be one of their top two retirement priorities, a significant decline from 65 per cent previously.

This shift is driven by uncertainties about property’s long-term stability and changing views of it as family legacy, the survey found.

Overall, cash remains on top of the pile when it comes to building nest eggs, with 35 per cent of participants swearing by it as their “most important tool for retirement preparation”. Those who view cash as king say that close to half of their current savings and investments is in cash and cash equivalents.

Next on the list is the ubiquitous Central Provident Fund, with 22 per cent relying on its lifelong annuity scheme CPF Life for the bulk of their monthly retirement income. Those who rely on rental income and their property investment are in third place at 19 per cent.

Stable and monthly income is paramount

There is a reason why CPF Life is back in vogue for many retirement planners – starting from 2025, those 55 and older can plan to top up to the enhanced retirement sum (ERS) of $426,000, which will enable them to receive up to $3,300 every month from age 65.

This is a significant jump from the $1,700 monthly payout for those who choose not to top up when $213,000 (the full retirement sum) is moved to their Retirement Account from other CPF accounts at age 55.

Based on estimates by some financial institutions, those who enjoy monthly retirement income of over $3,000 can not only pay for most of their bills, but they can also look forward to short overseas holidays annually.

As payments from CPF Life are guaranteed by the Government, the Monetary Authority of Singapore has confirmed recently that those who receive a payout of at least $15,000 annually are considered creditworthy enough to apply for unsecured loan facilities such as credit cards.

In the past, banks usually look only at other sources of revenue, such as rental income.

Couples can get more

With prices of private properties at a record high, it is probably a tall order to find a decent apartment with a budget of $850,000 and yet expect that unit to generate rental income of at least $6,000 every month.

A couple with such savings can get more bang for their buck than singles because they can enjoy two sets of CPF Life payouts, which will be quite decent if both are in the ERS tier.

A couple who both turn 55 in 2025 and set aside the ERS of $426,000, or $852,000 in total, will get a combined monthly payout of over $6,000 when they hit 65. These payouts will add up to over $72,000 annually, or a whopping $1.44 million over 20 years.

Some people think that having an extra property to generate rental income in their old age is the way to go. In doing so, they deplete their CPF savings and miss out on the opportunity to earn such good income as a couple.

Consider this instead: Make sure both of you can hit the ERS tier for CPF Life to get a good lifelong income. If you still have ample cash, you can consider your two-property dream.

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Fuss-free income

When you retire, you should expect a carefree life without having to worry about the maintenance and paperwork for your investment property or, worse, chasing after tenants for rent.

Moreover, landlords have to report their rental income, which is taxable, as well as pay higher property taxes for investment properties.

Unlike tax-free CPF Life payouts which are expected to be stable, rental income can be affected in a prolonged downturn.

This is probably why many people now prefer having cash over properties, so they will never encounter cash-flow problems when it comes to paying for a good retirement.

Check out Invest editor Tan Ooi Boon’s new book – Retire With More Money – at stbooks.sg

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Tan Ooi Boon writes for and oversees the Invest section of The Straits Times.

hardworking younger healthiest

If you want to know whether a prospective spouse or business partner is diligent in managing money, just look at their lifestyles, such as whether they watch what they eat and how frequently they exercise.

A unique survey by Manulife Singapore that focuses on both wealth and health has found that those who actively save and invest for their retirement also take extra care to watch their weight and general well-being because they know that serious illnesses in old age will set them back financially.

While many financial institutions have in recent years also emphasised the importance of personal well-being in retirement planning, the Manulife Asia Care survey has taken a deep dive to uncover how far some 1,000 Singapore consumers would go to stay healthy for as long as possible.

For instance, the survey found more than half of them would watch their weight diligently as this was the simplest health check everyone could do daily. To achieve their target, these weight watchers would ensure their food contained less salt, sugar and saturated fat.

Other than weighing scales, 44 per cent of them were likely to own battery-operated gadgets that allowed them to monitor their blood pressure and heart rate at home.

When these people went for their regular health screening, the result they usually paid attention to first was their cholesterol level, as this would determine whether they could reward themselves with a rare feast or be stuck on a strict diet for the next few months.

There is still room for improvement though – all of us should try to have a more balanced diet so we do not end up compromising on nutrition by always consuming only certain classes of food.

With more focus on mental well-being nowadays, especially in the workplace, about 43 per cent of surveyed workers here were more conscious of having a better work-life balance.

Some 10 per cent of the poll participants also said they were seeing therapists – a positive sign that seeking help for mental issues is no longer taboo here.

The young watch their health and wealth

It is heartening to note that about 68 per cent of those aged 25 to 34 put more effort into exercising and watching their diet because they know such good habits would enable them to stay healthy longer in old age. As a comparison, barely half of those in the 45 to 54 age group put in a similar effort to live healthier.

As there is much chatter among young people on topics such as financial freedom on social media, it is not surprising that about 90 per cent of them are aware that having sufficient savings is key to mental and physical well-being, especially when they are older.

About 40 per cent of them strive to focus more on their health when they are younger so that they can live life with dignity, and without chronic illnesses or disabilities, for the greater part of their lives.

When asked about the prospect of living longer due to better healthcare, most of those polled said they would value being physically, mentally and financially healthy in their later years than just extending their life span.

“Some also expressed concerns about physical and cognitive decline, further motivating their aspiration to live vibrantly,” the survey noted.

About 24 per cent of those surveyed put staying physically, mentally and socially active as their top retirement wish.

Roughly the same number of people also hoped to accumulate a sufficient nest egg so they could be self-sufficient without having to rely on help from relatives or the Government.

Many don’t plan for mishaps

Many workers, especially the younger ones, do not have health and life insurance coverage, presumably because they think they are adequately covered by their employers’ group insurance policies.

After all, when they seek treatment for their ailments, they can claim for the bulk of such expenses.

As a result, 65 per cent of them do not have critical illness insurance and even more – 85 per cent – are not covered should they become disabled.

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They probably do not realise their employers’ group policies will not take care of them in such cases because the protection here is not about the treatment of the ailments but more on providing emergency income should they become too unwell to work.

Similarly, about 60 per cent of those who do not have any life policies should realise the purpose of such coverage is not meant to benefit them personally but more to ensure their loved ones are taken care of when they are no longer around.

Ironically, even those who do not have health or life policies are likely to buy travel insurance just in case mishaps happen during their holidays overseas. This raises the question: Without any insurance coverage, are they financially able to take care of themselves and their families if mishaps happen in Singapore?

Critical to plan for own needs

It is paramount for each generation to make financial plans for themselves because failing to do so will exact a heavy price on themselves as well as the next generation.

This is especially true for the “sandwiched generation” as they have to take care of their parents and their children.

The Manulife survey found the burden of caregiving might cause many people here to have inadequate funds for their own retirement after they use their savings to care for their parents.

About 65 per of the poll participants had to support their parents, with more than half of them paying for the bulk of their parents’ expenses.

To do so, many of them said they had to either dip into their savings or try to earn more income by working for as long as they can.

If there is a lesson be learnt from the cautionary tale of the financial hardship of caregivers, it is that every generation should strive to take care of their own needs first before they think about leaving something for their beneficiaries.

For instance, many parents hesitate to top up their Retirement Account to enjoy more payouts from CPF Life because they mistakenly believe the money there would be wasted if they die early.

In doing so, they end up not having enough to spend on themselves, which means their children have to bear the extra burden of supporting them.

The reality is Central Provident Fund members’ savings will never go to waste because the unpaid portion of CPF Life plus the balances in the other accounts will all go to their nominated beneficiaries when they die.

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If you truly love your children, show it by being adequately prepared for your own retirement needs, so they do not have to live with the guilt of not having enough to support you through old age.

This is all the more crucial as many people now lead healthy lifestyles so they can live longer.

If everyone is living longer, it pays to plan for decent and lifelong retirement income, such as that from CPF Life, which can pay up to $3,300 per month, so that you never have to worry about paying your own bills in old age.

Check out Invest editor Tan Ooi Boon’s new book – Retire With More Money – at stbooks.sg

workload

Correspondent Elisha Tushara’s Opinion piece “Address teachers’ heavy workload, not just the inconveniences” (Sept 24) hit the nail on the head.

I was a relief form teacher in a primary school for only six months, covering a teacher on maternity leave.

With teaching, lesson preparation, preparing exam papers, marking, and writing student report cards, I was convinced not to enter the profession full-time or otherwise.

There were times when I had no time for even toilet or meal breaks.

If this was the situation more than 25 years ago, the range of duties that a teacher has to cover now makes the teacher’s role even more daunting.

Ms Tushara gave important suggestions for changing the school education system. Just as there are now vice-principals to help in academic and administrative duties, the Ministry of Education should seriously consider “specialist tracks” for education officers to, for example, teach subjects, manage co-curricular activities, or counsel and discipline students.

School leaders also should not have to take students to perform at all sorts of community events.

Events and celebrations involving large-scale participation of students should be reduced, as teachers are inevitably called upon to train and chaperone students.

Last but not least, the bell-curve ranking system for education officers can be demoralising. A former principal did not feel it was right to place any of her hardworking teachers into the last grade. Her solution – share her own bonus payment with these colleagues.

Chan Wai Han

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rt fajt

Forum writer Chan Wai Han’s letter “Relief teaching stint long ago convinced me not to enter the profession” (Sept 26) does not gel with my perspective of relief teaching.

Coincidentally, during the time the writer did relief teaching, I was also a relief English language teacher, spending 10 years in secondary schools.

I was privileged to have been given teaching assignments spanning entire academic years in one school where I was tasked with a full-time teacher’s roles, including co-form teacher and pastoral care after school hours.

Making weekly lesson plans, marking students’ work, setting examination papers, vetting and invigilating were part and parcel of my work.

I took over an absentee teacher’s timetable of 23 periods in class, so there might be a day when there were six consecutive periods and other days where I taught only two periods.

It was up to me to prioritise my workload and fit in mealtimes and toilet breaks.

It might have been daunting at first, but I got used to the routine. Ultimately, it was the thrill of being able to imbue my students with the knowledge and skills in the language that kept me going strong then.

I did not once feel that teaching was a chore.

There were years when I was tasked with teaching upper secondary Normal Technical students that I fumbled at the beginning, but soon picked myself up and learnt how to get them to respond positively to my lessons.

As I look back now, I view those times not as a challenge, but an opportunity given to me to nurture young minds.

A relief teacher’s work is done at 1.30pm on a school day.

A full-time teacher’s work, however, continues till evening and perhaps later. Managing the workload is easier said than done. Each teacher is different in his approach and ability to handle work stress.

In the end, it is up to the individual to ask himself if teaching is what he really wants to do and then be passionate enough to follow his dream to fruition. 

Raymond Han

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lead teachers unsung heroes

For months, my teenage son was lost in a fog of mischief and boredom. He began scribbling inappropriate doodles during class, acting out in the restroom, dozing off at his desk, and locking horns with his subject teacher. His once-steady grades also plummeted.

To many, he was just another “disruptive” teen. But my son’s school, Bedok View Secondary, was willing to work collaboratively to help him grow.

In the lead-up to the recent mid-year parent-teacher meeting, I had a few conversations with my son’s lead teacher, form teacher and the school’s discipline master.

During the meeting, which my son also attended, the lead teacher closed his report card, and gently but firmly said: “This isn’t about academics. Tell me what’s really happening.”  

In that moment, I realised the true power of a teacher who looks beyond the surface. While others reacted to the symptoms, he sought the cause. He understood that teens don’t act out without reason – they communicate in the only ways they know how. 

Teachers like the lead teacher are society’s unsung heroes. They don’t just teach subjects or languages, they read the defiance masking misguided thoughts and actions and see the child that needed subtle mentoring. 

They’re not just shaping students, they’re rebuilding futures. 

Lee Wee Sian

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teaching

Teaching is a calling.

One does not join the profession to get rich. In Singapore, educators are better paid than their peers in many parts of the world, but the pay is still not much compared with what one may get in the private sector.

More often than not, someone becomes a teacher because he wants to touch lives and help change the world in a small way. Perhaps he had a good teacher when he was a student, and now wants to pay it forward.

Teaching in Singapore in the 21st century is not an easy task. Expectations have definitely changed since the 80s and 90s – expectations from the Ministry of Education, and from various stakeholders such as school boards, parents and students.

It is tough teaching digital natives when one is a digital immigrant. It is not easy juggling lesson preparation, marking assignments and tests, co-curricular activities, the duties of a form teacher, and school committee work.

It is challenging to keep up with new policies as they are rolled out. There is plenty of on-the-job training to gain experience in handling delinquent students with poor family support, students with socio-emotional problems, and students with undiagnosed special educational needs.

It is daunting to teach subjects like languages, now that the use of artificial intelligence has become widespread, as it is teaching subjects like mathematics and the humanities, because the age-old question from students – “Why do we need to learn this?” – is becoming increasingly difficult to answer.

Let us remember that teachers are human too. Besides their professional role, they are also parents, children and siblings. Burnout is very real, especially when respect for the profession has somewhat diminished from Singapore’s nation-building years.

I therefore disagree with the saying that goes “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach”, and would like to instead say: “Those who can, teach.”

This September, let us wish teachers a very happy Teachers’ Day.

Julian Teo Eng Keat

trust for a house from pary

Last summer, after years of bouncing from rental to rental, Ms Brianna Racoosin bought her dream home, a sunny two-bedroom condo in Brooklyn. To cover the US$1.1 million (S$1.4 million) price tag, Ms Racoosin, an art teacher at a public high school, didn’t take out a mortgage; she paid in cash, thanks to a trust set up by her parents.

“I never thought that I would use the money to buy until I had a partner or a family,” Ms Racoosin said. “But then I was like, what’s the point of waiting?”

While generational wealth may be a subject of contempt, and envy, Ms Racoosin, 30, is far from alone when it comes to relying on family money to get a leg up in the housing market. About one in five Gen Z and millennial home buyers in the United States relied on gifts from family to help with down payments, according to a study released by Redfin.

Ms Danielle Nazinitsky, an agent with Decode Real Estate who worked with Ms Racoosin: “A lot of people don’t want to talk about gifting, even though everyone has help.”

In a historically tight housing market, parental support can help put home ownership within reach. Still, there’s a lot to consider before you turn to the bank of mum and dad. Here’s what you need to know.

Why are homebuyers turning to their parents?

A perfect storm of factors is making it especially difficult for prospective home owners in the millennial and Gen Z age groups to buy using entirely their own means.

“It’s the trifecta of high rates, high prices and rising insurance costs, which just makes it really hard for somebody when they’re starting out,” said Mr Bill Banfield, chief business officer of Rocket. “And this is all exacerbated by lower inventory levels.”

Ms Glennda Baker, a real estate broker, wrote in an e-mail that there was “fierce competition” for first-time buyers in her area and in other markets.

“More than 30 per cent of our first-time homes are being gobbled up by private equity and hedge fund buyers,” she said.

Even if someone has squirrelled away enough money for a down payment without help, the average home buyer would still struggle to afford the mortgage payments.

A median-income American family would need a US$17,000 salary increase to afford an average home, according to a Zillow study released this summer.

How can parents help?

There are a handful of ways parents can help their children buy a home, each with its own set of considerations.

The most common, and the most straightforward, is a cash gift, whether that’s by chipping in towards a down payment or funding the entire purchase.

There are a few drawbacks to cash gifts, said Ms Deanna Cascella, a wealth and estate planning strategist at Morgan Stanley, including a lack of financial protection: No one is stopping your child from, say, embarking on a spending spree instead of purchasing a home.

“But the pro is that it’s really simple and you’re done,” she said.

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If you’re looking for more guardrails, a less common option is a gift in trust.

In this situation, the trust is the owner of the property, not the child.

While a more complicated option, it’s a strategic one as far as estate planning is concerned.

Some parents may opt to co-sign a mortgage with their children to increase their approval odds. But that also has risks.

“Both the parent and the child are responsible and obligated to the loan,” Rocket’s Mr Banfield said. “If something goes wrong, it affects both people’s credit.”

Parents can also choose to loan their children money, which could have better terms than a mortgage rate. For this option, a lawyer is necessary.

“It’s pretty simple to administer, but it does introduce a formality and makes sure that the I’s are dotted and the T’s crossed,” Ms Cascella said.

How do you start the conversation?

If a future home buyer is thinking of approaching their parents for help – or conversely, a parent is thinking of helping their child – it’s best to talk candidly and early.

“There are a lot of personal considerations that parents and kids need to talk about, and need to talk about openly, before they make these arrangements, because the home purchase can affect people right now and then long into the future,” Ms Cascella said.

Before broaching the conversation, do your research.

“There’s nothing wrong with asking for help. But you want to do it in the appropriate way,” said Mr Ramit Sethi, a personal finance expert who hosts the Money For Couples podcast. “You always want to explain why you are asking – and then, of course, you want to give them an out.”

Parents, too, need to decide if lending a helping hand makes sense for them.

“As you age, there are a lot of unexpected expenses that might come up, so ensuring that your financial support isn’t going to inhibit your long-term financial health is really important,” said Ms Amanda Shur, a housing trends expert at StreetEasy. “It’s really important that parents speak with a financial adviser to make sure that they’re gifting the money in the most prudent way.”

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How parents can prevent disputes over their properties

Also, consider your relationship with your parents and the level of involvement you’re comfortable with. Would they hold the contributions over your head? Would they expect to be present at every house tour or have the final say over the purchase?

“Emotionally, I always advise setting boundaries up front – who’s in charge of the decisions, how communication will work and whether this is a gift or a loan,” said Ms Baker, the real estate broker.

Mr Matt Laricy, an agent in Chicago, has seen family dynamics go awry. “Sometimes it’s like watching the Kardashians,” he said. “Like, you don’t want to see it, but it’s kind of fun being in the middle of it.”

Who needs to know?

If you’re accepting a gift from your parents, a few parties need to be in the loop.

It’s always a good idea to keep your real estate agent informed. If a cash gift goes towards your down payment, you’ll likely need to document it with your lender in the form of a letter. This assures your lender that the money is a gift, not a loan.

Make sure the money is given in a single transaction and that it lands in your account early. After 60 days, the funds are considered “seasoned”, which helps confirm to the lender that the funds are truly yours, according to Rocket Mortgage.

Who you tell beyond the necessary parties is subjective. It’s wise, for instance, to be transparent with siblings to avoid conflict. If you’re married, it’s important to keep your spouse in the loop, whether you’re receiving the gift or the one doing the gifting.

When it comes to friends and peers, though, sharing that your parents helped you buy your house might be a murkier decision. For Ms Racoosin, who relied on a trust fund to purchase her house, it was complicated.

“It is something that I felt guilty about,” she said. “There’s so many people who are working really hard that aren’t able to do this. And so, like, who am I to say that I own this place?”

Those feelings, Money For Couples’ Mr Sethi said, reveal the love-hate relationship Americans have with family money.

“It’s one of the most taboo topics in personal finance,” he said, “yet, so many people orient their entire financial lives to give wealth to the next generation.”

Before diving into home ownership, Mr Sethi said, it’s important to get real with your finances and refrain from judgment – whether your parents are giving you a boost or not. NYTIMES

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Why you are not as selfish as you think

28 July 2025

Matt Warren

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Serenity Strull/ BBC Two hands cut out of paper - one red, the other grey – touch a multicoloured ball. The background is bright blue (Credit: Serenity Strull/ BBC)Serenity Strull/ BBC

Science suggests we are hardwired for altruism, but do we really need to be thinking of others all the time?

Whenever I fly, one line jumps out from the pre-flight safety briefing. Somewhere between "welcome aboard" and "use this whistle for attracting attention", we're reminded to "put on your own oxygen mask before helping others".

This is, essentially, an official instruction to be "selfish". And it is sage advice if there's an emergency at 33,000ft and 550mph (10,000m and (890km/h). If the cabin depressurises, you won't be able to assist others if you black out from oxygen starvation.

But on the other hand, in a world that often seems to reward narcissism, there could be a risk that that same line speaks to a somewhat troubling life philosophy. The idea that you should always put yourself first – and that selfishness trumps altruism.

Individualism was defined by social psychologist Geert Hofstede as "the extent to which people feel independent, as opposed to being interdependent as members of larger wholes". And in many parts of the world, particularly the West, individualism is not only endemic, but increasingly on trend. The question is whether that's a good thing or not.

Elements of psychology, economics and biology – not least the ideas of selfish genes and neo-Darwinism – have normalised the assumption that competition means humans are intrinsically cruel, ruthless or selfish, says Steve Taylor, a senior lecturer in psychology at Leeds Beckett University. But while we clearly can all be selfish – our brain's first job, after all, is arguably to keep us alive – he adds that new research paints a more optimistic picture, challenging the somewhat gloomy notion that we only ever prioritise ourselves.

Take the "bystander effect", which first emerged in the 1960s. This is the widely cited idea that people typically avoid intervening in a crisis when others are nearby. The theory followed outrage over the 1964 New York murder of Kitty Genovese, a 28-year-old bartender who was reportedly raped and killed in front of nearly 40 witnesses, none of whom helped.

But the final detail of the story behind the "bystander effect" appears to be an apocryphal one. While, tragically, Genovese really was sexually assaulted and murdered, investigations suggest that reports of there being 38 passive bystanders were inaccurate. One 2007 paper, for example, stated there was no evidence that any people witnessed Genovese's murder and simply did nothing. The story, the researchers surmised, was a "modern parable, the telling of which has served to limit the scope of inquiry into emergency helping".

Volunteering has been linked to improved mental health, self-esteem and self-efficacy, and reduced feelings of loneliness

Research suggests that people are actually more than willing to prioritise others' safety over their own in many situations. A paper published in 2020, for example, investigated CCTV recordings of violent attacks in the UK, the Netherlands and South Africa. It found that one or more people had tried to assist in nine out of 10 of the attacks – with bigger groups making an intervention more, not less likely.

You might argue that even so-called "have-a-go-heroes" are on some level motivated by self-gratification, perhaps to gain group approval. But a 2014 study about recipients of the Carnegie Hero Medal, awarded to people who have risked their lives for others, found that such extreme altruists, largely described their actions as intuitive rather than deliberative, suggesting their altruism was a reflexive, or "automatic" response. It's something we are when we don't have time to think.

"There is a superficial level at which we can operate selfishly, and we often do," says Taylor whose book, DisConnected, explores how certain human behaviours can cause social problems. "But that's at the level of our ego, or socially constructed identity." Humans also have the capacity to be impulsively altruistic, he adds.

In May 2017, for example, a suicide bomber attacked an Ariana Grande concert in Taylor's home city: Manchester. A total of 22 people were killed and more than a thousand were injured. Despite the ongoing risk to survivors, however, the Kerslake Report, an independent review into the atrocity, highlighted "hundreds if not thousands of acts of individual bravery and selflessness". Similar cases of heroic altruism have been documented during 9/11 and the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks. 

There are evolutionary reasons for human altruism, Taylor says. For most of our history, we have lived in tribes as hunter-gatherers – highly cooperative groups.

"There's no reason why early human beings should be competitive or individualistic," says Taylor. "That would not have helped our survival at all. It would have actually endangered our survival."

Some anthropological studies suggest that groups who still live in a similar way to our early ancestors remain egalitarian in how they share resources. 

Serenity Strull/ BBC Humans appear to be hardwired to help others despite the increasingly individualistic nature of societies around the world (Credit: Serenity Strull/ BBC)Serenity Strull/ BBC

Humans appear to be hardwired to help others despite the increasingly individualistic nature of societies around the world (Credit: Serenity Strull/ BBC)

Research in children also suggests that we are "born altruistic", says Ching-Yu Huang, director of the Cambridge Alliance of Legal Psychology, a private company, in the UK and chief executive of National Taiwan University Children & Family Research Center.

Some studies have found that even 14- to 18-month-old infants will go out of their way to help others and cooperate in order to achieve a shared goal – specifically by handing over objects others couldn't reach. And young children will do this even if there's no reward on offer. A 2013 review of similar studies, for example, suggested that young children's prosocial behaviour is "intrinsically motivated by concern for others' welfare".

Being kind also makes us feel good. Volunteering, for example, has been linked to improved mental health, self-esteem and self-efficacy, and reduced feelings of loneliness. And there are physical benefits, too. Regular volunteers who were assessed as part of a study published in 2013 were 40% less likely to develop high blood pressure than those who didn't frequently volunteer. Altruism of this kind has even been associated with a reduced risk of mortality, though it's not yet clear why. 

"There's such a strong association between wellbeing and altruism that it would be foolish not to live altruistically," argues Taylor.

The very structure of our brains might help dictate our predisposition towards altruism. Abigail Marsh, a neuroscientist at Georgetown University in the US, and her team have used brain scans to look for differences between people who had donated a kidney to a stranger and those who hadn't.

The organ-donating altruists had larger right amygdalae (brain regions associated with emotion), than the non-donor control group. The donors also showed increased activity in this region when viewing pictures of fearful facial expressions, perhaps making them more perceptive of and responsive to others' feelings. Indeed, the results from the donor group were the opposite of what you'd expect to see in psychopathic individuals.

Science suggests that most of us have the hardware to be selfless, often extraordinarily so. But that doesn't mean we can – or should – be selfless all the time. Whether we prioritise ourselves or others depends partly on circumstances, our prior experience and our culture.

I learned that, actually, I do sometimes need to be a female tiger – Ching-Yu Huang

Tony Milligan is a research fellow in the philosophy of ethics at King's College London. People should acknowledge that the vast majority of us are "morally mediocre", he says. But this isn't as uninspiring as it sounds.

Milligan argues that people tend to overestimate their own moral goodness. And this may have a particular impact when we are making deliberative, rather than automatic, decisions about our priorities. "Almost everyone we know is morally mediocre," he says, adding that it's unrealistic for most of us to try and copy the lives of extremely altruistic figures such as Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, Jesus or Buddha. "We can act in the light of them, but if you're not one of those statistical anomalies, we need to recognise that we really are in the middle."

According to Milligan, overestimating our moral goodness can leave us feeling guilty and disappointed when we inevitably fail to live up to overinflated standards. "The question you need to ask yourself is not 'What would Buddha do?'," he says, "But, 'What am I capable of? Is this within my reach?'."

This, he adds, requires some humility and self-knowledge. Because if we have a realistic appraisal of what we're capable of, we will be better able to consider others when we make decisions.

"You shouldn't be thinking of this in terms of developing something you can show off to other people, as something that will make you admired," says Milligan. "Think of it more as developing a skill. A skill is something that you slowly, incrementally work on improving."

People's altruistic tendencies are likely also greatly influenced by their experiences and culture.

Serenity Strull/ BBC The culture we grow up in, our past experiences and the circumstances we find ourselves in all contribute to how selfless we tend to be (Credit: Serenity Strull/ BBC)Serenity Strull/ BBC

The culture we grow up in, our past experiences and the circumstances we find ourselves in all contribute to how selfless we tend to be (Credit: Serenity Strull/ BBC)

Some countries, such as the UK and US, are more individualistic than others, such as many Asian countries, which are generally considered more collectivistic, where people prioritise the good of the wider group over themselves. This impacts not only how selfish or altruistic people tend to be but also the degree to which selfless acts are viewed as being either a choice, or a responsibility.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, for example, researchers found that people living in collectivistic cultures were more likely to wear masks than those in individualistic ones. The former group were more inclined to try and protect others. This difference between East and West is one that Huang has experienced personally.

She spent her childhood in Taiwan, which she describes as collectivistic, before settling for extended periods in the comparatively individualistic US and UK.

"I was brought up to really put everybody else first," says Huang. "If you're a woman, particularly a young woman, who wants to put yourself first and show your ability, this is actually really looked down on in this culture. They would call you a 'female tiger', the implication being that you're aggressive."

When Huang moved to the US and later the UK, she found it was more acceptable to prioritise herself – but initially held herself back because of her upbringing. Gradually, she found herself able to express her confidence and abilities: "I learned that, actually, I do sometimes need to be a female tiger, especially in the career sense."

Such cultural differences are captured in Huang's own research. She has explored two forms of compliance – "committed compliance" (in which you happily comply with instructions) and "situational compliance" (in which you comply even though you're reluctant to do so) – within three groups: young children from Taiwan; non-immigrant, white English families in the UK; and Chinese immigrant families in the UK. 

While all groups showed the same level of committed compliance, the Taiwanese children demonstrated much greater situational compliance because they were more likely to prioritise their parents' instructions over their own desires versus the white English and Chinese immigrant children who had grown up in the more individualistic UK.

The responsibility to always prioritise others can become overwhelming

In collectivistic cultures "we're more likely to comply even if we don't really want to", says Huang.

That doesn't mean there's one right way to do things. While altruism can benefit both ourselves and others, we do need to be mindful of our own needs and how past experiences, context and culture influence our behaviour. 

More like this:

• Why being kind to others is good for your health

• Should you ever cut ties with your parents?

• Why you feel lonely even when surrounded by people

"Things become hard in cultures where the expectation always to be altruistic is supercharged," says Huang, "such as in Taiwan when you're a young woman." Essentially, the responsibility to always prioritise others can become overwhelming.

Most of us are capable of extraordinary selflessness and altruism appears to be something that does us good. It has even helped our species to become uniquely successful. But our decisions and behaviours are also influenced by a wide range of factors, from culture to our own "moral mediocrity". In other words, helping others is great – but recognise that it's okay to look after yourself too.

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