Book review on the history of modern Singapore | Hacker News Reader

Book review on the history of modern Singapore

lrb.co.uk

74 pointsbetocmn59 comments

It's nice to read a capsule history of Singapore's history that doesn't toe the official line, but this is still laying it on a little too thick. For example, the supposedly "crash-prone trains" that carry some 3.3 million people on an average day have actually had a grand total of two (2) accidents since 1987, resulting in precisely zero (0) fatalities, and the "destitution of its underclass" is a bit much in a country where essentially everybody is entitled to a tiny but nearly-free rental flat.

> essentially everybody is entitled to a tiny but nearly-free rental flat

That is straight out wrong. Migrant workers are forced to live in terrible, cramped conditions (a big contributor to the spread of covid in singapore): https://www.latrobe.edu.au/news/articles/2020/opinion/why-si...

We're talking about different things here.

You're talking about non-Singaporean migrant workers, who are poor but not "destitute", since they have paid jobs, food and shelter.

I'm talking about the poorest Singaporeans, often unemployed and/or elderly who are entitled to meager but survivable benefits, including cash handouts and heavily subsidized housing. It's not an enviable life, and SG could and should do better, but neither is it "destitution" on the scale of street beggars in (say) India or Indonesia.

One thing that is striking when visiting Singapore is the number of elderly people working basic jobs in fast food, street stalls, and similar roles. I don't know enough to judge their financial well-being, but it's very different to what we see here in Australia. Without more information I can't even say if it's mainly because over here we are reluctant to employ the elderly at all, I'm sure some Australians need the money too. It's just different.

It's definitely starting to happen in Melbourne. Go to Red Rooster at Southern Cross and try to spot the non-pensioner.

I think too many young people are quick to forget that there are many boomers who didn't get the opportunity to own property back in the day, and they're fucked over by the bubble even harder than we are.

The main driver here (IMHO) is that Singapore's pay-as-you-go pension system is/was quite patchy, particularly for the self-employed, who were exempted a long time and even today only need to contribute to their health insurance. Many of the elderly workers never accumulated a pension, so they need to work in menial jobs to support themselves.

In 2014 and 2018, the government finally introduced a set of meager benefits for those born in the 1940s and 1950s, but it's almost entirely focused on medical expenses and far from a "real" state pension.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_Generation_Package

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merdeka_Generation_Package

Yup. Many of the folks in their 70s and 80’s were in their prime working years when Singapore was far from as wealthy as it is today and before a lot of the forced savings programs (CPF). Many aren’t destitute, they have an HDB that’s worth a lot, they have healthcare that is heavily subsidized, but not much else for daily expenses.

> they have an HDB that’s worth a lot

That got my interest. Apparently there's a HDB lease buyback scheme, basically a reverse mortgage I guess? Though with stronger family ties over there I'm not sure how popular that would be when considering children, inheritance, and all that.

I didn’t even know about that.

https://www.hdb.gov.sg/residential/living-in-an-hdb-flat/for...

But yeah, you basically sell whatever years of your 99 year lease you don’t need (calculated off the youngest occupant, so a 40 year old only needs 50 years of housing). Government gives you lump sum for your CPF, which you convert to an annuity at retirement for an income stream.

But you’re right, with family, typically the kids take over the HDB and living expenses for their parent. They get the HDB when the parent passes.

Many people really forget how brutally poor Singapore was not long ago. After being kicked out of Malaysia for wanting equal racial rights they had no land, resources, army or wealth. Any reasonable assessment would project them staying third world for a long time.

As boomers were entering adulthood in 1970, the GDP per capita in Singapore was US$900, in Australia it was $26,000.

Australian pensioners are the wealthiest of that cohort on the planet. Due to rampant property gains and incredibly favourable tax laws, technically you can live in a $10M mansion and still collect a full pension + benefits.

The two countries took wildly different trajectories and as such have very different attitudes by the generations that grew up in that time.

For a thousand dollars or so you can get setup and run your own hawker stall a couple hours a day in Singapore, lower that cost to a few hundred if selling sundries. The only equivalent I could think of for Australians is weekend markets which are full of oldies, but those are transient tents on some grass which are usually quite competitive to get and are once a week/month things.

Undoubtedly there's many who do need the income even in old age, but there's also a big cultural difference and many don't really consider retirement a thing. They may work a lot less, but have no plans to stop until physically unable, this is pretty common attitude to see.

Actually, the "Singapore was a third world fishing village" trope is mostly PAP propaganda. Singapore was very successful economically before WW2, and ranked second behind Tokyo or Shanghai as the wealthiest city in Asia by most measures.

Also, you're off by a factor of around 20x on your estimate of the costs of setting up a hawker stall: https://blog.seedly.sg/how-much-to-be-hawker-singapore/

Singapore was a British colony before WWII, not a nation state though. All the Straits Settlements accumulated that wealth on the back of colonial England, and before that it was part of the Johor Sultanate but was just some jungle that no one cared about, not even the Sultan himself who gave it to the British.

After leaving Malaysia it ranked right down the bottom on basically every economic and social measure, unemployment was at 10% and many lived in slums. Plenty of third world countries had better GDP per capita numbers.

Also my estimates are just fine according to that clickbaity link and a minute of research:

Upfront:

    $10 tender application
    $39 three year hawker license
    $321 Basic Food Hygiene Course
    $260 Stainless steel cart + delivery From JB [1]

Ongoing:

    $49 a month for a stall at Mei Chin Road
    $600 a month in cleaning/service fees
    $1000 a month in raw materials for say 100 chickens + everything else. Serves 1000 dishes.

It's certainly possible. That rental isn't common but certainly not out of the ordinary, you can get cooking stalls for ridiculously cheap.

[1] https://www.carousell.com.my/p/second-hand-stall-stainless-s...

I didn't mention destitution. I simply pointed out that you are very badly informed about the reality of housing in Singapore, or flat out making things up.

You raise the interesting question of why would someone travel long distances to live in terrible cramped conditions.

Desperation, usually.

> You raise the interesting question of why would someone travel long distances to live in terrible cramped conditions.

I found this [1]:

> Before he left home, friends and relatives who had worked in Singapore told of a dream city where the roads were clean, people were friendly, and everyone followed the law.

[1] https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/cnainsider/singapore-mu...

A question with a very obvious answer: Desperation and exploitation.

Singapore has no minimum wage. If its underclass were not destitute, I would think that would be rather surprising.

The unemployed (short or long term) with no assets or family assistance are entitled to ComCare subsidies, which are designed specifically to stop people from falling into destitution:

https://msf.gov.sg/Comcare/Pages/Short-to-Medium-Term-Assist...

https://msf.gov.sg/Comcare/Pages/Public-Assistance.aspx

Here's the BBC on what this looks like in practice:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-26349689

Without commenting on Singapore, many countries have no minimum wage without negative consequence. It can be substituted with strong unions or social programs. In fact minimum wage is kind of a blunt instrument. People often say that everyone should be paid a living wage, but a living wage for a single mom with four kids is much higher than a living wage for a highschooler who lives with his parents. A minimum wage high enough to guarantee the mom a living wage would almost certainly make illegal many job opportunities the highschooler would love to have. I would prefer the government guarantee everyone a dignified life rather than try to use the minimum wage (which fundamentally only affects working people, not everyone)

This is indeed a problem, but there is a very simple and effective solution that Australians call "youth wages".

It's not very effective if you look at youth unemployement compared to a country like Singapore. Young adults who miss out the chance to get work experience when they're younger get completely shafted, because employers demand experience but nobody wants to give them the chance to gain that experience because of how much it costs.

>It can be substituted with strong unions

When the bus drivers tried to strike against explicitly racist pay policies they imprisoned and beat them: https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-SEAB-2274

They don't substitute. Unions are basically illegal.

There are people earning ridiculously low wages.

Indeed, in some places (eg Nordic countries) the union movement opposes any introduction of a national minimum wage as it could potentially undercut their own role in setting the effective minimum wage - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/12/nordic-countri...

Singapore, of course, is nothing like this.

Denmark has no minimum wage.

> essentially everybody is entitled to a tiny but nearly-free rental flat

It's been pointed out already, but pretty much every word in this part of sentence is wrong. You may want to learn a bit more about Singapore HDB. Ah, I beg your pardon, you're absolutely right about tiny part.

Short answer: not everybody, not entitled, not anywhere nearly free (where is this even comes from?).

Overly broad and vague, but not that far off the mark. If you're a citizen or PR you are entitled to an HDB if your income isn't too high. If you can't afford to buy an HDB (with many gov't grants), you can rent an HDB. If you're really low income, the rent can be very low (ten's of SGD per month).

So basically if you're a SC/PR, you won't go without decent housing in Singapore. That's actually quite impressive for countries in SE Asia.

I saw a good number of homeless camping in, for instance, East Coast park.

Yes, there are an estimated 1,000 people sleeping rough. The study below determined that 40% of them actually own/rent housing, but don't use it because of eg. family conflicts, while the remainder either choose not to apply or have somehow fallen through the cracks of the system.

https://lkyspp.nus.edu.sg/gia/article/singapore's-hidden-hom...

Erhm, if you want to camp in East Coast Park (or anywhere on public land in Singapore), you need to apply for a permit and it's only allowed at designated camping grounds. The campers you saw were recreational, and seldom stay for more than one night. On most weekdays you won't see any tents at East Coast.

That's what I thought initially. My curiosity was piqued because they were in a non designated area and I thought it was weird that the police weren't making an effort to get rid of them.

A friend of mine said it was coz they were homeless and the police were aware.

In other countries they'd probably be moved on by police trying to make them some other department's problem. This could be the place where they ended up where they caused the least headache coz they did somewhat blend in.

It wasn't just east coast park either. There were several who slept on benches outside of my HDB in Clementi and Tiong Bahru. They tended to wake up early.

Oh, that's interesting. I had not heard of such cases, nor have I seen them. Do you remember which part of the park this was? I'll keep an eye out next time I am there.

Actually I got confused - I think it was up in Changi Beach park (connected to East Coast park, I used to cycle the whole route).

I left ~5 years ago so I'm not going to guarantee they're still there.

I'm pretty sure the HDB void decks still have their fair share of homeless tho.

> I'm pretty sure the HDB void decks still have their fair share of homeless tho.

Can confirm. I wrote about this in another thread 5 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26811554

Feel free to walk to Sentosa from HF around midnight. You will find tens of people sleeping around. And yea, they do not have permits of any kind if you'd like to suggest it (neither people sleeping at east coast park have, except people who really do camping there).

Police doesn't care just because Sentosa is pretty much desolated at night, so noone complains or sees them.

There are few other places to mention, way far from HDB/condo settlements in order to maintain a nice picture of homelessness absence.

This was a great read from the man himself: https://www.amazon.com/Third-World-First-Singapore-1965-2000...

Should be required reading within education systems in developing countries. I'm not saying LKY was perfect and everything he did was right, I am saying his topics would have been more relevant for me (African, grew up in Nairobi) than WWII or the history of Europe.

He was an overrated thug. What good he did (e.g. HDBs) was largely a result of arm twisting and fear - of domestic communists, and being smart enough to listen to Albert Winsemius (attracting foreign investment).

He's popular in the Western media because he treated foreign investors like kings. They're happy to trumpet the successes and sweep the uglier side under the carpet and indulge the cult of personality he built.

Singapore's geography, meanwhile, is not given nearly enough credit. It had probably the world's most strategically located deep water port and being a city state helps keep the government on its toes and avoid corruption (in stark contrast to, say, Brazil/Myanmar) :

https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w19027/w190...

This is why a lot of its success is not really replicable elsewhere.

They've had some good results though. From poor and third worldy they now rank

GNP PPP/capita #2 (USA #7)

Corruption perceptions index #3 (USA #26)

Life expectancy #5 (USA #40)

they must have been doing something right. I'm sure the US was way ahead on all of those back in 1965. Also I was in that part of the world last year when the race riots broke out in the US and it looked terrible - Singapore is one of the most racially mixed countries in the world and seems to deal with that much better.

They did a number of things right. Nonetheless under less fortuitous circumstances Lee Kuan Yew would still be ruling a third world country with an iron fist.

They've also had race riots - there was one while I was living there in 2013 on race course road.

That was the first riot in 44 years, and describing it as a race riot is a bit much.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Little_India_riot

It was urban unrest driven by anger against systemic discrimination against people with dark skin triggered by a fatal accident caused by a perpetrator of a different race who wasnt punished.

I think arguing that it wasn't about race and bore no similarities whatsoever to America is stretching it just a bit. Don't you think?

You're looking at this through a very American lens. The riots were kindled by the many frustrations of being a migrant worker in Singapore, which are much more about class/poverty than skin color (for one thing, there is a very large Chinese migrant worker contingent as well), and it was triggered by a traffic accident, not (eg) police brutality.

I'm not American.

There is a racial hierarchy among migrant workers in Singapore (as well as among citizens). Mainland Chinese are at the top, people from the subcontinent at the bottom. This is partly what inspired the riot. They are the lowest "caste" in Singapore - even below other migrant workers. their friend died in front of their eyes largely because he, like them, was at the bottom of the ladder and they (police,first responders,the govt) could not give a shit whether he lived or died. So he died.

It also inspired the bus driver strikes - partly because this racial hierarchy was encoded into pay.

American racism is often more subtle (you won't get lower published pay rates for blacks) but tends to be more brutal at the same time (routine police beatings). Not fun being part of either system.

You can criticize LKY for many things, but a "cult of personality" is not one of them. Even after his death, and his will was very clear about this, there are precisely zero statues or portraits of the man, and neither are there any airports etc named after him. Hell, there's an ongoing legal dispute among his heirs about how serious he was about bulldozing the rather modest bungalow where he lived, instead of converting it into a museum. The only thing named after him is the Lee Kuan Yew Institute of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore.

All that said, I do agree that Goh Keng Swee (who?) doesn't get nearly enough credit for the economic policy that make Singapore possible: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goh_Keng_Swee

What's an airport name when you can get a week of mourning declared when you die?

They set up his body on display in a way that's eerily reminiscent of Kim Jong Il did when he died.

He said he didn't want a personality cult (more likely he didn't want to be seen to be having one) but still set one up anyway.

The press (notoriously one of the least free in the world) lionized him frequently and enthusiastically and attributed the various successes to his keen intelligence and vision, etc. Meanwhile he bankrupted detractors with libel lawsuits with savage abandon in an attempt to quash any criticism.

I just found this video interview of LKY asking for his house to be demolished: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoA2M_CWC28

If anyone wanted to set up a cult of personality around him, it would be his heirs.

Men in White is another good book that focuses on the PAP and their role in Singapore post independence.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/9814266248/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_...

Can anybody tell me what 'a onetime Fabian' means?

> [the Fabian Society; from the members' belief in slow rather than revolutionary change in government] : of, relating to, or being a society of socialists organized in England in 1884 to spread socialist principles gradually

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabian_Society

Thanks! Is this actually common knowledge in the UK (and US?)?

To a reader of the London Review of Books? Almost certainly. To the general public? Probably not.

Though perhaps worth mentioning that the Fabian Society has long been influential in the British Labour Party, so plenty of Labour party members or folks in unions will have a passing familiarity.

Corruption

Singapore is one of the least corrupt countries in the world:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_Singapore

Accusations of high level corruption will see you bankrupted by libel lawsuits.

It's entirely possible that the ruling elite have nothing to hide but they hardly act like it.

I find it hard to believe that a country that was (or maybe is) a transportation hub for drugs and still is a money laundry for the SE Asia, can be free of corruption.

If you believe that then you don’t know how the Singaporean government works

Singapore doesn't have much "corruption", but we have:

- the highest-paid politicians in the world [1];

- political offices with poorly-defined job scopes [2]; and

- a track record of installing PAP (the dominant party) members in government-linked positions if they somehow fail to win an election [3].

[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/04/21/20-highest-p...

[2] https://mothership.sg/2021/02/pritam-singh-cdc-mayors/

[3] https://www.straitstimes.com/politics/ntuc-reaffirms-support...

Not to mention installing unqualified military generals in irrelevant posts.

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