I was pretty disappointed after living three years in Singapore and witnessing the uglier underbelly of the country that the UK decided that's what it wanted to become almost as soon as I got home.
Moreover, they don't want to copy any of the successes - e.g. their public housing system or strict "you WILL go to prison if you overcharge" price controls on medical care.
They just want the tax haven, deregulation, an under the thumb easily exploited workforce working themselves half to death and handouts to their friends.
On the balance, Singapore is much more free in the economical sphere than the UK, so if the UK did copy ALL of its policies, it would become more much economically competitive and see more rapid economic development.
As for exploitation of workers, Singapore has seen massively more wage growth than the UK over the last 50 years, so I don't equate a free labor market with exploitation.
I will add that there are important ways in which the UK is more conducive in the long run to a free market and free society than Singapore, but at least in the short run, Singapore's simulation of a free market economy has been offering more practical liberty and working better at raising living standards.
Ideally, the UK would maintain its pluralistic and democratic core, while adopting Singapore's economic policies.
>On the balance, Singapore is much more free in the economical sphere than the UK
Singapore is massively more favorable to investors and this gets charactized as "free".
Forced savings accounts with strict rules about how you can use the money are pretty much the antithesis of economic freedom, for instance, but it won't show up in economic freedom indices. The Economist is squarely aimed at foreign investors with moolah to invest, not Singaporean toilet cleaners pissed off that they can't access their CPF.
>As for exploitation of workers, Singapore has seen massively more wage growth than the UK over the last 50 years
As for exploitation of workers, Russia has seen even more wage growth than the UK in the last 20 years (somewhwre between 60-150% I think?).
Would you like to endorse the lack of exploitation of Russian citizens or retract your statement?
>Singapore's simulation of a free market economy has been offering more practical liberty and working better at raising living standards.
Ironically it's been the deliberately anti free market stuff they've done which has boosted living standards the most. The HDB program is practically Soviet both in inspiration and nature and dragged the citizens out of shantytown kampongs and led to an exceptionally well oiled and competitive private property market that brings a huge inflows of capital.
This is in addition to the Winsemius plan.
>Ideally, the UK would maintain its pluralistic and democratic core, while adopting Singapore's economic policies.
Ideally none of that. It's their economic policies that are partly what made it such a nasty place for me to work in. I was so glad to come home.
Just my 2 cents as somebody who lived under the "investors uber alles" regime.
>>Forced savings accounts with strict rules about how you can use the money are pretty much the antithesis of economic freedom, for instance, but it won't show up in economic freedom indices.
Forced savings are less of an affront to economic liberty than redistributive taxes. With Singapore's MediSave accounts, you are also free to start spending some of the funds on a wider range of goods/services once you have built an adequate amount of savings. This is not pure libertarianism, by any stretch of the imagination, but it is less of an expropriation of private property than taxes that create an uncapped obligation for you to support people you have no relationship to beyond being co-nationals.
The most important thing about Singapore is that it doesn't have a welfare culture. Situations you see in the West, like a person suffering from drug addiction all their life, and spending a lifetime being arrested for stealing from other residents, and quickly released each time due to a left-wing pity culture, while they receive disability and welfare cheques each month, that other citizens - the same ones losing their precious property to the lifelong addict - are forced to pay for, and that are promptly converted to drug money via their local dealer and node in the organized crime controlled drug trafficking network, are unheard of in Singapore, because there is no large Welfare Culture like there is in the UK and other Western countries.
>>Would you like to endorse the lack of exploitation of Russian citizens or retract your statement?
Fair point. Much of the wage growth in Singapore can be attributed to the catch up effect. But even after becoming an advanced economy, it has seen more rapid wage growth than the UK, and that is not attributable to the catch-up effect. That is because economic liberty is in the long-term interest of workers, because it raises overall productivity and average wages.
>>Ironically it's been the deliberately anti free market stuff they've done which has boosted living standards the most.
Western countries have massive intervention in their housing markets too. At least Singapore's is about expanding supply and making it available to the general market, as opposed to creating poverty-concentrations/ghettos by targetting socialized housing to those with low reportable income.
Ironically, Singapore's government, by building towers across the city, did away with one of the major impediments to housing markets in the West - zoning restrictions on building density/height.
no matter how much I like this idea, this will never happen in a European country unfortunately. there's just too much baggage of big state and other nonsense.
Healthcare is largely paid via a forced savings account, not via taxes. It's the same account you'd use to buy property, for instance.
The price controls also apply to medical tourism.
In theory this kind of thing should show up on those economic freedom indices but they're so enamored of Singapore's lavish aid to foreign investors that they tend to look past this stuff (especially since it mostly just applies to locals).
So we throw away our relationship with a trading bloc that is 0km away to do things we already do but spun to make Brexit look palatable before the people who voted for it are already dead?
Why do you think so? What do you think EU has to gain from UK doing badly? And I mean in practice, economically - we're way past the time "told you so" is relevant.
If the EU cannot show there's a big exit cost it may not last too much longer.
Economic growth is so lackluster all across the EU, including new entrants, that few people (who looked at the data) genuinely believe EU membership is a GDP booster. EU's next best bet is to play into the fear that exiting will bring about economic ruin. This works particularly well on newer members who may not be on good terms with core EU countries. Their fear wouldn't necessarily be missing out on benefits but getting slapped with sanctions.
We already saw the big exit cost. Tariffs will apply where trade deals are missing. I'm not sure who you expect to use sanctions - EU won't slap anyone with sanctions just because they left EU. Have a look at https://sanctionsmap.eu/ for situations where sanctions have been applied.
There's nothing interesting going on with UK's economy. Seems pretty indistinct from the rest of Europe.
No, I do not think EU would really do major sanctions, but I do think it's something some fear and I do think it's a fear the EU plays into. Many in ex-Soviet and ex-Soviet-satellite countries see EU membership as the guarantor of access and lasting ties with not just Western Europe but the "free world" in general (as in not being part of the Russia/China/Iran/+ club). Even in the UK you see some semblance of this sentiment despite being rather ridiculous. In countries that have a fairly recent history of being excluded for no good reason it seems all the more compelling.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singapore-on-Thames