As mentioned also in the other forum, the WSJ article is not well-researched, and IMHO, missed the most important point in the budget, which is the company rebate for a portion of their employees' CPF.

Being a city-state, it is rather hard to argue for a consumption model. Assume that CPF are all given out in cash, and people do buy more, majority would go out to consume imported goods that depreciate significantly over time vs the current model where the most logical choice to place CPF is in real estate which does not follow normal depreciation. One of the significant contribution to wealth of our current generation of retirees is the significant appreciation of real estate value and the fact they own (had invested) in them many years back.

On the rich-poor divide, the rich will get significantly richer during the good times, so with bad times, I suspect the rich-poor divide will be brought up less.

My suspect is that the more pressing concern for the government is the threshold point between poor and middle income. There should not be any significant growth in the poor, which will result in civil unrest and political instability.