The Dark Side of Singapore's Economic Miracle

this is what Singapore looked like 60 years ago when it gained independence and this is what it looks like today as a city stayed with zero corruption and efficient government and the four highest GDP per capita in the world Singapore has managed to build a reputation of an ideal country but the reality is a little different because Singapore's economic Miracle came at a cost to its own people and it looks like it's running out of steam singaporeans are stressed overworked and burned out as the country is running out of space and becoming more and more expensive for the first time in decades the city-state is experiencing a housing crisis and with a rapidly aging population the lowest birth rate in the world and an increasing resentment against the constant influx of expats its economic model is about to hit the wall but how did we get here what was the price of this success and why is it not working anymore this is the Dark Side of Singapore's economic miracle when Singapore gained independence no one thought that the small country surrounded by much larger neighbors had much of a future it was suffering from high levels of unemployment shortage of food and lack of space with 70 of its population living in extreme poverty half of it being illiterate and one-third living in one of the worst slums in the world but Singapore had one advantage its prime minister Lee Kuan Yew the leader of Singapore for more than three decades and The Man Behind its economic Miracle Lee Kuan Yew declared that the only two resources Singapore has are its people and their hard work and that basically describes what made its incredible development possible first since Singapore had need their money or a skilled Workforce it decided it had to attract as much foreign investments as possible and turn itself into a hub for global companies coming to Asia Singapore already had an excellent location as a naval club and it offered a stable and efficient government and really friendly policies like exemption from tax for foreign companies for 10 years and no unions and as an increasing number of Western companies started choosing Singapore as their Regional HQ they started bringing their money people and know-how with them second in order to maximize the potential of the people a Lee Kuan Yew made sure that Singapore will be defined by the principle of meritocracy the idea that Society rewards people purely based on their Merit their skills and their performance so that talented people can rise to the top no matter what background they were born into and more than anything else this has defined the Singaporean education system and its practice of streaming basically since the youngest age kids in schools across Singapore are constantly put through standardized tests and then sorted based on their results and those with good results move up and are given access to better schools and better education programs allowing the system to help the most capable students to achieve their maximum potential and this then repeats throughout their educational Journey making sure that the usefulness of every individual in the society is maximized and to get out even more from the only resource Singapore had the people leeco and you made sure that another founding principle of the country and a defining trait of the Singaporean Nation will be constant hard work not only that he was known for his personal work ethic but he puts special effort to encourage singaporeans to work harder reminding them that it's the only thing that can get the small country ahead and the government has been echoing this message ever since by communicating it through National productivity campaigns targeting people from their earliest childhood like through the slogan good better best never let it rest and the productivity mascot to me the productivity B [Music] and finally The Grove made possible by all these factors was boosted by an enormous population growth as the population has more than tripled since Independence in the 1980s the government introduced very open immigration policies that attract tens of thousands of people every year to come live and work in Singapore and it managed to bring both less qualified manual workers as well as those that are labeled as foreign Talent meaning highly skilled workers that work in the so-called knowledge economy and to boost the population growth even more the government has been running a number of campaigns encouraging people to have as many kids as possible like the half three or more if you can afford it campaign or this song encouraging people to make babies on the Singapore National Day sponsored by Mentos this August the 9th it's time to do our civic duty and I'm not talking about speeches fireworks or parades but I like that stuff I'm talking about the stuff after that stuff I'm talking about making a baby so this is the secret of Singapore's success and this is where the story usually ends but there's another much darker side this story as well because the same principles that have been so successful for Singapore have also created a new set of problems that it now has to deal with but what happened so there's this term in Singapore called kyasu basically it means the fear of losing or the fear of falling behind and it's meant to capture the Singaporean mentality and how both the country and the people see the world as a merciless competition where you have to be constantly on your toes and constantly pushing to the max if you want to succeed but it's not just an arbitrary term according to sociologists and psychologists who research this topic kiasu is actually a real psychological and cultural trait that can be defined as obsessive concern with getting the most out of every transaction and a compulsive desire to get ahead of others and while this mentality has some positive effects like that people push themselves to work as hard as they can it has also some pretty serious negative impact on the people themselves it's not just that singaporeans hate their jobs more than any other nation in the world and they are one of the most overworked and strong stressed out societies but research also finds that the kiisu mentality directly leads to higher Conformity lower self-esteem and lower creativity on an individual level in other words the system and the mindset makes people feel worthless and it kills their ability to generate and pursue new ideas which is a paradox because while working hard is good for the economy self-esteem and creativity are one of the most important requirements for success in Business and Entrepreneurship and if obsession with hard work is killing those qualities then it might not be such a good trade-off but where did this counter come from well basically it is just the other side of the coin of Singapore's success since its independence Singapore has perceived itself as a small vulnerable country that is constantly in an existential danger and it needs to work harder than everyone else in order to survive but that survival mentality of the entire nation has translated into the same survival mentality on an individual level which is at the core of the fear of losing and at the same time while Singapore is highly developed it has a great quality of life and one of the highest gdps per capita in the world it's not an easy Society to live in since the time you're a kid you go through an education system that is highly effective and produces students with one of the best standardized test results but that's also incredibly stressful like in South Korea after school tutoring is the norm but even more than in Korea test results even at a young age can Define your entire career later on because of the streaming process how well you do at a test in a primary school can decide which high school and then University you end up in and if you want to work for the public service for example which is the biggest employer in Singapore you have to show your test results from when you are 16 and even individual grades play a decisive role in whether you can even get a job there or not and so it's not a surprise that students in Singapore are a lot more stressed and more prone to anxiety than in other countries and it doesn't get much better as an adult despite the effort of the government the country does have limited resources and even though Singapore has high salaries this does make certain things comparatively more expensive than elsewhere and a good example of that is housing because space is with the limited size of the land and with an ever-growing population one of the scarcest resources in Singapore and while Singapore has been known as the country that solved its housing problem in the past two decades that's not really true anymore private housing is extremely expensive and unaffordable for most people apart from those earning way above average and so the government has been building public housing and selling apartments or actually renting them for 99 years at a relatively cheap price so that every family can have a place to live but the truth is that in recent years the government has not been able to build enough houses to satisfy the demand and so weightless for new flats are desperately over subscribed and if you want to buy or actually rent a public flat you will often have to wait more than five years and meanwhile people have been reselling their public apartments on the secondary Market which is not regulated and their prices have gone up so high that they are getting extremely expensive as well Enzo Singapore is now experiencing a quickly escalating housing bubble in which the living situation is becoming a huge stress factor for a growing percentage of people and the fact that life is so expensive and competitive is a key reason why Singapore has the lowest fertility rate in the world even lower than in Japan in surveys people often cite financial reasons as to why they don't want to have kids and while that's similar in most developed countries this is particularly problematic for Singapore because one of its growth strategies has always been constant population growth but since singaporeans are having fewer and fewer children this growth is literally unsustainable and the population of Singapore its only and most important resource would have started to go down very quickly if it wasn't for extremely high levels of immigration but here's another catch because life in Singapore is already competitive there is a growing resentment against continuing high levels of immigration to the country especially against the more qualified immigration because a growing number of people feel that these x-bands who are coming to Singapore are competing over the qualified jobs with the locals but at the same time Singapore needs the immigration because it already has a quickly aging population and without immigration it will soon be a nation of senior citizens the point is that the strategy that Singapore has relied on for Success so far expanding its pool of people and getting them to work as hard as possible my just not work anymore even if people keep working as hard as they always have without the expanding population it won't be enough and if people don't feel financially secure about their future they won't be happy with always more and more people coming in because life is already competitive enough as it is and so the success and the future of Singapore is more uncertain than it seems

Channel: Explained with Dom

Views: 747,406

Keywords: singapore, singaporean economy, why singapore is so successful, dark side of singapore, why singapore is so rich, why are singaporeans so stressed, why singaporeans work so hard, why singapore education system is so succesful, is singapore the perfect country

Id: XDYy8z7krAI

Length: 12min 4sec (724 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 09 2022