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.
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.