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Comment by boeingUH60 | Hacker News Reader

Singapore is a city-state with limited space and stellar public transport...the absurd cost of owning a personal vehicle is easily justifiable. You can hardly justify this structure in most other places...residents will revolt, lol

A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It's where the rich use public transportation.

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> You can hardly justify this structure in most other places...residents will revolt

Those statements may both be true, but it's worth noting that people revolting against a measure doesn't mean it's unjustified. People would revolt in the US against any measure meant to control car ownership, but we definitely need such measures in our car-first societies.

Fees to own gasoline cars in Norway and Denmark are fairly comparable as far as I understand, and they haven't revolted.

Fees to own cars vs. fees to own gasoline cars, I'm sensing there's an important difference here.

Fairly comparable? Not even close

The 'fees' are primarily in the form of high taxes on new gasoline cars, and especially high taxes on new cars with large/powerful engines. If you want, say a BMW M3 with the biggest and most powerful engine, then you're probably paying a $76k premium compared to the US. If you want to buy a small 30 year old piece of crap then the additional taxes aren't anywhere near that high.

It looks like they pay a VAT, plus a greenhouse tax. But the greenhouse tax seems relatively small, equivalent to around $100 USD—though there are many factors that would change that number a little bit. The VAT is much higher, something like 25% of the vehicle price. But I would not consider VAT a tax on car ownership, per se, since it is applied to many other goods, and we would not consider a VAT levied on, say, a microwave to be a tax on microwave ownership.

I thought the VAT on new gasoline cars was 180% in Denmark. Turns out they cut it to "only" 100%.

180% of an average car price of $40K is very close to $78K.

No, Denmark has a extra tax.

For gasoline cars: First you add 25% VAT to the price. From this you calculate extra tax as:

25% of first $10k of price. 85% of price from $10k to $30k. 150% of price above $30k.

https://motorst.dk/en-us/individuals/vehicle-taxes/registrat...

This is amazing. How did the public respond when this was introduced?

You can get along quite well in Denmark without owning a car. Hence, car-owners are proportionally not as big a voting bloc as in the USA.

It is true for Copenhagen, but I wonder how it feels to families living in rural areas.

If I can trust Wikipedia over 1/3 of the 6m people live in the Copenhagen Metro region, that's ignoring all the other towns. Also now I wonder how this works with used cars.

... public transportation

It's more like "how did the public respond when the extra tax was reduced from 180% of the total amount".

(the above rates are lower than previous rate!)

By buying a bunch of EV’s, because they’re more or less exempt from the tax.

No, the citizens working for international organisations like CERN and WTO buy the cars without taxes instead, as per countries agreements with said organisations.

Not really comparable after paying for CoE for open category 152K SGD (US$104K), in Singapore there is a advanced registration fee called ARF,then there is additional tax on top. So a typical BMW X5 will be around SGD 540,000 (US$ 394,600) and that too for 10 years, after 10 years need to buy a new CoE or discard the car.

A Tesla Model S will be more than 400k for 10 years after that need another 100k for 10 year renewal.

Also fuel prices and road tax are high in Singapore which needs to be paid regularly besides buying costs.

This is a red herring. It is a conscious decision of the government rather than a consequence of being a city-state.

Because of limited space owning a car will be expensive in any casem

> It is a conscious decision if the government rather than a consequence of being a city-state.

Sometimes, drastic solutions like these are needed. Singapore strikes a good balance between freedom and responsibility IMHO.

> Sometimes, drastic solutions like these are needed. Singapore strikes a good balance between freedom and responsibility IMHO.

Some of them make sense. But executing people for drug crimes can be called barbarism.

> Singapore strikes a good balance between freedom and responsibility IMHO.

Singapore is a one-party state, probably as close to a perfect implementation of a benevolent dictatorship as there ever could be. It's a great place to live if you don't care about political freedoms and aren't a dissident of any kind.

It's only had three prime ministers since self-governance began in 1959 (64 years ago), and the third and current prime minister, who has been in office for nearly 20 years, is the eldest son of the first prime minister, who was in office for over 30 years. The same party, the People's Action Party, has had over three-quarters of the seats in parliament throughout the country's whole history.

There are many things to be admired about Singapore, a "good balance between freedom and responsibility" is not one of them. And endemic to all governments of this type, it remains to be seen whether it can be maintained for another few generations of Singaporeans.

https://freedomhouse.org/country/singapore/freedom-world/202...

Just to add to you comment, the fundamental problem with a benevolent dictatorship is that it stays a dictatorship even after the benevolent part ends.

Without the fee, the cost will take time to rise.

During this period of rising costs, cars will be overbought (in relation to the parking and driving space available).

As car numbers increase, traffic congestion increases. (This is a time cost)

As congestion increases, cars will be sold or parked in favor of public transportation.

Selling a car in such conditions will be difficult and probably result in net loss.

This means more cars will be kept parked and unused. (This is a space cost)

All the while, traffic will still be bad. And now there are more cars in the city than can be driven or sold.

A fee can prevent these time and space costs, effectively turning them into upfront monetary costs.

If there is no parking space overall car ownership cost will adjust very quickly, especially in a city where I am sure police does not take lightly to illegal parking... (and you probably need some form of official authorisation to build more parking spaces...)

I think some places regulate car numbers by requiring proof of parking space in order to buy a car (some towns in China?).

This is not a criticism. They decided to limit cars and to limit them through tax.

Good point. Since cars aren’t driven 24-7, every purchase likely already has a known space available, limiting the negative effects of parked cars.

This doesn’t take into account shared spaces (where one car is parked while another drives), which might be more common in such a space-limited area? Just a guess.

Either way, a parked car is still a waste of space. A fee can help make more space available for humans rather than metal. (Assuming the fee rises above the natural cost of parking)

> You can hardly justify this structure in most other places

Because most of those place where build to be car centric (most of the US?). I live in Sydney/Australia where there used to a massive tram infrastructure which was destroyed (allegedly) under the pressure of big oil to make the city more car centric.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jul/28/erase...

Monaco is considerably smaller. Have you seen their cars?

Do you mean the ones they travel through the sea? And on top of that, it’s just a ‘country’ for rich. Singapore is not a fake country, far from it.

My point is space is not the issue (Monaco is smaller), policy is.

I feel like Singapore is also largely a country for the rich, perhaps just larger -- they import something like 30-40% of their workers as migrant workers.

Singapore is super modern futuristic place, while Monaco is just a tiny city with no infrastructure, but a dock for yachts, casinos, restaurants and some mountains. I don’t know much about Monaco (visited once), but it feels like a place to invent some laws and install money laundering schemes, or tax evasion, or whatever else similar. Singapore on the other hand feels like super futuristic utopian dream city. I lived shortly there, but not long enough to dive into local culture and meet many people. While I would like to come visit Singapore again and again, I see no point in visiting Monaco ever again, for me it’s just beyond boring.

I think if you find money laundering and tax evasion schemes to be scummy you might want to look closer at the migrant work force that helped build that utopian dream city and ask important questions like:

* How do they afford such an expensive city?

* Where do they go when the work is done?

* Why don't they get the same rights as citizens?

* If the city needs them so badly and has such a hard time finding work, why aren't they allowing migrants a more permanent residency that isn't tied to a specific company?

* Why are companies and the government restricting migrant movement?

* Why do companies (sometimes) charge their migrant workers for the right to work?

* Why do companies (sometimes) withhold the passports of their workers?

* Why does the government punish overstaying a visa with caning?

I think there are a lot of parallels to western wealth disparity but there's still a lot of grossness to the systemic human labor trafficking that is the backbone of the country.

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