Rental being the major cost doesn't mean you have to pay $1,200 to a cleaner. You want to maximize profit and reduce all costs.
The owner wants to pay the least possible amount for any labor. He is not running a charity. This has got nothing to do with the amount of rent he pays.
you are right, no business is a charity. but companies in singapore are by far greedier than companies in the rest of the world. in Sg, labour (wages) as a % of national income (GDP), has the lowest share in Asia. behind indonesia, vietnam, pinoy, mat land, thailand.
there is only 1 moral of the story here: DON'T BE A WAGE SLAVE IN SINGAPORE. start a business, hire workers and exploit cheap labour.
4 legs good, 2 legs bad.....
"Finally, high corporate savings are a major contributor to high aggregate national savings. In Asia these result from a number of structural features of the corporate sector.
Large low-income China and small high-income Singapore represent the two extreme cases, with the lowest shares of labour (wages) in national income, and consumption ratios at or below only 40 per cent of GDP (versus the Asian average of 55 per cent). Moreover, in each case these shares have steadily declined over the past two decades. Malaysia ranks a close third.
Both China and Singapore are correspondingly characterized by high and rising shares in GDP of state-owned enterprises or government-linked corporations, and of multinational corporations—
none of which have built-in incentives to distribute corporate income where it is produced, preferring reinvestment for growth. Multinationals are often beneficiaries of host country tax breaks or other investment incentives that reduce local income distribution, and are obligated to remit income overseas to their predominantly home-country shareholders. "
- linda YC lim;
http://www.voxeu.org/reports/global_imbalances.pdf
