As an aside, it's funny how Singapore is known as a hypercapitalist utopia, but the ruling party was originally quite socialist and that's still visible in the naming.
- Most people work for the government for example. PSD (public service is the largest employer). Temasek, controlled by the Singapore Minister of Finance owns the every major local company (Singapore Airlines, Captialland, DBS, JTC, etc).
- The housing market is 80% HDB and directly government controlled
- The tax system is very progressive with foreigners paying a lot and locals collecting a lot of subsidies.
People in the US swoon about capitalist wonderland when in reality Singapore is the strongest case for government run economy you can probably find because it a actually works quite well to keep the country competitive and extract maximum value for the population.
Go ahead, verify it.
> They are also quite blatant about "if you vote against PAP, we'll take money away from your constituency".
Not cool!
> The "grassroots" setup PAP has resident committees, neighborhood committees, resident's networks, etc. It's a massive group of volunteers for PAP that allows them a broad interaction with voters that the opposition can't really replicate
Unpaid volunteers? Wow...
Honestly I think if they were serious about it they could create processes and entities in place that would benefit constituents without depending on the ruling party.