Posted on 07/15/2010 4:35:12 AM PDT by Cronos
Singapore is on pace to be among the world’s fastest-growing economies this year, after a spurt in the first half prompted the government on Wednesday to project an expansion of as much as 15 percent for 2010. That would be four times the pace at which the United States economy is expected to grow.
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Singapore is one of the Asia-Pacific region’s most open economies, serving as a major financial center and as an important production and research hub for pharmaceuticals and electronics.
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The main driver was the manufacturing sector, which expanded 46 percent, thanks to gains in biomedical production, as well as strong growth in the electronics cluster, which benefited from healthy worldwide demand, the Ministry of Trade and Industry said.
The services sector benefited from tourism inflows after the opening of two casino resorts this year.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Looks like Jim Rogers was right
I think a large part of it is capital inflows from companies and individuals wanting to have their money offshore.
My husband, 2 kids and I lived there for 4 years in the mid 90’s. We loved it...had a great time. Hubby is actually there right now on business.
What is the general sense of the ‘rule of law’ in Singapore?
Practically crime-free, even late at night, but do exercise reasonable caution wherever you are.
The competition between Singapore and Dubai will be a major factor in the continued decline of Europe. The colonies will surpass the colonialists.
The future is China. Those who control the flow in and out will prosper on a scale never before known.
Yes - and compulsory retirement savings - 10% of it all - and it goes into a PRIVATE account you own.
At least, I think this is Singapore...
Also, about the corruption among public officials. Is bribery necessary for business continuation?
If you look around, there are few places that actually enforce laws and regulations that are necessary in a ‘business’ climate.
A country an engineer can love. Best form of government... more-or-less a benevolent dictatorship, and that is not really bad. Right things get done and the greater good is most generally served.
New subway / commuter rail system, gum being thrown on the floor = ask this end, no response = ban the sale of gum... logical to me.
Key a car = get a whipping / caning = not many cars get keyed in Singapore and not by the same person twice
Drugs = death penalty (you get really nervous about someone making you and unwitting mule though so you check and check and check)
The trouble with benevolent dictatorships is this - when they turn non-benevolent, there’s nothing you can do other than to engage in armed revolt. To paraphrase (loosely) Churchill: democracy (including democratic republics, such as the U.S.) may be the worst form of government; unfortunately, all the rest are even worse.
No doubt you are correct. However, I would not want the citizens of Singapore against me. There is a healthy tension there against non-benevolence and not much place to run.
Amazing they can produce a squadron of pretty good pilots from such a relatively small population and buy the best F-15Es we have to offer (save for the SE). They have a permanent party at MHAFB for about 25 years from now as a training squadron. Their F-15S is a better version than we can put in the air. It has the engines we should have.
Don’t forget the other secret to Singapore’s success: an authoritarian government that isn’t particularly oriented to the so-called will of the people.
I have made no secret of the fact that I think representative government is bad government. Man is psychologically suited for hierarchy, not democracy; any attempt to devolve power to the consent of the governed ends in chaos, as competing interest groups struggle to hack the system to their advantage. Sooner or later one group achieves dominance — and you’ve got a hierarchy again. And since it all ends in hierarchy anyway, why not skip the whole pointless charade of voting and elections?
Fact: people want to be ruled. Fact: people will be ruled, either by a ruler who springs from the tradition and culture of the nation (a king) or by the toughest gang leader on the block (a dictator). Singapore is a dictatorship — a soft dictatorship, one that is wrapped in cushioning layers of bureaucracy and which recognizes limits to power — but a dictatorship in everything but name. It is not a “free” country, because the people there do not want “freedom” in the Western sense. They want order, peace, and justice, without which no nation is truly free.
Let’s praise Singapore for its economics (which aren’t really capitalist at all — but that’s another post), but let’s also honestly admit that its undemocratic, unrepresentative government is a factor in its success, too.
You have certainly "forgotten" to ask me and hundreds of millions of your fellow Americans, including those who died for freedom from tyranny. The "fact" you mention and the notions you enunciate exist only in your head.
The same is true of representative republics such as the United States.
The President of the United States can, if he wishes, declare a state of emergency and suspend elections indefinitely. He can create a private army and have its operators kill anyone he deems to be threat. He can transfer legislative power from Congress to a shadow government located in a secret, secure facility. He can seize and nationalize any or all industries, cut off water and power supplies to any locality, and prevent air, rail, and road travel between the states or between the U.S. and foreign nations. He can cut off telecommunications, silence broadcasters, seize publishers, and abolish any association or private group. He can send federal officers to surround your home, shoot your wife and children, grind their bodies to mush under the tread of a tank, and burn all the evidence to cinders. He can have you detained without arrest, transported to a secret location at home or abroad, and held incommunicado for as long as he likes. He can use torture and extortion to extract information from detainees. He can order soldiers to assume control of any state or local government, and shoot anyone who protests. And, provided he can convince one other man to join him, he can pick up a telephone and in one hour seventy million people will be dead.
These are all powers the President of the United States legally and constitutionally possesses right now. Now, if the president were to turn "non-benevolent", what could you do about it?
NOTHING, that's what.
Friend, there's no difference between our "free" country and a benevolent dictatorship. You may feel free, but realize the freedom we have to change or control the government is an illusion, one which can be terminated at any time. If those who control the federal government decide not to respect the will of the people, or ignore the Constitution, there isn't a damned thing the people can do about it. The Constitution is just words on parchment, which only mean what the Supreme Court says they mean. If you think the Constitution has any power to protect you, you are fooling yourself. All presidents ignore the Constitution when it suits them; in fact, it's probably not possible to govern this country constitutionally.
Of course, in the final analysis the President has no real power of his own. He only has power as long as the majority of our armed forces obey his orders. Should they stop doing so, the power of the presidency vanishes. Does anybody really doubt that the Army could depose the president and assume political control of the country if its leaders decided such was necessary? If you do, you are whistling past the graveyard of history.
Ultimately, the true power in the U.S.A., as in every country, is the person or group to which the majority of the army is loyal. Might can never truly make right, but it surely can make people shut up and do as they are told. In the end, our freedom depends upon the good will and Christian conscience of the leaders of our armed forces. In other words, upon the continued benevolence of benevolent dictators.
Because he held his authority "by the grace of God", there were some things even a king could not do. Should a king exceed his authority, the Church could release his vassals and subjects from their duty to obey him. Bad kings thus become outlaws, and it became the duty of their vassals to depose them.
Our rulers are children of the atheistic Enlightenment. They know no God, and consequently can do whatever they please. If you don't believe that, you are fooling yourself.
Weird country where they have elections, but the party in power (1) controls the local press by holding over them the threat of yanking their license to publish, (2) prevents - via libel suits - the opposition from campaigning; they can smear the opposition, but the opposition can’t repeat factual information about them and (3) places economic pressure on companies whose employees or proprietors run for office. By all indications, the counting of votes is fair, but the Potemkin-style press, electioneering constraints and limited opposition slate (think cab drivers and janitors) mean that it’s pretty much a one-party state. Much more open that some place like China, but not exactly a free and open democracy.
But why could it? Only because the power granted to it by the populous. You suggest, correctly, that monarchy was limited by the power of other social institutions --- e.g., Church. If people held church in the same esteem, it could perform the same function today, imposing limitations on the government (not formally, of course, but by affecting opinions of people). Hence the distinctions we --- by your own logic --- do not necessarily imply the superiority of monarchy: they are more parsimoniously described by the weaknesses of other institutions (e.g., church).
The attribution is spurious for yet another reason: under the same system we have today, IRS could not take 50% of possessions: until the Civil War we did not even have an commissioner of internal revenue. Even in this century, the income tax initially small and affected only a small percentage of the population. It is therefore not a system itself but its particular implementation (influenced by the relative strength of other institutions) that is in question here. You also conveniently overlook the abuses of the Church over centuries that were not mitigated at all.
You chose to focus, moreover, on the economic restrictions, whereas the greatest benefits of democracy may lie elsewhere.
Finally, you don't know what's in my head, and I never claimed that I am entirely free from freedom. You thus commit two logical fallacies here: a leap of faith, and taking part for a whole. The latter appears to be persistent in your thinking: to wit, if democracy degenerates, why not dispose with it altogether. Not only it is illogical but breathtakingly naive: since all of us going to die, why not commit suicide at the first possible opportunity. In fact, since you know your children will have the same fate, why not kill them in childhood or better still not to have them at all.
In sum, you appear to have first developed a sentiment for monarchy and then manipulate the facts and logic --- very, very problematically --- to arrive at the desired conclusion.
Hey griswold3, I’m not really sure bribing is a way in Singapore. I’d probably guess that it could get you into trouble if you choose to bribe someone there.
The short answer is, attempting to bribe a public official here is basically a ticket to jail.
From the 2010 Index of Economic Freedom by the Heritage Foundation:
“Corruption is perceived as almost nonexistent. Singapore ranks 4th out of 179 countries in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index for 2008. The government enforces strong anti-corruption laws. It is a crime for a citizen to bribe a foreign official or any other person, within or outside of Singapore.”
http://www.heritage.org/Index/country/Singapore#freedom-from-corruption
Singapore ranks #3 on the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index 2009, just after New Zealand and Denmark, and before Sweden and Switzerland (US = #19).
http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2009/cpi_2009_table
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