Meritocracy, Personal Responsibility, and Encouraging Investment: Lessons from Singapre's Economic Growth Miracle

Commentators and scholars ranging from classical liberals such as Milton Friedman to social democrats such as Joseph Stiglitz have admired and praised Singapore’s record of economic growth from 1965, when it achieved national sovereignty, to the present. The remarkable growth in the standard of living of Singaporeans is well illustrated through a comparison with the United States. In 2020, the real per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for Singapore (US$58,057) was virtually identical to the real per capita GDP of the United States (US$58,190). By comparison, in 1961, Singapore’s real per capita GDP (US$3,727) was only about 20 percent of the United States’ real per capita GDP that year (US$19,271). In a wider comparison, in 2020 Singapore’s real per capita GDP was substantially higher than Canada’s (US$43,258) and the United Kingdom’s (US$41,098) and slightly higher than Australia’s (US$57,952).