Singapore is the beneficiary of a neighboring impoverished itinerant workforce to supplement its own collapsing demographics with artificially cheap services. It’s hardly replicable most places.

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eru 13 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> It’s hardly replicable most places.

How so? What's hard to replicate here? Many rich places could let in more migrant workers. It's good for the workers, and good for the receiving country.

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zer00eyz 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

So is the USA...

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georgeburdell 13 hours ago | parent [-]

No it isn’t. Malaysians commute across the river daily and then return at night, having provided their services in exchange for compensation. Singapore gets the work without many of the associated problems with housing those people long term. As a result, there are some ridiculously niche jobs in Singapore that would not exist in another rich country, such as widespread domestic servitude and manual street sweeping

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eru 13 hours ago | parent | next [-]

How is that different from people living in New Jersey and commuting to Manhattan?

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alex43578 13 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Because unless you really just want to prop up only Manhattan’s statistics at the expense of NJ’s, it’s irrelevant to a discussion about US labor statistics.

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vel0city 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

New Jersey and Manhattan are both a part of the same country last I checked.

Malaysia and Singapore are two different countries. Despite being right next to each other they have vastly different GDPs, standards of living, government benefits, etc.

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eru 12 hours ago | parent [-]

Malaysia and Singapore used to be one country.

New Jersey and Manhattan are in different states. But in any case, why so xenophobic? Borders are an administrative hassle, but they have no moral weight.

	▲	vel0city 11 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I didn't realize acknowledging NY and NJ are in the same country is a xenophobic take. Borders are a lot more than just a bit of paperwork or "administrative hassle". Central America is a very different place from US & Canada in many ways. Malaysia is quite a bit different from Singapore in a lot of ways despite such intertwined history. I'm not passing any moral judgement here, I'm just acknowledging current reality. Singapore and Malaysia are different countries. NY and NJ are two states in the same country. The relationship is very different. Even with "Imperium in imperio" in the US. To have a similar kind of comparison one would look at the cyclical migrant labor between the Southwestern US and Mexico.

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rangestransform 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The US could achieve the same thing with a proper migrant labour program