Singapore Increases Wages By Tightening Labor Market, Globalists Shocked And Dismayed

Singapore’s Parliament House, a colonial building in Singapore’s historic Downtown.

Singapore’s government has earned a reputation for being ruthlessly sensible and effective. While not perfect, as could be witnessed by its obedience to the globalist narrative of covid, the ruling party has nonetheless delivered results to its people, so much so that it has stayed comfortably in power for all of the 62 years the city-state has been self-governing. One of the more recent examples of the People’s Action Party’s (PAP) competence is in its understanding of simple supply and demand, a chapter found in nearly every principles of Microeconomics textbook.

According to Mothership, Singapore’s total population is set to experience the largest single-year drop in its history and the second consecutive decline, the main estimate being a whopping 4.1 percent between June 2020 and June 2021. The previous 12-month period saw a slight decline of 0.3 percent. Both these declines have been a direct result of border restrictions that began in March of 2020 and the shedding of around 200,000 foreign workers as a result of the economic fallout, a fallout which the government navigated through by drawing down on its national reserves and not incurring a single extra cent of debt.

Foreign workers are brought into the Little Red Dot on a contract basis to work in sectors that Singaporeans prefer not to participate in, such as domestic help and construction. High-skilled expatriates are also brought in from other First World countries to fill shortages in the administration of multinational company headquarters as well.

In the past decade, the Singapore government has admitted to the city-state’s unsafe addiction to foreign workers, especially low-skilled ones, and how it has been suppressing wages for their own working class. As a result, the PAP has been working on weaning the country off of this addiction and focusing on increasing labor productivity to power economic growth. This push has delivered surprisingly visible results.

According to the Ministry of Trade and Industry, labor productivity increased by 2.8 percent per annum between 2009 and 2019. This led to an increase in real median wages by nearly a third from 2010 to 2020. What is even more astounding is the even greater increase of 45 percent in real wages for the bottom 20% of income-earners. This means that Singapore was able to decrease income and wealth inequality by lifting the bottom up through upskilling programs rather than the traditional leftist method of soaking the rich.

Moreover, the PAP’s continued efforts to upskill its people may very well position the Orient’s richest polity to further take advantage of global trends in technology and logistics. Many in the West will undoubtedly look at Singapore confused and baffled by the existence of a government apparatus that is actually competent and not polluted by corruption and special interests.

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