Robo Chan came home happy. "I just got a pay rise," he told his live-in partner, Anita Hiew.

They went out to celebrate, only to find that food and drink prices have gone up. And then she broke the other piece of happy news to him: "Eh, our 4th child is on the way."

"Wah lao," Robo slapped his forehead with his palm. "Another mouth to feed. Some more, price going up. Like that, I am richer or poorer?"

Got this article from Yawning Bread.

Read that article first before continuing.

Just a primer, in economics I learnt GDP is due to C + I + G + NX, which basically means consumption(by people), investment(by external source), government(spending) and net export.

Just some points I wanna mention from the article..

Theres the part about CPI stood at 104.2 in September 2007, compared to 101.4 in September 2006. So it doesn't really look like theres a lot of increase. However, the statistics failed to mentioned the historical values of CPI. So when yawning bread mentioned

2004   100.0
2006   101.4
2007   104.2

Now.. something looks wrong. 1.4% CPI (or inflation) over 18 months and another 2.6% over 12 months? woah.

Just some other numbers I got from singstat site..

CPI
2005 Q2  100.0
2005 Q3  100.7
2005 Q4  101.3
2006 Q1  101.1
2006 Q2  101.2
2006 Q3  101.5
2006 Q4  101.9
2007 Q1  101.6
2007 Q2  102.2

The other part he mentioned about GDP, CPI and population growth.

In the third quarter 2007, GDP was 9.4 % higher than the same period a year earlier. CPI running at 2.7%. Population growth 4.4%.

Thats just scary. Are we really growing as fast as we think we are?

If you enjoyed this article and found it useful, do subscribe to our Full Feed RSS at the right sidebar. Or, subscribe via email to ensure you won't miss any of the latest article or news!