OxFam is full of it
OxFam just ranked Singapore close to the bottom of the list in its Commitment to Reducing Inequality (CRI) Index 2018. I live in Singapore, and have lived here on and off for thirty years. I’ve also lived in several other countries and travelled to dozens more, including a majority of the countries listed in OxFam’s report.
My reaction upon reading this report was: what the hell are they talking about?
First, here’s what you need to know: The OxFam-sponsored Commitment to Reducing Inequality (CRI) Index 2018 report focused on economic and social aspects of life in almost 160 countries. According to the report, Singapore ranks 149 out of 157 countries, when it comes to enabling equality: In other words, the island republic has, over the past fifty years, barely made any progress when to comes to reducing inequality. OxFam, on their website, even goes so far as to say Singapore is “fuelling inequality”.
Sorry, but that is just rubbish.
Few countries have made anywhere near the commitment to erasing inequality that Singapore has, and even fewer have stuck to that commitment continuously, over decades.
Let’s start with the biggest cause of inequality in any country: corruption. It barely exists here. Yet for many countries on the list, the biggest problem for their citizens is the massive amount of inequality that is generated by corruption at every level of society, including the rampant syphoning of money from citizens at government and local levels, and in business.
Don’t agree? Talk to a Venezuelan. Talk to citizens of some of the higher-ranked countries listed by OxFam. I have done both. They will tell you the biggest problem they have in life is people stealing money from them — directly, or via corrupt officials, on a more or less continuous basis.
This is not something your average Singapore encounters. And as someone who has done business in Singapore, and more than three dozen other countries for more than 30 years, I can honestly say there is nowhere in the world that compares with this country when it comes to freedom from corruption.
OxFam should rewrite its report based on this core fact alone: Corruption — and the vast inequality it causes in the societies it affects — is for the most part absent from this society (a blessing that one hopes will be far wider-appreciated when future reports on “inequality” are prepared.)
Let’s talk about equal opportunity — not a phrase commonly heard in many of the countries in OxFam’s list.
At a personal level, the average level of household wealth in this country — recently reported at around US$100,000 — is considerably higher, and more evenly distributed — than almost any other country on the OxFam list.
Is that “average” inflated somewhat by the massive number of millionaires that live here? Of course it is. But consider this: over 90% of Singaporeans own their own homes. And such is the pervasiveness of the government’s home-building program that more than 8 in 10 of Singaporean’s poorest 10% are also homeowners. And these are not cheap homes — the lowest listed price of any HDB flat I could find (a two bedroom flat in Geylang) was not US$25,000 — it was priced for sale well above US$100,000.
Are a proportion of Singapore’s resident’s living in poverty? Almost certainly — no country is free of poverty, and some reports published in Singapore in the past ten years say that upwards of 10% of residents may be suffering from some form of financial hardship. But as with its HDB program, Singapore has taken significant steps over the past five decades to ensure that its citizens have a safety net.
The difference is, it’s not based entirely on a budget allocation to social services. Singapore’s CPF pension plan requires all citizens to save money for housing and medical care, equally, over decades— and the Maintenance of Parents Act requires all children to contribute to their parent’s comfort, if that parent is over 60.
This is not the same as the social plans in place in Denmark — the holder of the top spot on OxFam’s list. But can it really be argued that Denmark’s system is more effective at reducing equality? Can these types of comparisons even be included within OxFam’s social services calculations?
Is a structured social safety net — one that has been created over decades, and involves savings accumulated over the same timeframe — really comparable to an annual budget allocation of 50% of tax revenues to social services by a country that has not implemented a long-term plan?
Perhaps one of the things most striking (and left unadvertised) about Singapore is not so much the assumption that all citizens equally deserve to own a home, but the way in which these homes are distributed to their owners.
The vast majority of Singaporeans that purchase their homes through the government do not get to dictate what race or religion their neighbours are — because in the eyes of the law (and policy), all races and religions are considered equal. If you buy a Singapore HDB flat, the probability that you will have a Malay, Chinese, or Indian, or “other” neighbour is based on their proportionate representation in the population. There are no preferential neighbourhoods — at least not publicly-subsidised ones.
Has that policy resulted in greater “equality”, when compared to the state of many of the cities on OxFam’s list — and especially when compared to the under-serviced, race-defined neighbourhoods of many of the cities studied?
Of course it has.
Still on the subject of neighbourhoods, Singaporeans don’t appear to us Westerners to suffer from discrimination when practicing their religion in their neighbourhoods. And it’s likewise apparent that men of all ages, religions and socio-demographic backgrounds do equal amounts of NS together (NS is Singapore’s compulsory National Service program.)
Women don’t require a chaperone to get home in the evening, and are far less likely to be a victim of a violent crime compared to women living in many of the listed cities. Literacy rates for both genders in Singapore were statistically identical as of 2016. Gender-based pay differences in 2016 were just 10% across positions ranked “professional” — significantly less than comparable unweighted studies for the US.
Last time I checked (and I have a nine-year-old), children in Singapore do not require bullet-proof backpacks to attend any school, anywhere in the country. The garbage gets collected in every suburb, and the roads get repaired as fast in Punggol as in Tanglin. In fact, no matter where you live — driving around this country, the uniformity of this kind of work — the equality of distribution of public services — is striking.
Strikingly equal.
As for the OxFan’s Report’s concern about Singapore’s relatively low taxes… as any taxi driver (or luxury car owner) here will tell you, Singapore bases its tax system in large part on consumption (e.g. road usage), rather than income levels. I use more roads, I get charged more dollars. I earn less, I take home more, proportionately, to someone that earns more, like my boss.
How is such a system promoting less equality?
If inequality means that women can feel safer here than virtually any other city on the list, and mixed race couples (like we have) can live without the prejudice they might experience in those cities, and citizens can have a shot at long-term wealth-creation for their families, access good schools, travel freely using one of the best passports in the world, and be pretty well-looked after in a society virtually free of corruption and strife of any kind… then I, for one, am very happy to be living in such a sea of inequality.
OxFam, you’re full of it.
p.s. Singaporeans, I know you well, and I love you for what is about to happen — I know you’re going to post comments and pick holes in all of the above arguments and argue that Singapore is not as great or as equal as I’m making it out to be. I simply beg to differ, in advance. Yes, I too occasionally get mad when my train is delayed, or a policy gets changed (the shisha ban still stings) — but I still think what you’ve achieved as a nation is amazing. You deserve far better than #149 out of 157 when it comes to enabling equality.