To what extent has recent higher levels of inflation affected the poor in Singapore? It is interesting that the government did not agree to be interviewed for the  Al Jazeera English report, for they have actually taken numerous steps to help the poor according to their own terms. Whether the government would do more for the poor is more than a simple “challenge-and-response” paradigm that critics of the government would want us to believe. Rather it is a deeper philosophical stance underpinned by a historical paradigm. It is different from the contemporary conservatives in Western societies (pardon the generalization here) where they believe that individuals are ultimately responsible for their own welfare. Rather, the PAP conservatism stems from the notion that individuals, within a collective entity, are responsible for their own welfare. Hence the propagation of Workfare, many helping hands (aka CHARITY plus government) as solutions to the challenges faced by the poor in relations to increasing rise of global capital and in the last decade, labor. The notion of workhouses where the poor would have to regulated by the state to work for wages in Ireland in the eighteenth century and later in China in the early half of the 20th century represents the shift between the former form of conservatism (which ironically is happening today) and the latter form of conservatism. Thinking temporally, the PAP state (and by extension Singapore as a “nation-state”) is a new entity in which it is able to more or less subscribe to this general philosophy of helping the poor. The responses from the opposition parties challenge that form of temporal view by critiquing the rise of global labor in Singapore. The opposition parties, especially the WP, has moved from the calls for reduction in cost of living (which will be mean an overall less market-based mechanism in the economy would be difficult for the PAP and many Singaporeans to swallow) to that for calls in the restriction of labor migration in Singapore. Ironically, the rise of the nation-state in East Asia (with many exceptions) in the post-war and Cold war period demanded a less sanguine view of migration, where nationalism and ethnic identity (be it multi or mono) would be fostered by multiple parties to achieve an idealized imagined community. The post Cold war era meant that nation-states were less important to multiple actors in the pawn of realist ideology in the international sphere, especially the liberals in the West (historically ironic in my view). Is it any wonder that Singapore’s recent aims at increasing migration is neither controversial nor problematic for its allies in the West and the East?  The recent rise in migration into Singapore thus is less of an exception but more of a continuity from the pre-independence period, but of course on the terms of the government rather than that of the colonial authorities, the business sectors and hetergenous political and social bases. Yet, the net negative of migration in Singapore has yet to be properly ascertain (I find this plus and minus nauseous to some extent) but for Singaporeans with a view on the recent past (1960 onwards), such a restriction of labor and henceforth a larger economic pie for Singaporeans is very attractive. By linking the plight of the poor and the level of migration, the opposition has taken the path that may be more popular that it intellectually seems. More interestingly though, will the PAP have to rethink their underlying philosophy on the poor if they want to maintain the high levels of migration into Singapore? Is there a zero-sum game between the levels of assistance towards the poor and the levels of migration in Singapore to the view of contemporary Singapore voters?