as an eminent personality has so rightly observed, about stinkypura.
Most of the local population, however, did not benefit commensurately from the increase in foreign economic activity. Many Singaporeans were employed as lowly paid rickshaw pullers, boatmen, fishermen or market gardeners. These coolies lived in shophouses, often in crammed and squalid conditions. A domestic economy sprang up within the community, with vendors and artisans offering a panoply of services ranging from street food to haircuts. Opium dens and prostitute houses proliferated.
more pertinent observations
World economic order
WWII had a more significant impact on Singapore’s economic development than is commonly acknowledged. In 1944, hundreds of delegates were invited to a conference held in a resort town in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire in the United States (US) to establish a new system of monetary management and commercial relations among Allied nations. Commonly known as the Bretton Woods system (later coined as the Washington Consensus), the agreement heralded an era of market principles that focused on free trade and profit maximisation for corporations. At the heart of this ideology was the belief that markets across the world should be opened up with the lowest possible tariffs and the least amount of interference in the operations of private business. This ideology was championed by big Western corporations, which were constantly on the lookout for new markets and cheap labour. The inevitable corollary was that economic expansion following the ratification of the Bretton Woods system often occurred at the expense of the economies and workforces in which the corporations operated. The system also promoted a new post-war economic philosophy, sometimes called market fundamentalism, which favoured capital over labour. Some of its ideas included: Lowering personal income tax rates, a measure which benefits mainly the ultrarich; Lowering corporate tax rates, ostensibly to stimulate economic growth; Introducing indirect taxes such as the Goods and Services Tax (GST) or valueadded tax (VAT); Reducing trade tariffs to a minimum; Allowing economies to compete on reducing taxes. Following the defeat of the Axis powers, the West was free to shape the world economic order. However, it had to contend with the rise of communism. The struggle for economic supremacy between these two ideologies pervaded Asia. When the Japanese surrendered in 1945, the British returned to govern Singapore, but their hold on the island had been fatally weakened. The local population grew increasingly restive and calls for independence became louder.
This culminated in the first-ever elections, held in 1955, which saw David Marshall elected as the chief minister of a limited local government. Marshall subsequently stepped down when he failed to secure independence for Singapore. In 1959, the PAP, led by Lee Kuan Yew, came into power. Lee’s victory was made possible because of the backing of the British who had repeatedly detained without trial his opponents before and after 1959 (see Chapter 15). Lim Chin Siong, a founding member of the PAP, was a charismatic party leader who led the left-leaning faction of the PAP. Lim was imprisoned without trial which allowed Lee to claim power in the party, and eventually Singapore, even though it was acknowledged that Lim was the more popular leader (see Chapter 15). Great Britain favoured Lee because it felt that it could trust him to remain faithful to the West’s economic ideology. Singapore has since remained under authoritarian control for more than half a century. During this time, the country’s economy has maintained a hybrid form of statism and market fundamentalism
