Comments by "Zhi Han Lee" (@lzh4950) on "Asianometry"
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Singapore's government spending as a % of GDP is relatively low too I recall (~25%, & our biggest component of government spending (defence) is 'just' 3.5% of GDP), & it's less on welfare handouts/benefits (because there isn't much populist political pressure to have that; we can argue that it'd be delusional/spoilt to demand that because we lack natural resources, we used to be poor & don't want to be complacent etc.) but more on longer-term projects e.g.
- career retraining & other education (as a small, densely populated country, we probably have more economies of scale, as our population is spread over a smaller area, so you can serve them with fewer bigger schools (typically ~1600-2400 students/school, & previously we had some classes schooled in the morning & others in the afternoon, so each classroom can be reused daily by 2 classes, saving on the infrastructure needed). They typically get closed down/merged with other schools once the student population dips below ~500 (3 classes per level in secondary schools, which is equivalent to 7-10th grade), but in more rural areas in other countries I think some schools won't even have that many students.
- infrastructure (might help too that construction labour is cheaper since they're mostly migrant workers who remit their pay to their families living in countries where costs of living are lower, & aren't allowed to move to Singapore to live too (unless they're working here too). The government can be quite conservative with expanding transport infra too sometimes e.g. waiting for a neighbourhood to be populated for a few decades before adding a train station there, usually choosing the lowest bidder for construction projects (though sadly some contractors have gone bankrupt halfway). Fortunately public transport fares are cheaper here, probably because while other countries may discourage private transport by having highways privatised & higher tolls charged by the private companies that have the highways' concessions, or having more expensive parking fees in downtown, which leads to the negative externality of private transport e.g. congestion, air pollution be internalised by private companies, in Singapore these are internalised by the government instead e.g. high car taxes, though parking & tolls are cheaper (our roads aren't privatised either), & the government can use the derived revenue to fund public transport projects),
- health insurance (but our government's healthcare spending/subsidies can be more discriminating in some circumstances e.g. 1 of my ex-schoolmate's mother was reportedly not insured by the government's vaccine insurance programme when she faced chronic arm pain after her Pfizer-B&T CoViD-19 injection & had to go for physiotherapy/TCM treatment, as our Ministry of Health allegedly refused to recognise that as a "vaccine injury" (& might've blamed that on other factors in her lifestyle too e.g. other pre-existing (?) chronic illnesses/ailments). Another countrymen also found himself disqualified from public health subsidies at a public hospital that he was referred to by an outpatient doctor (who wasn't sufficiently equipped to treat his condition) as that doctor was in a private instead of a government clinic. Dental procedures are also often not insurable in this country, & our government had also announced it'll refuse to subsidise treatment for those who travel overseas (earlier on) & now unvaccinated people too, if they get infected by the pandemic.)
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