Letter to Ms Heffernan – the limts of lessons from Singapore
<small style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 0.9em; line-height: 1.5em; color: rgb(119, 119, 119); text-align: justify;">October 1, 2014</small>Dear Ms Heffernan,
I refer to your 28 Sept 2014 Huffington Post article “The Limits of Ideology: Lessons from Singapore”.
Next year is not the 50th anniversary of the creation of Singapore. Singapore was created in 1819 when it was founded by Sir Stamford Raffles. Next year will be the 196th year of Singapore’s founding and creation.
East Asian Tiger economies
Singapore is no more successful than the other three East Asian Tiger economies. According to the Penn World Tables, Singapore falls behind both South Korea in real per capita GDP growth since 1960.
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Singapore didn’t just become one of the world’s most important ports under PAP or Lee Kuan Yew. Singapore was already the 5th most important port in the world by the early 1930s when Lee Kuan Yew was still a child and long before PAP was born.
Singapore’s financial centre roots can be traced back to colonial times when Singapore served as the banking and financial centre for the surrounding region.
Founding father
Lee Kuan Yew is no founding father of Singapore in any sense of the phrase. Singapore was founded in 1819 by Sir Stamford Raffles not Lee Kuan Yew. There has been no re-founding of Singapore ever since. Lee Kuan Yew did not fight for Singapore’s independence like your founding fathers did. He married us off into Malaysia instead and so caused us to lose our independence to Malaysia. Our independence in 1965 was due to Tungku Abdul Rahman kicking us out of Malaysia, not due to Lee Kuan Yew fighting for our independence. Lee Kuan Yew didn’t even want independence, he cried and cried in front of national television when we separated from Malaysia and ended up convalescing at Changi chalet for 6 weeks. You cannot credit someone who didn’t fight for our independence, who didn’t even want Singapore to be independent, who merely unwillingly received our independence as our founding father. That would be an insult to what founding father means and an insult to all honest Singaporeans.
From Birth to Prosperity
It’s wrong to use the phrase “a nation from birth to prosperity” to describe Singapore post independence because Singapore wasn’t born in 1965 but in 1819 instead.
Singapore was already quite prosperous in 1959. The Penn World Tables puts our 1960 per capita GDP as 3rd in Asia after Iran and Hong Kong. Ours isn’t a rags-to-riches story but a middle income to rich story.
Most importantly, it was our Dutch advisor from the United Nations, Dr Albert Winsemius, not Lee Kuan Yew, who masterminded Singapore’s post independence economic progress.
Discrediting Western principles
Singapore’s inability to solve its problems is not a discredit to Western principles but evidence that it deviates from them. The Western principle of social democracy practiced by Northern and Central European nations has largely resolved the problems you have described – rising inequality, declining social mobility, widening gulf between haves and have-nots, self-entitlement and self-reference of those in power, longest working hours, least happy workers, over half of population wishing to emigrate. The fact of the matter is that for every dollar the Singapore government spends, it takes two back. No matter how it spends, it will always squeeze even more back from the populace. Singapore under the present government will never solve its current problems because it is fundamentally against the Western principle of social democracy.
Thank you
Ng Kok Lim
<small style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 0.9em; line-height: 1.5em; color: rgb(119, 119, 119); text-align: justify;">October 1, 2014</small>Dear Ms Heffernan,
I refer to your 28 Sept 2014 Huffington Post article “The Limits of Ideology: Lessons from Singapore”.
Next year is not the 50th anniversary of the creation of Singapore. Singapore was created in 1819 when it was founded by Sir Stamford Raffles. Next year will be the 196th year of Singapore’s founding and creation.
East Asian Tiger economies
Singapore is no more successful than the other three East Asian Tiger economies. According to the Penn World Tables, Singapore falls behind both South Korea in real per capita GDP growth since 1960.
| Country | 2011 over 1960 per capita real GDP (output) | Country | 2011 over 1960 per capita real GDP (expenditure) |
| Korea, Republic of | 27.1 | Korea, Republic of | 25.6 |
| Taiwan | 14.7 | Singapore | 21.4 |
| Singapore | 9.4 | Taiwan | 15.1 |
| China | 8.8 | Hong Kong | 11.6 |
| Hong Kong | 6 | China | 8.7 |
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Singapore didn’t just become one of the world’s most important ports under PAP or Lee Kuan Yew. Singapore was already the 5th most important port in the world by the early 1930s when Lee Kuan Yew was still a child and long before PAP was born.
• Singapore was already the estimated 5th or 6th most important port in the world by the early 1930s and the key port in the Straits region by the late 19th century
[Goh Kim Chuan, Environment and development in the Straits of Malacca, pages 107, 114]
Financial centre[Goh Kim Chuan, Environment and development in the Straits of Malacca, pages 107, 114]
Singapore’s financial centre roots can be traced back to colonial times when Singapore served as the banking and financial centre for the surrounding region.
Founding father
Lee Kuan Yew is no founding father of Singapore in any sense of the phrase. Singapore was founded in 1819 by Sir Stamford Raffles not Lee Kuan Yew. There has been no re-founding of Singapore ever since. Lee Kuan Yew did not fight for Singapore’s independence like your founding fathers did. He married us off into Malaysia instead and so caused us to lose our independence to Malaysia. Our independence in 1965 was due to Tungku Abdul Rahman kicking us out of Malaysia, not due to Lee Kuan Yew fighting for our independence. Lee Kuan Yew didn’t even want independence, he cried and cried in front of national television when we separated from Malaysia and ended up convalescing at Changi chalet for 6 weeks. You cannot credit someone who didn’t fight for our independence, who didn’t even want Singapore to be independent, who merely unwillingly received our independence as our founding father. That would be an insult to what founding father means and an insult to all honest Singaporeans.
From Birth to Prosperity
It’s wrong to use the phrase “a nation from birth to prosperity” to describe Singapore post independence because Singapore wasn’t born in 1965 but in 1819 instead.
Singapore was already quite prosperous in 1959. The Penn World Tables puts our 1960 per capita GDP as 3rd in Asia after Iran and Hong Kong. Ours isn’t a rags-to-riches story but a middle income to rich story.
Most importantly, it was our Dutch advisor from the United Nations, Dr Albert Winsemius, not Lee Kuan Yew, who masterminded Singapore’s post independence economic progress.
Discrediting Western principles
Singapore’s inability to solve its problems is not a discredit to Western principles but evidence that it deviates from them. The Western principle of social democracy practiced by Northern and Central European nations has largely resolved the problems you have described – rising inequality, declining social mobility, widening gulf between haves and have-nots, self-entitlement and self-reference of those in power, longest working hours, least happy workers, over half of population wishing to emigrate. The fact of the matter is that for every dollar the Singapore government spends, it takes two back. No matter how it spends, it will always squeeze even more back from the populace. Singapore under the present government will never solve its current problems because it is fundamentally against the Western principle of social democracy.
Thank you
Ng Kok Lim
Excerpts from “The Limits of Ideology: Lessons from Singapore” by Margaret Heffernan, CEO and Author, 28 Sept 2014
Next year will see the 50th anniversary of the creating of Singapore, widely hailed as one of the most successful of the Asian tigers. In that short space of time, the tiny nation state has grown into one of the world’s largest financial cities and most important ports. It has done so by becoming the partner every nation wants to work with: efficient, trustworthy and stable. In education, healthcare and economic competitiveness, Singapore routinely occupies a high position in global rankings. So it’s not surprising that commentators like Thomas Friedman often point to Singapore as doing well what the west does badly.
Competitive Meritocracy but Rising Inequality
Commentators routinely praise the competitive nature of Singapore’s schools and civil service. Slavish devotion to exams and credentials, they like to believe, is what bring the best to the top. In the early days of Singapore’s independence, this principle was coupled with the belief that everyone should have a fair shot at success. But as inequality has risen and social mobility has declined, those values look more like a justification for elitism. Does preserving this meritocracy does more to protect those in power than enable those who aspire to it?
Without social mobility and the continuing expansion of choices to the multi-ethnic population, meritocracy can come to feel like intrinsic, existential superiority: the sense that some are intrinsically more deserving than others. The bubble of money and power is isolating, severing the connections between governors and the governed. The surprise that greeted the 2011 election, in which the opposition to the governing PAP made significant gains, illustrated just how self-referential many in power had become.
With some of the longest working hours in the developed world, some of the least happy workers in the world and a population over half of which would emigrate if they could, Singapore’s society represents a more than statistical challenge. That trickle-down is now widely discredited as an economic defense for inequality only further exposes it to challenge. That a few are so wealthy and so powerful is no longer seen as providing a wider social benefit; indeed the rich may pose a bigger social threat than the poor.
Security requires trade-offs
The physical vulnerability of tiny Singapore, wedged between Malaysia and Indonesia, coupled with its lack of natural resources and its complex ethnic composition, has been used in the past as an argument for restricted freedoms: only a very strong and unquestioned government can protect such a fragile state. Safety demanded the abdication of personal freedoms.
Poetry or Money?
Lee Kuan Yew, the founding father of Singapore, once insisted that “poetry is a luxury we cannot afford” but few still believe that that is still true.
US – or THEM?
Seen in this light, the early success of Singapore represents a triumphant validation of principles that the west holds dear. Imitation may be a sincere form of flattery but in holding a mirror up to our values, we may not like what we see; the country’s current challenges and frustrations show us limitations we all need to see.
Meritocracies, powerful central states and transactional social modes, in other words, may be enough to get a nation from birth to prosperity – but not nearly enough to keep it there. In that respect, the United States and Europe have far more in common with Singapore than perhaps their governments recognize.
What Singapore holds in reserve, however, is an asset western leaders would give their eye teeth for: a national surplus accrued over many years of fastidious economic management. How will this wealth be used? While western leaders use insolvency as a perennial alibi for their failure to make coherent strategic choices, Singapore’s government has the money and the power to effect real change. Should it fail to do so, after this incisive an analysis of its opportunities, no politicians in Singapore will be able to claim they didn’t see their chance. If, with the freedom to spend that most western leaders lack, Singapore cannot address its problems, then the principles it espouses – principles still broadly accepted by western governments – will be discredited for good.
Next year will see the 50th anniversary of the creating of Singapore, widely hailed as one of the most successful of the Asian tigers. In that short space of time, the tiny nation state has grown into one of the world’s largest financial cities and most important ports. It has done so by becoming the partner every nation wants to work with: efficient, trustworthy and stable. In education, healthcare and economic competitiveness, Singapore routinely occupies a high position in global rankings. So it’s not surprising that commentators like Thomas Friedman often point to Singapore as doing well what the west does badly.
Competitive Meritocracy but Rising Inequality
Commentators routinely praise the competitive nature of Singapore’s schools and civil service. Slavish devotion to exams and credentials, they like to believe, is what bring the best to the top. In the early days of Singapore’s independence, this principle was coupled with the belief that everyone should have a fair shot at success. But as inequality has risen and social mobility has declined, those values look more like a justification for elitism. Does preserving this meritocracy does more to protect those in power than enable those who aspire to it?
Without social mobility and the continuing expansion of choices to the multi-ethnic population, meritocracy can come to feel like intrinsic, existential superiority: the sense that some are intrinsically more deserving than others. The bubble of money and power is isolating, severing the connections between governors and the governed. The surprise that greeted the 2011 election, in which the opposition to the governing PAP made significant gains, illustrated just how self-referential many in power had become.
With some of the longest working hours in the developed world, some of the least happy workers in the world and a population over half of which would emigrate if they could, Singapore’s society represents a more than statistical challenge. That trickle-down is now widely discredited as an economic defense for inequality only further exposes it to challenge. That a few are so wealthy and so powerful is no longer seen as providing a wider social benefit; indeed the rich may pose a bigger social threat than the poor.
Security requires trade-offs
The physical vulnerability of tiny Singapore, wedged between Malaysia and Indonesia, coupled with its lack of natural resources and its complex ethnic composition, has been used in the past as an argument for restricted freedoms: only a very strong and unquestioned government can protect such a fragile state. Safety demanded the abdication of personal freedoms.
Poetry or Money?
Lee Kuan Yew, the founding father of Singapore, once insisted that “poetry is a luxury we cannot afford” but few still believe that that is still true.
US – or THEM?
Seen in this light, the early success of Singapore represents a triumphant validation of principles that the west holds dear. Imitation may be a sincere form of flattery but in holding a mirror up to our values, we may not like what we see; the country’s current challenges and frustrations show us limitations we all need to see.
Meritocracies, powerful central states and transactional social modes, in other words, may be enough to get a nation from birth to prosperity – but not nearly enough to keep it there. In that respect, the United States and Europe have far more in common with Singapore than perhaps their governments recognize.
What Singapore holds in reserve, however, is an asset western leaders would give their eye teeth for: a national surplus accrued over many years of fastidious economic management. How will this wealth be used? While western leaders use insolvency as a perennial alibi for their failure to make coherent strategic choices, Singapore’s government has the money and the power to effect real change. Should it fail to do so, after this incisive an analysis of its opportunities, no politicians in Singapore will be able to claim they didn’t see their chance. If, with the freedom to spend that most western leaders lack, Singapore cannot address its problems, then the principles it espouses – principles still broadly accepted by western governments – will be discredited for good.
