The wealth gap is widening. The answer isn’t more handouts – it’s a stake
Wage growth can’t keep pace with capital returns in the age of AI. That’s why everyone must be given exposure to financial assets that compound over time.
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A more promising response is Universal Basic Capital or UBC – giving everyone, not just the wealthy, a stake in the assets that are generating outsized returns, says the writer.
PHOTO: LIANHE ZAOBAO
Here’s a statistic on wealth inequality in Singapore that might make you sit up: The average wealth held by the top 20 per cent of households is about $5.3 million per household, more than 18 times that of the bottom 20 per cent, which is $293,000.
The average wealth of the top 20 per cent also dwarfs the average wealth held by all the percentiles of the bottom 80 per cent added up, which totals around $3.5 million. This does not mean the top fifth owns more than the other four-fifths combined, since the latter group is far larger. But it signals a meaningful and troubling disparity in wealth per household.
