The United Kingdom has been in managed decline since 2008. The dismal performance of the British economy — characterised by slow growth, low productivity and stagnant wages — has been the subject of much analysis in recent years. The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has highlighted that the UK’s recovery from the 2008 financial crisis has been the slowest on record, even weaker than the recovery following the Great Depression in the 1930s and the early 1920s slump.
The authors have spent part of their careers in Singapore and have written extensively on the city-state’s economic growth since its independence. On several occasions, we have been asked about what lessons the Singapore experience might hold for Britain. We believe that an assessment of just what lessons can be derived from the Singapore’s policy-mix that would be of relevance to Britain’s economic stewards would be useful.
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‘Singapore tops in every ranking of countries with the strictest laws. Not only is feeding pigeons, singing songs with obscene lyrics, and public smoking or chewing gum banned, but they also have some of the harshest anti-littering laws.’
All the rules and regulations come at a price:
‘Singaporeans (81%) and Filipinos (78%) top the list of most stressed people in the six Southeast Asian countries according to a new survey conducted by mili.eu, the opinion-based insights platform and Calm Collective Asia, a community for good mental health in Asia.
Singapore and the Philippines were followed by Malaysia (61%), Thailand (59%), Indonesia (51%) and Vietnam (42%) where the respondents agree that it is stressful to live in their countries.’
https://www.asiainsurancereview.com/Magazine/ReadMagazineArticle?aid=45163#:~:text=Singaporeans%20(81%25)%20and%20Filipinos,good%20mental%20health%20in%20Asia.
Thanks for that. What about Hong Kong? It must have been one of the happiest places on earth BEFORE the ccp takeover! For that I blame the UK – useless spineless clueless and helpless.
I suspect most Brits save for gge favoured segments would say it is stressful here.
Another difference is the attitude to immigration. In Singapore it has to pay, here it has to cost.
Singapore is not the answer. The answer lies a lot closer to home.
Frankly as far as I am concerned any authors who could write what has been written in this article without addressing the elephant in every room in Europe should not be read and should be ignored.
That is of course my opinion which I am sure they will disagree with.
I explain more fully in my comment below.
I should be most interested to read any response to my perspectives which the authors of this article might be prepared to risk.
AFAIAC their position is indefensible. It is impossible for every economy to be like Singapore’s. If all were then Singapore could not succeed as it has.
Additionally, the comparison of GDP growth between the UK and Singapore is grossly misleading as well.
The true comparison is UK GDP growth as part of the EEC, EC and then the EU with comparable mature developed economies like USA, Canada, Australia.
You can read about how the EU and the EEC and EC before it has led to a dramatic failure to thrive with the worst GDP growth record in the world since the IMF kept full sets of figures from the 1980s and the World Bank Group’s figures which prior to 1980 go back to the 1950s but with gaps:
The EU – A GDP Graveyard – Proved by 40 Years of IMF Statistics
See also why the UK cannot afford to fix the potholes in its roads:
EU’s Monsieur Bonkers of Brussels Caused UK’s Potholed Roads – [and more]
The UK state is a corrrupt corporate-socialist state. We saw this during the Plandemic where it was quite obvious, unless you were brain dead, that Pharma had bought 620 or so out of the 650 cretins sat in Pharma-ment. Pharma and corrupt Globalist entities drove the Rona scamdemic across the G20.
Why doesn’t anyone mention the economic destruction wrought by the Rona Medical Nazism?
Then we have NHS, NetZero, Endless Wars – none of it ‘democratic’ or sensible. Who really believes that a $200 bn black hole, with 1.4 mn unionised workers will provide ‘care’? The only thing they might do is relieve your pain with opioids and morphine. Maybe get the odd surgery right.
Abortion – kill em in the womb – and now euthanasia – kill the old, the depressed,the crippled. Nice culture.
If London was not a financial centre this country would be in serious trouble. In fact I would say it would be on its knees. We don’t make anything, except financial ‘trades’ and profits.
Singapore is also smaller and authoritarian – facts the writer leaves out. Do you really want to live somewhere where you are arrested for spitting? It got the economics right, but a lot of the governance wrong.
Better to live in a country where you are arrested for spitting, than one where you are arrested for praying.
Spitting on the pavement is an offence in the UK but like shoplifting your chance of death from lightning strike is vastly higher than being charged with either spitting or shoplifting.
Indeed your chances of being arrested for a non-crime are vastly higher than for a crime in the UK.
The British police just don’t care about crime especially if you are white – as the Pakistani Muslim rape torture and murder gangs prove.
“According to Dr Goh, the cardinal virtue of state was the principle that the public budget should be in balance, if not in surplus, and that deficits were to be tolerated only in extraordinary circumstances.”
Music to this old fogey’s ears. Public finance as personal finance writ large.
Meanwhile back in Blighty, for over a hundred years Micawberomics has ruled.
Forget Keynes and ditch the Fabians, we should all know by now, sooner or later only Uncle Sam, Blackrock or the IMF can ever turn up.
Black rock haven’t enough cash to bail out HMT and I doubt either DJT or the IMF would do so.
Last time there were grumbles that the UK should get help from a fund intended for smaller snd less developed countries If we ask again I would expect a majority of member states to resist snd the USA would not step in.
Or to put it in simple terms GDP per capita dropped significantly during the Blair Brown era, started rising again after that and then tanked after the impact Covid.
Subsequently the impact of woke and green ideologies has prevented recovery.
“GDP per capita dropped significantly during the Blair Brown era”
Not true. See attached.
The UK has had 14 years of Austerity under the LibDim/Tory coalition and then under the Tories and now under Rachel from Accounts.
We have been getting comparatively poorer firstly because of the EU and then because of Austerity which is because of the Germans, the EU and the euro.
Blair/Brown was 1997-2010.
Interesting article. I wonder how the comparison would stand up if just London was compared to Singapore? More tellingly, if London sans the need to prop up most of the rest of the UK was compared.
I look forward to new data on just how much London ( meaning Khan’s area) gives and takes. London has had some big subsidies recently so the balance is not what it was.
Many rich have abandoned London.
City states will always thrive but at the expense of surrounding poverty. A few attractive tax breaks for the regions big-money powers it up. The money is made outside their borders.
You can say the same about Hong Kong, pre and post CCP takeover!!!
An early claim that government overspending were contrived to win elections in Britain do not see correct. As better described later in the excellent article all the Uniparty believes in Keynesian or even Marxist economic organisation.
Can fathom what happened in the late 90’s that led to the tanking growth and frankly tanking prospects for all in the UK… Something meaningful I think…
This entire article is totally misleading nonsense.
The UK is in decline since 2008 because of two things and these are authoritatively documented and completely ignored because they are so damaging politically to the UK’s government and to the entire EU project.
Stupidly the UK Conservative government faithfully followed Austerity for 14 years – first under Cameron and Osborne in coalition with the LibDims and later without. Instead of reducing national debt it increased it from Gordon Brown’s $900Bn to over £2.7 trillion.
Unbelievably, Rachel from Accounts is now doing more Austerity but pretending it is not by calling it “not a return to Austerity”. Of course not because this is Rachel’s version of Austupidity.
Austerity produces the opposite of what its proponents argue.
And you can read it all in many publications but I recommend Professor Mark Blyth’s truly awesome book “Austerity: the history of a dangerous idea” and Professor Florian Schul’s book “Austerity: a history of failure”.
Schul tracks the history of Austerity over 2500 years and it never ever worked. Blyth explains how after the US financial crisis of 2007 which became the EU financial crisis of 2007 the policy of Austerity was adopted. Over 17 years the value of Europe’s economy has declined from equivalent to 90% of the US economy to 65% now.
That is a dramatic decline. And fake climate change nut-zero is helping a lot.
2007 was the US financial crisis brought about by greed in banking which created sub-prime mortgages which were then turned into bundles of ‘securities’ [derivatives] and invested in widely by banks in the US and Europe.
The 2007 US crisis hit European banks in 2008.
To cut a long story short – this ushered in the long discredited and worthless economics of Austerity – which the Germans lobbied heavily for prior to the June 2010 Toronto G20 meeting.
[How stupid are the Germans? It is just unbelievably stupid. And why did the G20 agree – we are governed by morons.]
The German ordoliberals believe if government is spending more that it is taking in tax revenue then cut spending and increase taxes to eliminate the deficit.
Not only has this never in history ever worked it always has produced the opposite – deeper recession with less money circulating in the economy and higher government spending because tax revenues drop.
With awesome Teutonic efficiency the Germans have been destroying the EU project before their own eyes.
If the Chinese and Putin wanted to destroy Western European economies all they needed was to ensure the people in charge in the EU did exactly what the EU and Germany have been doing for the past 17 years.
It also is in fact far worse than this because the euro is inherently unstable right from its inception and implementation and because the EU shadow actual and contingent liabilities are not declared and the financial state of Europe is such that we could all be tipped into the stone age overnight – at least theoretically.
So why did neither the LibDims nor Labour in opposition in the UK ever oppose Austerity? Why were none of them complaining that the Tories were constantly increasing national debt by failing to reduce the annual deficits?
Aside from the whole of Europe being in such serious debt Europe cannot afford to defend itself, can the UK ever insulate itself from the carnage whjch could occur at any time over Europe’s economies?
And also, think on this further stupidity – as the UK was not in the euro it controlled its own money supply so did not need to blindly follow the stupidity of Austerity.
And why did the Bank of England under Carney and his predecessor never bang on about the stupidity of Austerity.
Accordingly, this article AFAIAC is utter drivel.