Singapore exists at the behest of the United States. Its sovereign wealth fund is heavily invested in the United States and its geopolitical precariousness on the straits of malacca is predicated upon the implicit protection of the United States Navy.

It's a political choice to let millionaires flee there, just as it's a political choice not to tax them at home. A snap of the US's fingers will change Singapore's policy.

Like when Wrigley sent a US Congressman to visit - he snapped his fingers and chewing gum was no longer banned.

That's true of basically 85% of the world. The only really independent countries, as far as I can tell are the US, China and Russia with France, Germany, UK and India on the edge.

I'm not sure what your point is unless you think the US will suddenly reverse its centuries old policy and start colonizing the world.

That's precisely why the argument of "if we tax the rich they'll just take their wealth elsewhere" doesn't stack up. If it happens, when it happens, it happens because we made a conscious decision to enable it.

He must not have snapped very loudly, because the only way to buy chewing gum to this day is as medicine (e.g. nicotine gum) from a doctor or pharmacy.

Singapore is not just dependent on the US. It depends heavily on China too. Defense wise, Singapore has one of the strongest forces in the region.

And most millionaires in Singapore are Singapore citizens.

Singapore's status is not just some offshore tax haven, as seen by many in the west. It has a diversified economy.

No, it's because it's a city-state, and millionaires tend to be urban, so comparison with countries with lower urbanization is misleading. New York City (which has a population not much larger, so it's a community of roughly comparable scale that, like Singapore, is 100% urban) has a notably higher concentration of millionaires than Singapore does. (1 in ~8.4 compared to Singapore's 1 in ~20.)

They treat Florida residency like a flag of convenience[1]. There are some who legitimately retire or move to Florida for a lifestyle change - not exactly a new phenomenon - and a bunch of young professionals who choose to live in Miami because it's Miami, but for most it's just paperwork.

David Tepper is a great example. He "lives" in Florida and moved Appaloosa to Miami, but Charlotte is now the center of his personal life and he spends almost half of his time there.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_convenience

Saying that some still remain doesn't refute my statement.

Sure, some millionaires have left, but not nearly enough to call it an exodus - "the millionaires" as a class are still there; they never left.

Indeed, according to Forbes, there are more billionaires living in NYC than any other city in the world: https://www.forbes.com/sites/giacomotognini/2020/04/07/world... And according to this cnbc article, the same is true for millionaires: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/18/new-york-city-has-more-milli...

NYC has the highest concentration of millionaires in the world.

I'm not sure what your point is. Unless you're claiming that cities spontaneously generate millionaires?

From what I can tell, NYC has lots of millionaires primarily because rich people like to live there, so rich and talented people move to NYC from all over the US.

The same thing is true of Singapore, except that - as you so rightly point out - there is no "rest of Singapore" for them to come from. Instead, they come from the rest of the World, by necessity.

I couldn't find any data on this with a quick search, but my instinct is that NYC probably generates more millionaires than it acquires. You can move to the city straight out of college and become a millionaire in relatively short order if you land the right job; it's a much more circuitous path to get rich by starting, like, a construction company in rural Nebraska and then move to NYC.

The same seems (broadly) true of other financial or tech capitals. It's easier to build wealth in cities than outside of them.

I guess it depends on how you count. I see most those people who would have been millionaires anywhere they moved to (e.g. top 10% Harvard law grad).

Will they make better money in NYC than probably anywhere else in the US? Probably. Are there more high paying law and finance jobs in NYC than anywhere in the US (with the possible exception of DC)? Probably.

But as many people are fond of pointing out, that doesn't really consider labor's role in this. NYC has jobs, but it needs talented people. There are plenty of talented people who are born and grow up in NYC, but there aren't nearly enough to fill the high salary jobs that open every year.

This is kind of my point (and, I assume, the OP's): most of those people move to the city to become millionaires, not because they already are millionaires and prefer to live in the city.

In that regard, cities do sort of spontaneously generate millionaires in that most wealth is produced there and not (there's probably a better way to phrase this) imported.

There's nothing “spontaneous” about it; millionaires don't just appear out of the ground, they arise through economic activity that is more concentrated in centers of trade and commerce, aka, cities.