I lived in Singapore for 2.5 years. I mostly remembered him for his psychomumbling of later part of his life.

Calling him "doing all things right" is a big stretch. The biggest error of him was to cling to power long after his mind went going.

Singapore's economic success was pretty much a meme too. The median income is only ~20000 USD a year, less than half of the economic product per capita.

There were three epochs in Singapore's economy:

First - everybody sat in their campungs and chewed paan. Pretty much nothing was happening till seventies. The only exception to that was that there was pretty much a small scale communist insurgency going on.

Second - reformation and industrialisation. This is the fabled Singaporean miracle. They built MDB flats, and everybody got so happy. A small industrial sector appeared, but it was quickly overshadowed by another kind of activity.

Singapore exploited Western reprehension dealing with Asia, and marketed itself as a "Western outpost" in the middle of barbarian lands. Singaporean companies used Singapore's GATT membership to run trade agencies that bought cheap goods from Asia, and stamp "made in Singapore" on them. That brought the country a big part of its current wealth.

Third - wind down and stagnation. China accessed to WTO, and Singapore's WTO membership no longer meant anything anymore. Singapore got into the middle income trap. People began to feel that Sing's economy was a one trick pony. It tried, but failed to upgrade its economy towards advanced economic activities. From that era, we got the fabulous Nanyang University, excellent primary education, and, back then, liberal immigration policy.

But there was blessing in a curse - China's WTO accession brought tons of money from China's first generation of billionaires to the country. From then on, Singapore fully took on its current identity of the "Luxembourg of Asia."

>The median income is only ~20000 USD a year, less than half of the economic product per capita.

This[0] publication puts median household income at $108k SGD or 79.5k USD (and that would actually be higher if adjusted for PPP). The median household income for the US is 59k USD.

[0] https://www.singstat.gov.sg/-/media/files/publications/house...

It's also my understanding that almost everyone in Singapore lives in some sort of government-subsidized housing. The system is structured such that it's difficult to get an apartment or buy a house unless you're married so many typical Singaporean households have several adults earning an income under the same roof.[1]

[1]https://www.economist.com/asia/2017/07/06/why-80-of-singapor...

Clarification - Singaporeans live in these flats (HDB housing) - not expatriates. Expat families live in different neighborhoods, different apartments, go to different schools and eat in different places than the locals. No part of an expat life is subsidized. It is therefore unfair to say that almost everyone in Singapore lives in subsidized housing - almost all of the Singaporeans do.

Nobody prohibits a privatised HDB flat tenant from subletting it.

It's a big stretch to say that every expat lives in a landed property.

My first place in Sing was a room that I shared with 3 Indian labourers, and no aircon.

Then, when I moved to a more upscale place thanks to hefty sales commissions, I think everybody was bedazzled "how such a pipsqueak can rent a place for $1800 by himself." Only then, I realised that only top few percents of Singaporeans can afford to live in non-HDB condominiums.

As pointed out elsewhere -- That's the median resident income. There's a huge class of workers that are never given residency that are purposefully ignored by the official stats. Roughly 1/3 of the inhabitants of SG are non-residents who typically work low wage jobs (nearly all domestic help in this category) and they have very limited rights.

> median household income

Not median per person for the whole population including non-residents in the country.

> Looking at the other southeast Asian all the countries in ASEAN one starts to realize that Singapore could have been a lot worse off.

I find this very funny in reality because as someone from the US living in SE asia for nearly 4 years, I pretty much prefer everywhere else in SE asia than Singapore, though I guess if you look at from a monetary standpoint I can understand.

why?

Over regulated daily life (though very well run) combined with being very culturally bland automaton like outside of very few pockets, mixed with Israeli militarism applied to its own people, just doesn't feel very welcoming compared to say Thailand, Malaysia or Indonesia.

Some of my wife's family has lived there and Indonesia for a while, and it is agreed that out of all the places in SE asia, it is a good place to make money and potentially for schooling when young, they plan on moving when retiring.

Fair enough, but every city in malaysia feels like post apocalyptic singapore, infrastructure wise. Indonesia - not much quality of life overall.

Well I live in South Jakarta, in a pretty nice area in a 2br apt with alot of amenities that I would never want to pay for in the US or SG, so I'm biased because I probably have a very high quality of life compared to say most Indonesians (or even what I had compared to living in Boston paying the same for a room in an apt with 3 other grown men), but Indonesian's seem to be much more welcoming/laid back/hospitiable than Singaporean's (at least to me as a Black American). Plenty to complain about here (as anywhere), but progress is being made here without whole jack boot feel to it, albeit at a slower pace.

Do you have to go to an office daily? How convenient is that? Do you go out socially a lot? How are the restaurants and bars?

Jakarta is the city in SEA i know the least. I spent 3 days there as a cheap backpacker 10 years ago. I remember spending a substantial amount of time in traffic.

No I worked remote for companies in the US, which was my main willingness to live in SE asia in the first place because salaries here are crap.

Some places are better than others, if you lived in SCBD or Pondok Indah (where I am), and your office is close, it kind of feels like some parts of tokyo, but with a little more green space. Traffic is pretty crap though (morning and eveing when people are coming from work), but go-jek or grab biking doesn't make it too bad. Pollution is still bad during the work week, and if you do it alot best to get one of those face masks people tend to wear a lot in Asia anyways. MRT is coming online soon (alot of test runs on the tracks now), so that will make it alot easier geting around esp from south to central jkt.

Plenty of restaurants, bars, and clubs, I manage to have a good time when I out (pretty introverted though, so I tend to not go a lot in general, maybe a couple of times every month, but I tend to order food via gojek at least like every other day), though I try to avoid places that allow smoking indoors. I also tend to avoid eating any street food unless I have something I can take that my stomach can handle (but I'm like that in the US as well ha). It's also nice to be able to take a quick flight to some of the Islands and relax (Bali is ok, but super crowded with tourists compared to other places).

Never was really interested in backpacking unless it was hiking in mountains purely, so I don't really know what would appeal to that perspective.

> No I worked remote for companies in the US, which was my main willingness to live in SE asia in the first place because salaries here are crap.

You can make decent money in Singapore as an expat. But the range of salaries i've seen here is quite a bit larger than in most of the west.

As for the rest of your comment - interesting. Thank you for taking the time to write that up. I am no longer a backpacker and i travel and look at places differently nowadays. I have to check out Jakarta again.

I live in Singapore currently, have been here since 2013. There are things that i miss from my home country (Switzerland), but overall life here is good.

> But the range of salaries i've seen here is quite a bit larger than in most of the west.

I noticed this as well, do you have a college degree? I've noticed companies over here place even more emphasis on having such (even despite paying less than in the US, at least regarding work relating to writing software).

> I live in Singapore currently, have been here since 2013. There are things that i miss from my home country (Switzerland), but overall life here is good.

Do you go back and visit fairly often? I found that friend's and family were more likely to want to come to me or meet me somewhere outside than the US so I haven't really found the urge to go back to at least visit.

I have a bachelor’s degree but i know people without a degree making 130-140k USD anually in software related roles. Not quite SF/Valley rates but it goes a long way here with the low tax rates. And these are relatively young people. (Early thirties)

I visit home about once a year.

Yeah but Singapore is so bland they fucking banned the song 25 or 6 to 4.

> Some of my wife's family has lived there and Indonesia for a while, and it is agreed that out of all the places in SE asia, it is a good place to make money and potentially for schooling when young, they plan on moving when retiring.

Not having to shoulder the cost of an aging population would work very well for SG.

> Not having to shoulder the cost of an aging population would work very well for SG.

One (surprising) way Singapore addresses the cost of caring for an aging population is Singapore's "Maintenance of Parents Act"[1] which basically permits parents to sue their adult children for alimony.

[1]http://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/infopedia/articles/SIP_1614_200...

You should see their subways when they are littered with signs for people to get pregnant.

"Pool of citizens aged 65 and older grew to 14.4% this year, from 9.4% in 2007, as lifespans increase and births stay low"[0]

[0] https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/spore-ageing-at-faste...

I've never ever seen signs in the MRT about anything to do with pregnancy... (been here 7 years, catch the MRT to work every day, yellow and green lines)

This was sometime between Feb 27 and early march 2017 passing through some station on coming from somerset station on the red line, coming off one of the trains and on the walking tram, there was a huge billboard for it.

Ah I never get the red line. It’s always so crowded :)

Singapore once aired a commercial during their National Day Parade about making babies, sponsored by mentos obviously. [1]

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jxU89x78ac

WOW! I never knew this existed. Just sent it to my singaporean friends and they are like "BAHAHAHA OMG I FORGOT ABOUT THIS"

The day they released this was so so funny. and awkward.