"Not every finger is the same size. Some are bigger than others."

He turned to me triumphantly. "All people are different in just the same way. Of course some will have more money than others."

The film Crazy Rich Asians has become an unlikely blockbuster, again updating our vision of the island city-state. Nobody bothers talking about Singapore as an ‘Asian miracle’ any more – the time for polite patronage disappeared long ago. What the film does is simply state, in a sympathetic, indulgent, and fascinating way, how different the lives of the island's wealthiest citizens are from those of ordinary people.

The taxi continued driving through the tropically fringed streets of Adam Park. It’s one of the island's better suburbs, with a few pleasant bungalows – but still nowhere near the top rung, of course. Why, even we’d been able to afford to live here for a couple of years in the late ’90s, when my wife Catherine McGrath was the ABC’s south-east Asia correspondent.

Today, just like Fairfax, the Corporation can’t afford to base a journalist in the city-state.

“Too expensive, lah!”

To really get the Singaporean flavour of that sentence, though, you’ve got to say it aloud, giving space to each syllable, and uttering them as if you’re pulling out wads of cash from your wallet and handing them over to a rapacious landlord.

“Ex-pen-sive.”

Money rules in Singapore. It’s naked in its dominance, triumphant in its power, mighty and uncontested. It is the arbiter of all things.

Very quickly, though, we had left the secluded park and were back driving beneath the towering flats of the housing development board (HDB); small units with drying washing hung from the balconies and shared, open gardens below. This is how most people live their lives. You won’t find them attending the “Asian launch of Bulgari’s latest high jewellery collection” (where the retailer took over a five-star hotel for four days to host private appointments) or indulging in the pleasure of a quick break to their luxury house in New Zealand.

It's always been a bit like this, of course. When my then three-year-old daughter was invited to one of her Singaporean friends’ birthday parties, I was astonished to find it was in the grand ballroom of the prestigious Orchard Road hotel. I shouldn't have been surprised. The baby seat fitted into the two-seater Porsche should have given away to me what was undoubtedly obvious to others: being Singapore rich really is something else.

The Economist Intelligence Unit lists Singapore as the most expensive city in the world to live in (Sydney jumped four places this year, just managing to nudge into 10th spot). A full-page advertisement urges parents to ensure their child is enrolled in a dual language school because "only excellence can guarantee your child's success in life." And this, after all, is what life is all about. Wealth becomes the ultimate measure of happiness. Without it, life is squalid.

It’s no use holding up "happiness" as a value in itself.

The gap between the wealthy and the poor is so huge; their outcomes so disparate; that no one wants to risk being left behind.

Which leaves a lingering question of cohesion.

In one sense even to pose this question appears ridiculous. Singapore voted the People's Action Party into government in its first election, back in 1959, and has continued reinstalling it ever since. Democratic opposition has been quashed. There are large Malay and Indian minorities, but more than 70 per cent of the island is ethnic Chinese. Everyone still performs two years of national service. The economy has expanded enormously. Everyone has a roof over their heads and everyone eats – it’s just that some eat far better than others. Singapore’s fertility rate has continued to decline as well, now standing at only 1.16 births per woman, the second-lowest figure ever recorded.

Does this mean people are so happy with their lives that they’re too busy enjoying the moment to procreate? Or are they too pressured by money worries to even think about children?

My taxi driver, an older ethnic Chinese man, continued extolling the benefits of life in Singapore until we began talking about children: it was his sore point. He didn’t have grandchildren, he wanted them, but his daughter wasn’t married “and she’s over thirty, lah!”. His ebullience, the verbal stream of consciousness that had occupied the taxi since I hailed it, suddenly dissipated. I was relieved to find myself in silence as he became lost in another world.

We’re all struggling to find meaning in life, even those crazy rich multi, multi-millionaires.

It does seem to be, however, much easier to find happiness in first class rather than travelling in coach.