> “The big, big elephant in the room is protection of privacy and ensuring security,” says Vivian Balakrishnan, Singapore’s foreign affairs minister and minister-in-charge of Smart Nation.
The idea that Singapore will protect the privacy of its citizens (or their access to information) is not credible in light of:
Bottom line is: Singapore is not for everyone. If you're willing to give up some civil liberties for an efficiently-run nation where you can generally walk around without fear of getting stabbed or robbed, then it's the perfect place for you.
Bottom line is: Singapore will give you safe nation to live in if you give up control of your life, labor protections, ability to find truths about country (eg fair media), and control over your future (dissent suppression). Several thousand years of world history show that is going to be a bad deal for many people in the country and maybe the country as a whole given enough time.
They do quite a few things right but need to counter the worst parts before it's too late. Might become the capitalist version of North Korea some day. Or something less severe but similarly hard to mentally escape or improve on via politics.
Do you have an independent media that can report on whatever goes on in your country, including negative info, with immunity to prosecution? Do you have individual protection in that case?
If you don't, then you can't reliably get the truth except for people taking personal risks on blogs and stuff. You can only hope your regime will provide it to you through media they control. And never do anything seriously wrong. Having read history books, I don't think that's even possible in the long run.
How do you define "independent media"? My impression is that the media industry in Singapore is near-centralized because of the size of the market. There's really just not enough people to support multiple large news organizations.
I'm not sure if there's anything that the media "can't report". When the government fucks up, the media reports it. When a terrorist escaped detention, it was reported. When soldiers die, it gets reported. When there's corruption, it's reported. [1] [2] [3].
What sort of event do you foresee happening that wouldn't get reported? The media even acknowledges the State's past detentions-without-trial [4] [5]. There's some visible bias, but it's visible, and any intelligent person can infer that things are a little less tidy and clean.
I actually protested against some attempted media regulations a few years back. None of us were prosecuted, or worried about being prosecuted.
The people running our government are smart people. They know that they need to be respected and be seen as legitimate in the eyes of the people. You can't really hide anything for long, and especially not somewhere as small as Singapore. The truth always comes out sooner or later. I dare say it's far likelier that states like the USA hide things from their people– and that's not a value judgement about the USA itself, but a statement about the difference in size of Govt. A tiny island-city-state can't sustain the sort of epic state apparatus that would get up to crazy shit.
I've only lived in Singapore for three years, but I do read the Straits times every day (I'm a paper and digital subscriber), get the daily update in email, and subscribe to their notifications.
The straitstimes is fascinating in that it so different from any newspaper that I'm familiar with in the United States (I subscribe to the NYT, and have the SJ Mercury news, and WSJ in the past). In many ways, it feels like a government newsletter, with clearly government approved messaging on things like the budgets, healthcare, elections, etc..
The "Structure" of the newspaper stories, particular on the front page, is also remarkably consistent over the last few years - usually with a story from one of the following collection - Story about a maid, story about something good in Singapore, Story about something bad in the rest of the world that wouldn't happen in singapore, story about someone who did something bad, and got caught, and what their punishment was, story about issues regarding racial/religious harmony. The complete lack of LGBT stories is also fascinating. And you will almost never, ever see a story regarding the liberalization of drugs.
For better or worse, the media is clearly not independent - whether that's a good or bad thing is unclear to me. Singapore is certainly a very safe and clean place to live in, with little visible signs of poverty and/or urban blight that is so common in American Cities. I know it's the only city I've ever felt comfortable about my mother roaming around anywhere at night.
Maybe there's something to be said about a bit of totalitarian rule?
Nazi Germany had the lowest crime rates in modern recorded history (if you don't count "government crimes"). When a government is able to act unilaterally with impunity your safety is still at risk, only the risks come from the government rather then street criminals. The real risk in Singapore is, what comes down the road? What happens if they implement laws that restrict free speech, or criticizing the government? What sort of position will people be in to oppose future government oppression when they live in a Totalitarian state that is completely controlled and monitored? At the end of the day, ceding your rights and freedoms to government officials with the idea that you can trust them to do the right thing is dangerously naive, and has never ended well.
Singapore promotes racial harmony, religious acceptance. They are opposed to drugs, corruption, and littering.
About the only place I would suggest they perhaps are behind in terms of what I would consider important modern civil liberties are their attitudes towards LGBT issues, and, honestly, they aren't particularly strict about it, even though it is technically illegal for homosexual men (but not women) to have sex with each other. Ironically, you probably run into more serious discrimination issues in certain states/towns in the United States than you would in Singapore. It's just something that's frowned upon, rather than very actively prosecuted - and there is a healthy gay rights movement here.
And, once again, I would much rather cede my rights and freedoms to a government that creates a safe, clean, and tolerant environment, where I, and my family can live in safety, than a government which, while protecting my rights/freedoms, created an environment that was unsafe, dirty, and intolerant, and in which I and my family were not safe to walk around in.
>And, once again, I would much rather cede my rights and freedoms to a government that creates a safe, clean, and tolerant environment, where I, and my family can live in safety, than a government which, while protecting my rights/freedoms, created an environment that was unsafe, dirty, and intolerant, and in which I and my family were not safe to walk around in.
That's like saying, "I'd rather stab myself in the eye with a pen then a pencil". My point is that nobody who values their dignity and freedom ever cedes their rights to any government, for any reason.
>About the only place I would suggest they perhaps are behind in terms of what I would consider important modern civil liberties are their attitudes towards LGBT issues
If you don't see a civil liberties issue with the government putting censors on you, your vehicle, and every street corner to monitor everything you do, everywhere you go, when you sleep, when you eat, and when you take a shit, and to regulate your personal behavior in each of these matters, as they claim it relates "to the public good" we have a very different definition of "civil liberties".
“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”
― Samuel Adams
As Stanislav says, it's about whether the government is in the threat profile. All of human history, including in Asia, shows that the protective government eventually go corrupt. The more power they have then, the worse things will be for the citizens. This already happened more than once in Asia.
So, the question isn't no rights/freedoms for safety vs rights/freedoms without safety. What are you even talking about? Aren't you aware that there are countries with plenty freedom and low violence? And even areas of my country (U.S.) that are similar due to culture? You can keep free speech/expression, free press, due process, and so on without it turning into the Wild Wild West. At worst, people will be more honest and blunt with a bad guy here and there going free instead of innocent people being locked up.
Singapore is a police state governed by a single party/family with very limited freedom of press (enforced via strict libel laws). Granted, the rulers are enlightened, and it is very much a stable "rule of law" country...it is also multi-cultural with necessary tolerance on religion. Hopefully Singapore can evolve into something a bit less authoritarian while keeping those qualities.
Interesting write-up. More interesting is that the paper fits your description closely when I loaded it. Might read it a bit more often out of curiosity.
"Maybe there's something to be said about a bit of totalitarian rule?"
Or a combo of culture that cares with strong enforcement of good laws. I think that would suffice. Remember that there's pretty safe democracies without totalitarianism.
I define it as a media that is financially independent from the government and with little influence from them. I wasn't aware that the media reports as much as it does based on what Singaporeans told me in past. There could be a bias there.
I appreciate the links. Ill look into them. One thing you might clarify is how much reporting contradicts the very nature of the regime, government, and way the system works. Journalist that ask thd big questioms with alternatives provided with references showing they'd likely work. We get that in American media, including HN, all thd time. That's critical for reform.
Do you have examples of that in Singaporean media?
> One thing you might clarify is how much reporting contradicts the very nature of the regime, government, and way the system works. [...] That's critical for reform.
I think this is one of those things where we run into one of those massive fundamental differences in perspective– about the value of contradiction and its role in reform.
I don't personally believe that "contradictory reporting -> reform". I surprise myself a little by saying that – in my teenage days I spent a lot of time writing blogposts that were deliberately critical of the media and the State. I got a lot of traffic to my blog, but I don't feel like I made much of a difference. I don't feel like I contributed towards reform. All I did was give people links that they could share on Facebook to argue with their friends about. I'm starting to share Obama's perspective on this– if you want real change, you have to get involved in the political process. And that doesn't actually require the sound-and-fury way of doing things.
I think INDEPENDENT THINKING is necessary for reform, and diverse, independent thought doesn't necessarily always emerge from A vs B. In fact, I've come to believe (from personal experience, mostly) that contrarian thinking tends to lead to very entrenched opposing camps, which leads to deadlock.
As another comment pointed out– Singapore is always constantly reforming, and a healthy, steady pace [1]. Our population sees no need for massive adjustments. I personally think in areas like legalizing gay marriage, removing the mandatory death penalty for drugs, etc we really ought to take some big leaps, but people are already making those arguments and progress is slow. But there is progress. And it's not the state that's holding the progress back– large portions of the population legitimately are indifferent or conservative or "if it ain't broke...".
So anyway– to answer your question– the media rarely contradicts the Govt or the system directly. But that doesn't necessarily mean what it seems. Criticisms exist, they're just subtly put.
Here's a very interesting article [2], from someone who's known to be a high-ranking journalist from a pro-establishment background:
> There is also the argument that a stronger opposition is good for Singapore's political development, not just as leverage against the PAP. Even some PAP ministers have said this.
> According to this view, a strong opposition provides checks and balances on the ruling party. It sets Singapore further along the path towards a two-party system, the dream of political liberals who do not buy the PAP's argument that Singapore is so tiny and so exceptional, it can only be governed by the PAP's pre-selected A-team of political leaders, and that it lacks the talent base for other parties to build up a credible alternative. Each election that sees capable individuals joining the opposition dents that argument.
> All that is needed next is for those capable individuals to coalesce around one or two serious political parties and their leaders, learn to compromise and work together, and win voters' support. Singapore can then become a "normal" country with a political system that remains stable even when parties alternate in power.
> It may undergo a period of turbulence in the transition, but settle into a stable equilibrium. Then, the biggest risk for Singapore - of having a system untested by alternation of political power - will be neutralised.
That might not seem like a big deal, but it was published by a "high-ranking" journalist in the national newspapers, legitimizing a non-PAP future for Singapore. It would've been unthinkable 10 years ago. And that's the kind of progress and reform we're proud of. A response to that might be "that's so tame, that's so mild!" – but we like it that way. Less blood and death. Nobody gets pepper-sprayed or tazed. It's more elegant.
This seems an oddly difficult proposition to grasp for a lot of people who have never lived in, visited, or been anywhere near Singapore, nor have any plans to do so.
Yeah, "Singapore is not for everyone" seems an extremely odd argument to me, given that unlike a health club or a gated community, the majority of Singapore's residents don't have any easy way to leave.
The headline of this article is:
"More than half of S'poreans would migrate if given a choice: Survey"
"More than half of a tiny and almost certainly unrepresentative fraction of Singaporeans" would be a more accurate description. Arguing from headlines seems like it must be an uncomfortable place to be.
The CIA World Factbook estimates a 1.5% net immigration rate for Singapore in 2015. They don't seem to break out immigration vs. emigration, so I'm not sure how frequently people leave, but a quick glance at Google results for "singapore emigration" suggests people leave frequently enough for some pundits to consider it a problem, which makes it seem improbable that doing so is all that difficult.
Singapore can be a very uncomfortable place to live if you're Singaporean, poor and unskilled, which is also precisely the combination that makes it virtually impossible to emigrate.
Every now and then the gov't media accidentally lets the veil slip, as in a story about a retired old lady who worked as a hawker centre table cleaner with wages of around S$190 per month (around US$100, this in a country with higher cost of living than the US) and slept in a pile of cardboard boxes on a public housing block's "void deck" (outdoor forecourt). This wasn't the story, mind you, since this is what happens to you if you have no retirement funds or family to support you in Singapore; the story was that somebody had stolen her S$90 of savings.
That people describe emigration as a problem says something. Most citizens of any given nation won't leave, and generally feel like they can't leave, because emigration requires either resources and skills or extreme desperation.
Virtually all nations of the world put a fairly high bar to immigration. For this reason, a nation's willingness to allow immigration at all tends to determine it's immigration rate since there are numerous areas of the world whose citizens are in extreme desperation.
You observe this from this chart of world immigration rates. Sweden is a pleasant destination for immigrants, Jordon and Libya less so but both have high immigrations rates.
The original argument was "Singapore is not for everyone" and my point that Singapore pretty much is for everyone who's a citizen without a whole lot of resources. It's not a matter of taste akin to an exclusive club.
Seems like a vague question without knowing exactly what constraint they're worried about. Are they too poor to afford the move? Singaporean expats have a harder time getting visas? Restrictions on getting a passport to leave?
"In 1987, 22 people were arrested under Singapore’s Internal Security Act (ISA) in a security exercise known as Operation Spectrum.
Accused of being involved in a Marxist conspiracy to establish a communist state, many detainees were tortured and then coerced into implicating themselves and their friends on public television."
> Accused of being involved in a Marxist conspiracy to establish a communist state, many detainees were tortured and then coerced into implicating themselves and their friends on public television.
The pendulum has already swung back somewhat: Since the '00s, the ruling party has been quietly ramping up the social safety net (various subsidy programs for the low-income), implemented universal healthcare to an extent (keeping health insurance costs low), and focused a lot on aiding older unemployed citizens (wage subsidies, retraining, upgrading). Government departments focus more on "customer service" and have a "no wrong door" policy.
It's been a gradual moderation since the '90s and before, when things were more uptight and anti-welfare-state. I remember the "OB markers", stuff that was out-of-bounds for public discussion - much of those have been eroded by blogs, forums & social media. So, not Marxism, just a shift away from pure capitalism and authoritarianism.
Even its "pure capitalism" has had a lot of public housing projects, right from the get-go. (And stuff we take for granted like public education.) I think its policies can be derived more from a "no passengers" ethos and the need to react to present living standards and their growth rate.
My name is Bryan and I'm one of the co-founders of a local company Intraix. Our company has been selected to be one of the vendors and is involved in the HDB Smart Home Trials with a local Telco - M1. I am pretty sure I would be able to paint out perspectives from different spectrums of this conversation.
In term of data protection and ensuring security,
The agencies involved in the smart home trial did put in a lot of effort to ensure that all companies in the program complies to the [Personal Data Protection Act] (https://www.pdpc.gov.sg/legislation-and-guidelines/overview) with very stringent criteria to data handling passed down to all the vendors.
As a matter of fact, our system had to face penetration tests conducted by Ernst and Young, a big 4 Auditing Firm before we can even get past the initial gates of entrance. I’m not saying that these measures are perfect but I believe the agencies, especially the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) is really serious about data privacy.
> As a matter of fact, our system had to face penetration tests conducted by Ernst and Young, a big 4 Auditing Firm
Auditing is not about security. It's about checking if proper procedures are in place, separation of duties, there's "access control", etc.
One thing it'll miss out on is the security of the system. You say that they performed penetration tests, but IMO saying that E&Y performed it makes me doubt the security.
FWIW, company I work for also has the big auditing firms (all of them) come along and perform audits.
Did you get the irony of a platform for personal expression and sometimes dissent moving into a country that suppresses dissent and narrows personal expression? Unreal. They've clearly bought into the propaganda with the list they posted. It's half right but counterexamples show transparency and corruption should be off it entirely with trust in politicians and education having qualifiers.
It is a good place to do business with people capable of it, low risks, and so on. In general. Yet, I wouldn't bring in anything that's about personal expression or privacy. That's just incredibly stupid given long-term risks.
Not a fan of authoritarian governments, but I have to say that from the perspective of a UK-based SaaS company trying to cope with VATMOSS, their reasons are more than a little compelling. Sometimes pragmatism really does need to win the day.
They can open a Nevada or Delaware corporation in the U.S. that hires from the tech scene. They'll have speech/press freedom, almost no taxes, plenty IT people to draw on a low-wages, Stripe support, no VATMOSS, and easy business dealings with any country.
Wonder why that wasn't on the list given we're the start-a-business-and-get-rich capital of the world.
Banning people's ability to protest is a positive social and cultural trait for you? Fuck that. That just made me think twice about ever bothering visiting.
With what's going on in America right now, restricting peoples abilities to protest is a blessing. So many people protesting against things they don't understand, people becoming violent. Blah. I love Singapore.
Really? And who determines what can you protest against/about? , do you have to pass an exam to protest certain things or a college degree is valid? Restricting peoples abilities to protest is one of the first things that dictatorships do.
Did you forget about the violent responses to the peaceful Occupy Wall Street protests? Tightly controlled "Free Speech Zones"? That is what we have in the USA, coupled with propaganda ridden corporate news. I don't think that we are in a position to criticize other countries too much since we have our own problems.
I just got back from a business trip to Singapore, and considering how that area was devastated by the occupation during WW2, it is amazing how fast they have built a very good place to live.
Experiencing specific forms of tyranny puts us in a perfect position to call out the same patterns in other countries and warn them so they can counter it before it's too late. Apathy by the majority is what screws America up. That Singaporeans actually care collectively about theirs and invest in their country's future is one of their most enviable traits. If Americans had that in mass, then our freedoms, votes, and capital would give us control of the country and vast improvements in one election cycle.
It's amazing how many Americans believe the propaganda about how free and liberal we are. Except I have to pay taxes to the US even if I don't live there and can't play poker legally if I do.
You didn't provide any argument for your statement. Singapore is also an extraordinarily expensive place to live, which doesn't seem like startup heaven to me.
Rubbish. I spent 5 years living in Sydney, Australia, before moving to Singapore.
Unless you want to live a high roller expat life-style in a condo and own a car, Singapore is NOT expensive.
And please don't refer to that terrible study that puts Singapore as the most expensive place to live, it's designed for companies to create packages for people for recruitment. It includes things like owning a car (something that is definitely not needed in Singapore), the price of alcohol (not a requirement to live), and living in an expensive condo (HDB's are excluded from the study)
Sydney on the other hand, costs more for an apartment in the city, public transport is more expensive, especially taxis, food and drink is more expensive (exception is Alcohol and Beef), utilities (power/gas/internet) is all more expensive.
My last tax bill in Sydney was about 22k when I left. My first full year in Singapore was like ~3k, and the government gave $1000 back. And the best part about it is you see all your money going back into the country, rather than lining the pockets of individuals to pass the blame on the failing like they do in Australia/New Zealand.
HDBs are still expensive. 2k SG for a small 2 bedroom HDB and very expensive electricity are not a good mix and there are very few studio or 1 bedroom HDBs. In most non coastal cities in the US you can get a studio for $600 USD.
In U.S. South near big cities, you can easily get a whole house with 3 bedrooms, two bathrooms, living room, kitchen, back/front yard, electricity, and high-speed Internet all for about $1,300 a month. Cheaper if you are about 10 minutes out into rural areas.
Either people make serious money in Singapore or their poor are pretty crunched in terms of living space. I don't have data to answer that.
Feel free to correct me, I've only been to America a couple of times, so I don't know the most appropriate place to search for comparison.
Rent would be considered a lot for most Singaporeans, however being ang moh I automatically pay more anyway. I know people living in my building who pay half what I pay in rent simply because they are Singaporean.
Also young Singaporeans live at home with their parents well into their 20s, and often get engaged and order an HDB which they start paying before they get married. They are not allowed to move in (by law) until they are married, and can only buy as a single if they are over the age of (35) i believe.
This is to encourage marriage. Likewise the lack of single bedroom HDBs is to encourage starting a family by having the rooms available. etc.
----
I pay $2600/m (divided by 2 because I live with someone else) for a 2 bedroom hdb, that's bigger than the $2800 2bedroom apartment I had living in Sydney.
My power bill in Sydney was about $210/m while in Singapore its about $110/m.
Internet in Sydney was about $120/m for ADSL2+ (that connected at 2.5mbit) while in Singapore I pay $59 for uncapped, unthrottled, 1gb down / 500mbit up.
Taxi in Sydney cost me $27 to get to work in the morning. In Singapore, it takes 3x as long to get to work in a taxi and costs $10.
Train in Sydney cost me about $7/day and because it was only a few stops it would cost more to get a monthly or yearly pass than to just pay each day. Singapore costs me $1.18 to get to work and $0.90 to get home.
Basically my cost of living has significantly dropped living in Singapore. I'm not saying its like that for everyone. People I work with live in Condo's and pay a lot more than I do.
"New York - Downtown, as I figure in terms of status and location that seems comparable to Singapore."
"Feel free to correct me, I've only been to America a couple of times, so I don't know the most appropriate place to search for comparison."
You narrowed the scope of our conversation to one of the most expensive and famous parts of the entire United States to compare to the average of Singapore? At least you offered that you don't know where to do the comparison. ;) In my area (Memphis Metropolitan), there's tons of businesses, restaurants, activities, service sector, events... you name it. It's not even one of best areas: actually a bad one. Yet, just around $1000 a month. Lots of areas in the South are like that where I hear some suburbs in Northeast near tech capitals are as well. West is expensive everywhere. Good parts of big name cities like NYC, LA, Chicago, etc are as well.
So, it's best to avoid comparisons with those as mostly rich people live there. The rest of us dare not try. :)
"I know people living in my building who pay half what I pay in rent simply because they are Singaporean."
Never heard of this before. How does that work?
"They are not allowed to move in (by law) until they are married, and can only buy as a single if they are over the age of (35) i believe."
That's really messed up. Thanks for telling me, though.
"I pay..."
Your house is double or more what many Americans will pay in rent. The power bill is reasonable if that comes with water. Or does water come with rent or free? The internet leaves me jealouse: I heard you had uncapped Gigabit but didn't know how many or how much. $59/mo. Wow. Corruption is preventing that here with a handful of cities having gigabit ranging from a little above that to $350/mo. Corruption puts me at 50Mbps down with a cap for $70/mo.
"Taxi in Sydney cost me $27 to get to work in the morning. In Singapore, it takes 3x as long to get to work in a taxi and costs $10."
Hmm. I've always wondered about this tradeoff but have no hard data on it. It happens here. In cities, people taxi or walk to work. Rates I paid were similar. Out here in suburbs, we mostly own cars to do that 20-30min drive I mentioned. Gas is maybe $5 a day. Car and insurance can be had for as little as $600 a month for 4 years. Interesting enough, that puts it at about the same rate per day although we pay with or without a trip to work. Ego reasons mean many people pay a lot more for their car, though. ;)
"Basically my cost of living has significantly dropped living in Singapore."
That I believe. Australians tell me the country is expensive to live in if we're talking the cities. You might have dropped your cost of living moving to... anywhere. Just kidding but cities cost $$$ in First World countries with Singapore obviously cheaper.
So, what kind of work do you do? With good hours, wages, and breaks? Is that average for your area?
It's just assumed that because I'm white I earn more money so I can afford to stay here.
"The power bill is reasonable if that comes with water. Or does water come with rent or free?"
Includes water in the power/gas bill.
"So, what kind of work do you do? With good hours, wages, and breaks? Is that average for your area?"
Just a lowly .NET dev. 10am till 6pm, good salary, hour lunch. There's a huge need for developers in Singapore. Singaporeans seem to get pushed towards Doctor/Lawyer/Accountant by their family, and those who do programming, often end up in big companies like IBM etc where they earn less and become a number, because family thinks that startups are not a good secure future. Atleast that's what i'm told from Singaporean programmers.
Traveling from Singapore is awesome too. Got return flights to Taiwan for a week for $70, been to Cambodia for $80 return, japan for $260 return, thailand for $160 return. Etc. Great for weekend trips. Fly friday night come home sunday night. :)
I believe it's highly dependent on where you are from.
Glass door has the average salary as < 4000/m, but to get an employment pass (EP) you need to be paid minimum of 4000/m
There's linkedin jobs that go from 5k up to 14k.
As far as I know, Java roles pay rather low because theres lots of developers from India who will fill those positions, but there are very few Node / .NET developers and so those roles get quite a bit more.
I mostly do .NET tho, bit of Node, and currently learning golang (even tho I dont think there are any golang jobs in Singapore, want to learn something new)
Basically I cannot confirm or deny those links because there are lots of factors to consider. The market here is very different to Australia where all roles are around the same range regardless of language.
It is if you're comparing cities. We're comparing countries. America is very diverse in this regard even geographically. Want expensive, dense city? We have them. Want to spend no more than $1300/yr with access to many jobs and activities? My area and dozens of others. Want to live off the land in isolation with a home costing a few grand? Rural areas further south of me have that.
So, comparing Singapore to U.S. means we win on cost of living vs what we get for it because we have tons of lower cost options with similar benefits. Still, I gave them the Internet as I might up my rent $500 to get unmetered Gigabit. I would but can't except in a few areas most of which are quite isolated.
Singapore is a city state. The entire country is a single city, with a population density comparable to New York City (18,645/sq mi vs 26,403/sq mi; and unlike NYC, large slabs of Singapore are used for heavy industry or military purposes).
I knew it was small but didn't remember that it was that small. Hmm. My counter still stands as choosing a country based on options it gives you still leads to better value for real estate in U.S.. The extra information I'm getting just makes it more clear why this is true. It's still a drawback, though, that doesn't exist everywhere. It must be factored into cost-benefit analysis.
It's hard for me to compare the cost of living in Singapore vs (insert American city) because I've never lived there. I can only compare to Australia because I lived there for 5 years after leaving New Zealand.
There's a lot of things that are far cheaper in America, for example I can buy an SSD cheaper on Amazon shipped to Singapore, than buying it in Singapore. But then (having visited only a couple of times) I'm unaware of anywhere to get lunch for $4(sgd) in America.
Singapore can definitely be an expensive place to live. If you choose that sort of life-style. However your federal tax alone is more than my whole income tax. And if Sanders gets his way, that will go up even more. Coupled with State tax, I can only guess my disposable income is more in Singapore than it would be in America.
For example, lets say that USD/SGD was 1:1, with a yearly salary of $75,000. In America the federal tax alone is 17,666. (not including state tax)
In Singapore the income tax on that would be $2000, however every couple of years Singapore does 50% tax rebate up to the first $1000. So the effective tax for last year would have been $1000. Meaning your net income was $74,000 vs $57,334.
This doesn't include singapore's common "13th month" salary which is often an extra month of salary as bonus, usually to cover the cost of taxes as tax is not withheld here like it is in Australia / NZ.
That means you would get an extra $6200 (approx) on top of the 75k, making your net income more around $80,000
If you paid $500/m rent in the US that's $6k/yr, in singapore you pay say $1,300 or $13,000/yr
I don't fully understand how you do taxes in America, but based on my limited research from when I wanted to live in America, and just now, this is what I worked out. This isn't meant to be factual and proof of the cost of living between the two countries.
Edit: Also not a good idea if you're American to move to Singapore to work, since you get double taxed. Even all forms here in Singapore ask if you're American Tax Citizen.
Let's just run through this see what we can quickly glean.
The meals may be cheaper. What's that constitute a meal, though? Here, I can get a footlong sub and side items for $8-10. A restaurant meal, with tip, is going to be $10-15 per seat if it's an inexpensive one with one plate and a drink. What's the $2-3 USD you claimed get you?
For taxes, I try to stay in states with no state tax. So, it's just federal. We get various types of deducations that should be considered. I'm ignoring that to simplify to worst case. So, $75,000 is $5,156.25 + 25% of amount over $37,450. That's $14543.75 of tax. That leaves $60,456.25 of disposable income in an area with cost of living of $15,600 which leaves me with $44,856.25.
Note: Wait, are you paying $1,300 for your part of rent or is that the whole rent? If we're halving it for a roommate, I can drop a few hundred off mine to add a few thousand a year. That's still around $50,000/yr so not huge difference.
"This doesn't include singapore's common "13th month" salary which is often an extra month of salary as bonus, usually to cover the cost of taxes as tax is not withheld here like it is in Australia / NZ."
We do withholding here, too. Many withhold extra to cover for overtime as the IRS will come after our ass if we don't have the difference. People like the check they get during tax season, though. So, similar in practice to the bonus but with some differences.
"Also not a good idea if you're American to move to Singapore to work, since you get double taxed. Even all forms here in Singapore ask if you're American Tax Citizen."
That last part is due to all the tax avoidance and U.S. cracking down on it. We can't even open a bank account in some places like Switzerland. Plus, if we renounce citizenship over taxes, they claim taxes on 10 years of our income in the new country as punishment. Taxes are not among America's strong suit unless you're rich enough to avoid them with loopholes designed for the rich. :)
Good to see you are enjoying your stay in SG, Phillip.
Hacker News comments on Singapore are always a great reminder that a majority of opinions on social media are laughably misinformed and ignorant. Being verbose and decent technologists != able to source accurately and provide cogent arguments without letting personal biases get in the way.
The last time this happened, people were quoting Kenneth Jeyaretnam, James D Ross and Roy Ngerng as credible sources. In fact, it is happening right in this very thread.
That last two examples both talk about the same thing, which is that it's illegal for a religious organization to explicitly comment on public policy matters.
Of course, it doesn't at ALL stop them from organizing and spreading their perspectives – it's an open secret that gay sex is still technically illegal in Singapore because of the conservative Christians lobbying for it to remain.
It just forces the religious groups to be more subtle about their agendas, which I think is about as good as it gets, really.
I think that's dangerous. Religion is a valid player on the field of public policy and they should be free to comment. In a government by the people, if the people choose to put weight on religious advice or concerns, that's completely valid. They don't need to reason by an arbitrary governmental standard that excludes something they believe in.
Even the restrictions on political speech for religious organizations in the US are worrisome (they lose their tax exemption if they explicitly endorse a specific candidate or party in an election).
>The ruling party uses power to eliminate opposition
That article is from 1990. More than 20 years ago. If you had looked a little further you would have found that Singapore increased the number of people in parliament who represent the opposition.[1] It is slow progress, but it's still progress.
Please don't be too quick to judge other countries regarding the subjects of privacy, representation and human rights. The reason for that is that if Asian countries have specks in their eyes regarding those issues, Western countries have telephone poles stuck in theirs for their breaches of privacy, representation, racism and human rights.
One of Singapore's prominent politicians in the late 90's wrote an essay about why Singapore does not have free speech. He said that the U.S. requires free speech because the press acts as a check on a corrupt government. In Singapore, he claimed, the government must instead act as a check on a corrupt press.
How's that for logic? You can find this article in a book of many similar essays available right up front in most major bookstores of Singapore.
You seem to be saying that one of those propositions is prima facie absurd, but I'm not seeing it. Who would disagree that checking corruption in industry is a primary function of government?
People have voted for the opposition in the face of incredibly unfair elections where the opponent is given just a few weeks where they can campaign and the media is controlled by the government.
Don't buy into their propaganda, their lies are pretty blatant if you take 60 seconds to do a search.
The idea that Singapore will protect the privacy of its citizens (or their access to information) is not credible in light of:
* http://www.economist.com/blogs/banyan/2013/06/regulating-sin...
and
* https://sg.news.yahoo.com/-smart-nation--singapore-will-be-w...
The ruling party uses power to eliminate opposition:
* http://www.csmonitor.com/1990/0731/eross.html
and
* https://www.questia.com/newspaper/1P2-33363045/suppression-i...
Many, many other examples can be found with minimal searching.