Is the freedom to accept a contract for poverty wages to avoid starvation a desirable feature in our society?
A country general success does not equal the success of its poor people. There are not many income inequality stats of Singapore, but the ones I've seen [1] actually put Singapore with a similar income inequality to the US.
Furthermore, it is a small country (5M people) with a pretty high GDP per capita (8th in the world). I don't think you can extract too many conclusions that would be applicable to other, bigger countries.
> The question to ask is do the rules of the game allow anybody to succeed. Minimum wage is a rule that says some people just don't get to play.
And without a livable minimum wage, you'll get people that are working full time for peanuts. They won't be able to save, get healthcare, provide their kids with good education, etc. Are those people succeeding?
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...
There is no requirement that everybody succeed at the same level. The measure of a country's success is improvement of society over time. Has the general quality of life improved for the people of Singapore over the last 55 years? I think that is a resounding yes.
It's not. You'll see that a lot of the top companies in Singapore are operating at global level while headquartered in Singapore. It's a little bit like looking only at the economy of the main US cities.
> There is no requirement that everybody succeed at the same level. The measure of a country's success is improvement of society over time.
Inequality is a pretty important measure. What society is better, one where everybody earns two times a livable wage or another where 25% earn eight times a livable wage and the 75% remaining are in poverty?
Upon independence, "Singapore faced a small domestic market, and high levels of unemployment and poverty. 70 percent of Singapore's households lived in badly overcrowded conditions, and a third of its people squatted in slums on the city fringes. Unemployment averaged 14 percent, GDP per capita was US$516, and half of the population was illiterate." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Singapore#Independe...]
Compared to today, Singapore has about 1000 homeless, 3.16 persons per household, a literacy rate of 97.3%, GDP per capita of $602 billion, an unemployment rate of 4.11% and a median household income of $9,293. The income distribution isn't bad either. From what I could find the cost of living (minus rent) for an individual is $575 a month.
https://blog.seedly.sg/average-singaporean-household-income-...
The better society is the one where everyone has an opportunity to improve their lot in life by satisfying a need of others.
By that same link, the bottom 10% of the population have less average income than your cost of living.
But I read a little bit more, and it looks like that they are indeed tackling the income inequality problem [1]. Which is where country size and GDP per capita comes into play: a richer country has more money to implement inequality-reducing measures, and implementing them for a 5M people country is far easier than for bigger countries.
> The better society is the one where everyone has an opportunity to improve their lot in life by satisfying a need of others.
Well, that's why inequality is important as a metric. If you're born in a poor household, statistically you'll have far less opportunities than if you're born in a better situation. Want everybody to have an opportunity to improve and succeed? Fight poverty.
1: https://www.straitstimes.com/politics/parliament-inequality-...
Other than my opinion that the needs of the people would have been better met with a free housing market. I don't have much to say on it.
You start somewhere. Minimum wage laws just reduce the amount of opportunities low skill workers can choose from.