World most expensive salaries for the world best government? Not according to the Global Prosperity Index.
Singapore ranked just 19th in the overall index, Damningly, in the Governance sub-index we are ranked just 18th.
So one may argue that liberal democracies change government so often, argumentative, noisy, even unstable to Singaporeans who are used to a one-party government but that does not mean we are better governed.
We do well in Health, number 2 and number 1 in Safety and Security. But the trade-off in the latter means we are abysmally no. 97 in Personal Freedom.
We do well in Business Environment as sixth and eighth in Economic Quality. But again the trade off may be that we are also abysmally ranked 31st in Social Capital which is rather contrary to all that Asian value being harped upon by the late Lee Kuan Yew since it shows we don’t do that well in social network support, personal relations, social norms and civic participation.
Mind you. a lot of European nations and including the US, Canada and Australia are ranked higher despite what we had been told about the decadence of Western societies. Perhaps, this is a consequence of the People’s Action Party’s over-emphasis on meritocracy. Most of the top ranked countries, are examples that the trade-offs need not be so drastic.
Another shoe drops….As good reason as any that money do not equate quality. Or do not expect good quality when you keep buying the same product without questioning if it is worth the price.
