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Comment by tidenly | Hacker News Reader

I left the UK after graduating at 21, fully intending to come back within a couple of years. Its weird watching it from the outside for 10 years waiting for a "good time" to move back and realizing that time isn't coming more and more each year.

The salaries in Japan arent great honestly, but mine, the quality of life and how far my money goes is so much better than if I lived back at the UK. Every time I go back it seems more and more people are struggling to pay for basic expenses - and even if I moved back it seems get a great salary I'd have to live in London, which I dislike.

I imagine lots of people far more talented than me must also be feeling the pull to not stay in the country too. Its festering politically and economically. Besides family there really is no benefit to remaining.

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IMO the UK should look at what Singapore did and maybe learn from that.

There's really no excuse for a country like the UK other than ordinary plain and simple mis-management from the top.

Singapore did not depend on neighboring countries to climb out of 3rd world poverty. To name an example.

It's a political issue. There are things the UK is good at - finance, culture/media, software and yes hardware innovation, legal services, tourism. But since the GFC especially, none of these things are considered "right" by the electorate.

Instead we romanticise unproductive legacy stuff, and an NHS which, while its staff are in many cases heroic, spends most of its vast budget cleaning up the mess of a population who thinks eating a sensible diet and enacting basic public health policy is "woke".

It's a good thing we banned indoor smoking in public buildings in the early aughts, there's no way you'd get that through in today's political climate.

You're not thinking like an economist :) Here's something I saw on Twitter (no source):

The bicycle is the slow death of the planet. General Director of Euro Exim Bank Ltd. got economists thinking when he said: "A cyclist is a disaster for the country's economy: he does not buy cars and does not borrow money to buy. He does not pay for insurance policies. He does not buy fuel, does not pay for the necessary maintenance and repairs. He does not use paid parking. He does not cause serious accidents. He does not require multi-lane highways. He does not get fat. Healthy people are neither needed nor useful for the economy. They don't buy medicine. They do not go to hospitals or doctors. Nothing is added to the country's GDP (gross domestic product). On the contrary, every new McDonald's restaurant creates at least 30 jobs: 10 cardiologists, 10 dentists, 10 dietary experts and nutritionists, and obviously, people who work at the restaurant itself." Choose carefully: cyclist or McDonald's? It is worth considering. P.S. Walking is even worse. Pedestrians don't even buy bicycles.

Author hasn't been to SW London on a sunny weekend then. £5K bikes strapped to the top of £70K cars as far as the eye can see.

Vast majority of NHS expense is keeping an aging population alive. A lot of the rest of government spending (nearly 80% of my council tax for example) goes on social care for that same aging population.

The NHS spends less per capita than the US spends on medicaid. Not less per person covered, less overall.

How do poorer countries manage to avoid getting outright bankrupted by social care? Why is it such a black hole money-pit in the UK particularly?

It’s a black hole money-pit everywhere. There is no return on spending money for people who will never be productive again.

The only way that kind of wealth transfer works is with a growing proportion of workers, but that has long not been the case in many developed countries.

The solution for all these countries (even the US) is to dismantle all wealth transfer to old people. It might be the only way to incentivize production of families that raise productive children. Or tell old people to expect declining quality of life (faster than it already is).

Transferring away from older voters is not going to happen, other than very gradually.

The west is caught in a web of its own creation. We have basically incentivized the countries to get older by taxing the young to subsidize the rich.

Unfortunately, there's no easy way for democracy to correct this. older people vote and are wealthier. Both of those mean they have large political power.

Doesn't this create a situation where the old rely on their own younger generation to support them?

And therefore inequality between older people who have families (or have families that care about them) and those that don't?

I can see this particularly being a problem for countries like the UK which has long encouraged "upwardly-mobile" people to move away from their towns of origin in pursuit of economic opportunity, leading to families being widely dispersed across a country which, despite its fairly small size, is not especially fast to travel around.

More workers to older people ratio

More social care from family (which is unpaid and thus is hidden in GDP figures)

Less social care

Expectation in the UK that wealthy old people should not pay for their own care and instead poorer working people should

Are we miscounting GDP?

That is, if someone goes out for work instead of caring for relatives, not only do we count their work as GDP, we also count the person who has to stand in for them.

So that's a large increase in paid work done, but a minimal amount of extra wellbeing generated. Especially if, say, each of them now has to drive 45 minutes each way.

If, as you say, care is paid for by other people working, are there interventions - either state or individual - to reduce the need to consume it? Obviously some people are just unlucky, and live a long time in a state of total incapacity (hence the "dementia tax" rhetoric), is it possible to incentivise people to do things that mean they need less of it - by spending a greater proportion of their lifespan in good health, say?

Depends on the what your goal is when counting GDP.

If I spend a day painting my garage door, and my neighbour spends a day wiring a new lightbulb, nothing is added to GDP

If I pay my neighbour to paint my garage door, and my neighbour pays me to wire a new lightbuld, that counts as GDP

Same work is done, same outcome.

> by spending a greater proportion of their lifespan in good health, say?

Might reduce the amount, on the other hand might extend lifespan and thus cost more.

Not necessarily on that last point as it's something other than a linear relationship.

There are people aged 90 who've needed 0 years of care, and others who've needed 30.

That was kind of what I meant by greater proportion.. we're all mortal, but for me personally, the idea of being utterly dependent for a long period of my later years is, to put it mildly, not something I want. As in I would literally rather be dead. I'm not saying other people should feel the same, but that's how I feel about it.

Two, three, perhaps five years at the end? Sure, that's rather to be expected. Even then, there are huge differences in quality of life enjoyed by different eldercare residents. I had one older relative in a home for his last four years, who basically had good quality of life up until the final couple of weeks. Another who was in a home for a decade+, and had almost zero quality of life from the day she went in. Not because it was a bad home, she was just too far gone.

The UK cannot just "be Singapore". What happened in Singapore was a specific, unrepeatable combination of its geography, the needs of the region, the size of the country, and the culture.

To maintain its wealth today, Singapore relies on a large underclass of underpaid non-citizens. Around 40% of the country are non-citizens.

In addition, London sort of has its own Singapore(s) in the form of the City and Canary Wharf. That's great for those who work there, but it's not feasible for a country of nearly 70 million for everyone to just work in finance.

Final comment:

> Singapore did not depend on neighboring countries to climb out of 3rd world poverty

Singapore's wealth is built on trade and foreign investment. To assume that without other countries it would be equally successful is absurd.

This is true but there are many policies that the UK could copy from other countries like Singapore that would work much better than what they are currently doing

Can you give a couple of examples, for those unfamiliar with Singapore and/or the UK?

Housing+Development Board comes to mind. Singapore housing policies ensures people can afford to live somewhere reasonable.

From the top of my head, might be incorrect but this is what I remember from reading about it:

1. Some of the least bureaucracy in the world to start a business. Simple + fast.

2. Some of the simplest/least laws in the world (law in general) to allow for business to succeed/be efficient. They actually started out with British law and then modified it where necessary to get to where they are now.

3. Some of the least political corruption in the world, due to a deliberately designed system against it: paying politicians very high salaries from taxes (on par with industry) instead of from bribes/lobbying (or legalized insider trading like in the US) + a dedicated secret service department tasked with keeping an eye on politicians and their corruption. Very high fines/imprisonment if caught. There's other stuff they do that could be copied.

4. Simple tax laws and low taxes in general.

5. Relatively simple worker protection laws (easy to hire and fire).

6. The best public transportation system in the world (based on my own experience and extensive travel around the world, I'm from EU).

7. Some of the best public housing in the world. Basically similar to what the UK used to have (based on a legacy UK system) before Tatcher killed it, except better thought out. It's all connected to their "central provided fund" (CPF) where everybody can save tax-free for housing, healthcare and other important stuff.

8. Tons of trade agreements with other countries. UK choses to just follow EU, which is relatively complex and limited (Brexit never happened in any practical real sense). "fort Europa"

9. Access to highly educated talent. Both local (some of the best uni's in the world) as well as from students all over (South East) Asia who can't wait to come to Singapore (highest income in the region).

This is some very general examples, the TLDR is that they went from third world country to first world within 1 generation thanks to the best leadership there can probably be.

I often hear the same non-explanations repeated about how Singapore got to wealth. "they use cheap labor" (literally every country in SEA does), "oh it's their location", "they just got lucky", "it's because they're an Island", "it's because they're on a trade route", "it's because other countries helped them", "it's because they're small". None of these make sense to me and don't explain anything. There are tons of regions and countries around Singapore who fit (some of) those criteria. All of the countries around Singapore started out as 3rd world countries when Singapore was a 3rd world country and all of them still are now that Singapore is not. The difference is leadership IMO.

Thanks for being fair-minded and giving credit where credit is due. I'm so tired of reading comments trivializing Singapore's achievements and mischaracterising it as a country.

> it's because other countries helped them

Also, this is not true. Singapore never received any handouts, save a meagre sum from Japan as compensation for occupying Singapore during World War 2. Singapore's first Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, understood that such monetary gifts always came with strings attached, and that accepting them would increase Singapore's vulnerability to the caprices of its benefactors. He was adamant to avoid having Singapore held hostage.

> Singapore relies on a large underclass of underpaid non-citizens. Around 40% of the country are non-citizens.

There is nothing stopping other wealthy countries from doing this besides egalitarian values, it could take the place of illegal immigrants in agriculture in the US for example

>The salaries in Japan arent great honestly, but mine, the quality of life and how far my money goes is so much better than if I lived back at the UK.

In a similar situation to you apparently. Every couple of years I'll take a look at UK as well as NZ and Aus (all places I can legally work) and Japan is still the better option. Even with the yen situation and despite all the doom and gloom others write online, life is still pretty nice here.

As an NZer, jobs in Australia pay wayyyy better and everyone here seems to agree that the lifestyle is better there. Lots of NZers move to Oz to improve their life and opportunities.

The NZ economy isn't doing great.

I'm personally worried that demographics and an incoming Labour government will mean that if you have saved for your retirement our next government will simply tax your savings until you have nothing (they keep talking of a 2% wealth tax: if we go back to a 4% annual return environment that's 50% tax of your savings over time). Plus they are slowly introducing means testing or equivalents.

In the meantime, it seems your parliament is quabbling over (the limitation of) Maori rights and so on. I guess the end goal is to improve the economy but is the chaos worth it?

or, alternatively the limitation of Pākehā rights.

It goes to the foundational treaty between the two peoples and the land grants and land uses agreed to.

There are sticking points lost in translation, to say the least.

Not worth it. Maori rights are an intractable problem - the only way to win is to avoid the topic and punt it to a future government. I'm sure you've worked on projects sunk by a non-technical distraction so you surely understand the mechanics.

National says they (and ACT) are the business party but they seem to be mostly windbags. The NZ government traditionally screws over businesses and founders - they certainly fail to encourage businesses while producing a lot of ineffectual programmes.

I don't recommend anyone try and start a business here. Plus NZ society generally cuts down tall poppies - especially capitalists (sportspeople is the main way to achieve without approbation). Be an employee or leech on the welfare state are the usual alternatives.

> Australia pay wayyyy better

well having a relatively small population and bountiful natural resources do great wonder.

We should form a club - even though I came here from Germany...

Exact same story for Korea. Dollar-term salaries similar to the EU, but when you compare to CoL it's a much better deal.

How about suicide rates?

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