Singapore is, by common consent, one of the most open economies in the world. Yet, more than 80 per cent of the Singaporeans live in public housing, the buses and trains are run by two government-linked companies, the mainstream media really state media – the television stations owned outright by a state investment firm, the print monopoly traditionally headed by former government ministers or officials – and many of the top local companies are also linked to the government.
And this economic model has worked very well for Singapore.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, Joseph Stiglitz says in his book, Freefall:
Government has played an especially large role in the highly successful economies of East Asia… Singapore, Korea, Malaysia, and a host of other countries followed and adapted Japan's (government-led growth) strategy and saw per capita incomes increase eightfold in a quarter century.