The cynical quote in Singapore is that it’s cheap to die, but you better not get sick.
Healthcare costs can and do ruin families - dialysis being one of the chief examples, but other cases of ongoing chronic care are equally as expensive and unaffordable - and everyone has to pay, there is no other option.
As a Singaporean, I agree with this. I think it’s pretty much what everyone I know of thinks.
What??
If you can’t afford it, you absolutely have subsidised healthcare. Standard vaccinations are free. See a doctor for under $10 and subsidised drugs. http://polyclinic.singhealth.com.sg/PatientCare/Fees/Pages/Home.aspx
Also, national insurance. https://www.moh.gov.sg/content/moh_web/home/costs_and_financing/schemes_subsidies/Medishield.html. If this isn’t universal healthcare then I guess Obamacare doesn’t count either. Do you mean socialised medicine like in a NHS system and nothing else?
Also, by “forced savings”, I assume you mean CPF. Medisave and CPF are in different accounts. CPF is like your 401, except mandatory. You can also use it to pay your mortgage, invest in certain approved funds etc. Medisave is your other “forced savings” account, explained here https://www.moh.gov.sg/content/moh_web/home/costs_and_financing/schemes_subsidies/medisave.html.
You know, I was thinking about this comparison, and I don’t think it’s quite accurate. Vetinari makes people’s baser instincts work for him. Take for example Moist - he basically blackmails Moist into working for him, same for getting the guilds to work for him, etc.
LKY on the other hand would not have worked with the guilds - he would have torn them down and built his own - see the trade unions. He busted them like a right winger’s wet dream, and built his own “National Trade Unions Congress” National Trades Union Congress - Wikipedia which does nothing like a trade union. It’s more like a co-op - runs cheap supermarkets, insurance, home services, etc. I would actually compare him to Vimes - wade in there, bust stuff up, make it better, I don’t care if I have to get rough but I never do it dirty.
Whereas Carrot makes people’s better instincts work for him.
But that is a rare talent among Roundworld leaders.
Lee was lucky.
When the city was cast out of Malaysia, it became a city state with two significant assets: a deep water harbour and a legal system inherited from the British the guaranteed contracts would be honoured for international trade. Lee was a lawyer.
China had turned its back on the world and the other nations in that part of Asia were dominated by dictators and their corrupt cronies. Singapore became an entrepot, a centre of trade, then investment in light manufacturing that required little land: plastics, semiconductors, then later insurance and finance business. Good business decisions.
I remember an interview with Lee when he as asked whether he ever thought Singapore would become as prosperous as it did. He said ‘not in my wildest dreams’, Singapore was a such sleepy place after WW2.’
I guess he played his cards right with the other regional powers who were consumed by their own troubles and kept Singapore ordered and open for business.
I have visited both Singapore and Hong Kong. The cities both seemed to follow the same economic trajectory and had adopted the same legal framework.
Sitting around a table in Hong Kong with some young professionals, I remarked that Singapore made sense at a certain time of your life, being a city that prided itself on having a law for everything. They all looked at me and nodded. ‘Yes, when you are retired!’, they replied.
Lee built Singapore in his own image. A very old, wise lawyer. It is a great place to be a old. It is Hell to be a teenager or young, just about everything you want to do is illegal and there old people giving out tickets and fines to keep you in line. Everything works, but it is sanitised, predictable and authoritarian.
If you are inside the system, you are fine, if you are on the edge, your life will not be comfortable. A great deal the government does not like is swept under the carpet and pushed over the border. The culture stifles creativity.
Lee was a good a poker player at the game of international and domestic politics. He ended up creating a Asian version of Switzerland and his power base was sitting on a big pile of money because the other states in the region could not get their economic act together.
A great leader? I don’t think so. More like a great mayor, certainly. One that learnt how avoid the messy details of democracy by legal chicanery. But put the law to good use in regulating a city state.
Eulogized or damned? Neither! Respected for his skill at guiding this little country, certainly.