How did Singapore become an insanely rich country despite having pretty much zero resources that it can exploit?
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Trades, max Millionaires/country, Expats … More fun-facts here ( quick google search ) – [https://www.holidify.com/pages/facts-about-singapore-2099.html](https://www.holidify.com/pages/facts-about-singapore-2099.html)
One thing I’m not seeing called out in the comments yet: urbanized trade-centric global cities are wealthy in general. Singapore is rich as a “nation” in that it’s a wealthy sovereign city-state without any rural land to have to upkeep.
The Londons, the Tokyos, the New Yorks, the LAs, the Seouls, the Shanghais of the world in turn help financially to support the lesser populated rural areas.
Sure fertile land can help you grow an excess of food to sell, but where’s the real money? Controlling the marketplace itself where *all* of said food (or oil or minerals or….) in the region changes hands. [London is basically 1/4th of the UK’s entire GDP.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_London) [Seoul and the surrounding region (Gyeonggi-do) are almost half of South Korea’s GDP.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyeonggi_Province) Which makes Singapore having a GDP the size of the nation (Malaysia) it once belonged to, actually pretty normal.
It does have a powerful and difficult-to-find-elsewhere resource: Its location, which makes it a useful trade hub.
Step 1: start as an international trade hub (even if a former colony).
Step 2: super stable and conservative government focused entirely on business, enforcing the law, and stability.
Step 3: have a population of highly educated, high industrious people who are willing to embrace a business focused and lawful lifestyle.
The end result is that a society that suffers very little “drag” from drug addicts, violent crime, corruption, “useless” members of society.
And the stable government with stable laws is great for international companies, which has flocked to Singapore.
It does have a powerful and difficult-to-find-elsewhere resource: Its location, which makes it a useful trade hub.
Singapore has a population of 5.5 mil. Compared to other comparable metro areas GDP‘s, Singapore is not really ‚that‘ rich. E.g. Boston metro has a higher GDP per capita, as well as Washington DC, San Francisco, Munich, Paris, London…
It does have a powerful and difficult-to-find-elsewhere resource: Its location, which makes it a useful trade hub.
Singapore has a population of 5.5 mil. Compared to other comparable metro areas GDP‘s, Singapore is not really ‚that‘ rich. E.g. Boston metro has a higher GDP per capita, as well as Washington DC, San Francisco, Munich, Paris, London…
Singapore has a population of 5.5 mil. Compared to other comparable metro areas GDP‘s, Singapore is not really ‚that‘ rich. E.g. Boston metro has a higher GDP per capita, as well as Washington DC, San Francisco, Munich, Paris, London…
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