Singapore’s Lessons for an Unequal America by Stiglitz
Inequality has been rising in most countries around the world, but it has played out in different ways across countries and regions. The United States, it is increasingly recognized, has the sad distinction of being the most unequal advanced country, though the income gap has also widened to a lesser extent, in Britain, Japan, Canada and Germany. Of course, the situation is even worse in Russia, and some developing countries in Latin America and Africa. But this is a club of which we should not be proud to be a member.
Some big countries Brazil, Indonesia and Argentina have become more equal in recent years, and other countries, like Spain, were on that trajectory until the economic crisis of 2007-8.
Singapore has had the distinction of having prioritized social and economic equity while achieving very high rates of growth over the past 30 years an example par excellence that inequality is not just a matter of social justice but of economic performance. Societies with fewer economic disparities perform better not just for those at the bottom or the middle, but over all.
Its hard to believe how far this city-state has come in the half-century since it attained independence from Britain, in 1963. (A short-lived merger with Malaysia ended in 1965.) Around the time of independence, a quarter of Singapores work force was unemployed or underemployed. Its per-capita income (adjusted for inflation) was less than a tenth of what it is today.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/18/singapores-lessons-for-an-unequal-america/?hp
Proud Public Servant
(2,097 posts)And the comments call him on it. There's more economic equality in Singapore for Singaporeans, sure; but that's only because nearly every hard, dirty, menial job in the country is done by guest workers. Maids? Filipinas and Indonesians. Construction workers? Thais and Bangladeshis. Low-level factory workers? Malays living across the straits, in Johor Bahru. And none of them make anywhere near the average Singaporean income. I actually have lived in Singapore and like both the place and its people; but this article is either fundamentally clueless or deliberately dishonest.