By Devadas Krishnadas

There has been much public angst amongst Singaporeans over growing income inequality, rising property prices and the growing presence of foreigners. These may all seem like distinct concerns driven by unique causal factors. Often, the only shared vector is the assumed ripple effects of adding so many foreigners to the population. This has translated itself into a furore over the Population White Paper, which continues to have echoes.
While it is understandable that Singaporeans should have concerns, it is less defensible that we should conveniently attribute causation to the presence of foreigners. In fact, I would argue that the concerns we have over inequality, property and workplace competition are second-order considerations, not of population augmentation, but of a more basic and fundamental anxiety in society. And this is that these social challenges are perceived to be manifestations of an erosion of social mobility. Rather than venting our frustrations in terms of crude xenophobia or cynicisms towards any and all things government we should be asking what the drivers of social mobility are and what can be done to boost them.
Social mobility
Social mobility is the notion that anyone, regardless of initial social economic state, can go up the achievement ladder. There are twin-operating concepts within social mobility. First, is the responsibility of the State to provide equal ‘starting positions’ to all. Second, it is also about ensuring that there is both scope and incentive for individual initiative, drive and ambition.
Social mobility is central to the Singapore story and its background context of “Asian values”. It is the belief that with hard work and diligence anyone can raise themselves up socially and economically, regardless of the humbleness of their origins. Increasingly there is a growing sense amongst Singaporeans that this has become less true.

The sea of mobility
If social mobility were a sea, it would be bounded by three vectors. These are inequality, meritocracy and individual effort. On the waters within these boundaries, the individual vessels of aspirations rise and fall with the level of the sea. How far and wide these ships of hope can roam is also determined by the interaction of the vectors.
Inequality
Inequality is the vector that is most obviously hyperactive in recent years. Singapore has one of the world’s highest levels of inequality. This has created social angst. What most people miss is the perspective on inequality after contextualising it within the frameworks of aggregate affluence and country-to-country comparisons on wealth. When they do so they will soon recognise that unlike other unequal nations, our inequality is of the type that allows the rich to buy more but it does not deny those without from getting enough.
Singapore is one of the world’s richest countries in terms of GDP per capita. The monthly median income of employed residents, including CPF, was nearly three thousand five hundred dollars . Hence, the overwhelming majority of Singaporeans are better off than their peers in just about everywhere else. This is not to deny that we have the poor, but it is to acknowledge that relativity within ourselves is one thing, but relativity between us and everybody else presents a more reassuring picture.
Unlike in many other countries with differentiations in the provision of public goods and services across local governments or regions, in Singapore every person and all areas benefit from the same standard of distribution of public goods such as infrastructure, public safety, potable water and reliable power. The same applies to public education and housing. This is a rather remarkable situation that is often taken for granted. So even our poorest benefit from public goods in no less a way than our richest. Thus in our aggregate public “wealth”, we are much less unequal that the picture presented by the differences in private wealth.
However, those who are well-off should have a sense of moral conscience. The US Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Bernard Bernanke recently addressed the commencement class at his alma mater, Princeton, with the words: “The only way for even a putative meritocracy to hope to pass ethical muster, to be considered fair, is if those who are the luckiest in all of those respects also have the greatest responsibility to work hard, to contribute to the betterment of the world, and to share their luck with others. As the Gospel of Luke says (and I am sure my rabbi will forgive me for quoting the New Testament in a good cause), ‘From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded.’” In other words, our rich need to do more for others, either on their own volition or through the redistributive authority of the state.
Meritocracy
While inequality can give the top-end more advantages, as long as the principle of meritocracy reigns, everyone should be able to work their way up. This is the theory and the principle of meritocracy which in Singapore we have long cherished and defended. However, perhaps today we need to refine the principle.
The observation could be made that the outcome of pure meritocracy is inequality. This is because a meritocratic model assumes a world of winners and losers, where the former need pampering and care to be motivated to perform while the latter need be maintained at minimum cost for humane reasons.
I suggest that there two different kinds of meritocracy — static and dynamic. Static meritocracy is the type most commonly operating in Singapore. In a static meritocracy, the initial state of performance, typically in examinations, becomes the determinative agency in success or failure. It is most manifest in the civil service with its scholarship system. While purely meritocratic, it fails to adapt to the reality that people have varied intelligences, that people develop at different rates, that experience matters and perhaps most significant of all, that performance and not potential of performance matters most. It can also lead to abstract thinking and risk aversion. There is competition within winners in a static meritocracy, but the rule of the game is not so much to succeed but not to fail.
In contrast, we could operate on the basis of dynamic meritocracy. Dynamic meritocracies could care less about initial state conditions or first “gate” performance. In such meritocracies, one is only as good as how one performs contemporaneously. All are judged on the demonstration of abilities — not on the presumption of abilities. In such systems the successful can succeed only if they dare to fail; and fail if they only try to succeed.
Dynamic meritocracies can be uncomfortable because it demands that everyone do their best all the time. However, social mobility has the best chance of working under such conditions as incumbents cannot afford to sit still and institutions cannot make a priori judgements of performance for the life of individuals.
In practice while Singapore is neither fully one model nor the otherwe seem to be more static than dynamic. We should instead be more of a dynamic meritocracy and less of a static one. Educational systems, the civil service and the private sector all can play a part in ensuring that we are. Before, it was about an adjustment of procedures and policies, now it is about an adjustment of the mind and attitudes. Choosing between static and dynamic meritocracies is not about which is easier, but which is fairer and more relevant to the reality of the human condition in all its variety and unpredictability. The state has a powerful role to play, by first setting an example through its own human resource polices, and by implementing legislation to ensure that there is no discrimination on the basis of anything other than performance.
The individual
The third vector is the individual. Whereas the other two vectors are characterised by big players and principles — this final vector is about you. Nothing can or should substitute individual effort, ambition and drive. This is the most powerful of all vectors. History is replete of examples of how impossible adversities have been overcome by the human will. Hence, even if the vectors of inequality and meritocracy move to narrow the sea of mobility, unless the individual spirit fails too, there will always be a margin of sea to sail to a better day.
As we proceed to make greater social investments in public housing, healthcare and education, it must be a conscious choice to draw the line between what, where and how much we socialise outcomes in tension with the contribution of the individual. This is not a science but neither need it be voodoo.
Raising the waters
Social mobility is rightly a present social concern. It will require the participation of many minds and hearts to push and pull the three vectors to their optimal positions to generate the positive energy to raise and widen the sea of mobility. But to benefit from this expansion we have to also lift the anchors of our individual ships. These anchors can be held by heavy intertwined chains of false belief – namely, that our lives cannot be changed, the lazy expectation for easy living and the wishful thinking that someone else will solve our problems for us. These chains must be cut by each of us for ourselves before we can truly set sail.

Devadas Krishnadas is Director of Future-Moves. He is also Editor of IPS Commons, the commentary website of the Institute of Policy Studies.