LSE Events | Tharman Shanmugaratnam | Inclusive Prosperity: making it possible

Inclusive growth has to be at the centre of our agenda, if we are to avoid the continued unravelling of the social compacts that have underpinned an era of open economies. It will require new strategies, redefining the role of government and reinvigorating the politics of the centre. There is also something to be learnt from international experience.
Tharman Shanmugaratnam (@Tharman_S) is Deputy Prime Minister and Coordinating Minister for Economic and Social Policies in Singapore. He has been appointed Chairman of the Group of Thirty from Jan 2017. He also chaired the International Monetary and Financial Committee between 2011-2015, and was its first Asian chair. He served for several years as Minister of Finance, and earlier as Minister for Education. Tharman is an alumnus and Honorary Fellow of LSE.
Nicholas Stern (@lordstern1) is IG Patel Chair of Economics and Government, Chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the LSE and is currently the President of the British Academy.
STICERD (@STICERD_LSE) brings together world-class academics to put economics and related disciplines at the forefront of research and policy. Founded in 1978 by the renowned Japanese economist Michio Morishima, with donations from Suntory and Toyota, we are a thriving research community within the LSE.

[@napoleonb55]

There is no way the audience could just sit there, this was so thought provoking at so many points!

[@franciscody9622]

Where us the Swiss Standard of Living?

[@JJ-iu6sr]

Congratulations to Mr Tharman for becoming Singapore's 9th President with a landslide victory!

[@FrancisLim-g7c]

Singapore is blessed to have Tharman

[@franciscody9622]

Talk is cheap. Where is the promised Swiss Standard of Living?

[@sabrecruz6721]

I'm so proud to be Singaporean!

[@franciscody9622]

Are you "proud" not having a First World standard of living?

[@ponuruvens.r.3108]

Singapore moving away from hosting commonwelath games is a detriment to the now and living mid 30's in singapore. ❤

[@choonyew8878]

Enjoyed the speech. Good speaker and very thought provoking ideas which we can all learn from.

[@franciscody9622]

Nobody was provoked to ask where is the Swiss Standard of Living?

[@Ybblpp]

59:27 "If you want to upgrade your skills" For some reason I thought he was gonna offer a coupon code for 20% off skillshare

[@angsiuhong3408]

Time: 1.30 on Tuesday 16 January 2024 Should be my last starement for 16 Jan 2024. Now I understand the difficulties of PAP government. About ministers high salary, you are worth it. Look at all the graduates questioning Mr LKY on social media during voting, they are really not worth talking to. These people around me, poor and ah soh, and well heeled ladies, I wonder do they deserve their high paid salary Their attitudes are so so only. PAP salary are well paid for high performance, especially during Covid 19. Yes, many opportunitic moments for ADHOC NGOS, but now Singapore government have my unequivocal respect for getting us out of Covid 19, and soaring ahead. Every penny spent by PAP is well done. You deserve a high ministerial salary. President THARMAN no pressure on you. Thanks. From: Siu Hong, Ang. Karen Pamela. ❤❤❤ Mr K SHANMUGAM Bye.

[@elliottsenseman1424]

-Mixing housing through wealth/ free housing

[@TradingElements254]

woe to my kenya.

[@RakXiangyu]

go tharman, go LSE!

[@franciscody9622]

As an economist, he should explain why Singaporeans still do not have a First World Standard of Living.

[@Albert_Einstein_not]

Ong Lai!!!

[@jodalinkus5538]

Shrinking incomes in the States are made up for by increase in food stamps and welfare vouchers so no one misses out. On a more serious side I am rather concerned with repugnant gap in wealth disparity across the country. Some places like ghetto's are living in squalled conditions on a third world standards. One could argue this is down to a lack of coherence in gov't social policy driven by lack of political willpower. That is totally shambolic to witness this in one of the world' s largest economies.

[@user-db1qk5gf7z]

37:40

[@TheOldmankk]

Almost the same themes and scripts presented in the IPS What if session. Old have to give hope to the young, and I don't see they are willing to.

[@franciscody9622]

After 58 years I have lost hope of getting a First World Standard of Living under PAP. It is a "spent force"'.

[@user-db1qk5gf7z]

58:39

[@krishnanunnimadathil8142]

There is a problem with active multiculturalism, and that is that it is directed by the state. Passive multiculturalism places the burden of forming relationships on people, and the resulting linkages, if they are formed, are more fluid and resilient. Active state-sponsored multiculturalism is just that - state-sponsored - and with most things that are state-sponsored, they break down at the slightest hint of state weakness. And you cannot have active multiculturalism of the type Mr. Shanmugharatnam preaches without significant curbs on the people's ability to question what they see as questionable or undesirable. You've seen that take place in India, where decades of active state-sponsored multicultural initiatives has, while giving sufficient election fodder for the sponsoring party, not at all achieved anything in bridging the suspicions which people harbour about each other. The lemon being sold here is that the richly deserved accolades for Singapore as an efficient, open economy somehow gives it license to lecture other states on ALL aspects of national and civic life including cultural cohesion and communal relations. It remains to be seen how far this can be carried on without making the people completely and utterly subservient to the will of the state. There is little, from this perspective, that separates Singapore from China. The government decides where you live, who you meet and much, much more. And you can see where this all eventually leads - an all-knowing, supposedly all-wise Big Brother government. You can already see this in play in China. Singapore does this dance with freedom of the press which is also unique in that it insists it is free when it is not. As for India, where he has lectured a body of ministers upon invitation by the PM, while Indians can learn about government efficiency from Singapore, it must resist falling for the charms of Singapore as a free society, for it is not. It is technocratic and uber-efficient, but it is not free. That is the bargain - Singapore would not be as efficient were its people free to play to their own motivations. It is part of the reason Chinese-majority Singapore was thrown out of the Malay Union in 1963 in the first place. Passive multiculturalism has not failed. Look at America, which until the black movements of the 1960s was a true melting pot of various European nationalities as well as African and Native Americans. Look at India, where nearly a fifth of humanity, minus one particular community (and even here, there are exceptions), get along for the most part just fine, in an open, democratic fashion. In fact, the problems arose when the state took on characteristics for itself, rather than subjecting itself to the mercies of the people. Active multiculturalism as propounded by the FM seems to be when the state decides to turbocharge social cohesion in order to meet its own targets for economic growth and social mobility, which are ultimately the handiwork of some nerdy economists in some back room. A globalised world necessarily means that people have to learn to respect differences. Totalitarian, megalomaniacal ideologies such as Communism and certain religious monotheisms draw sustenance from othering people, and campaigning to deprive the self-declared 'others' from a normal life here or in the hereafter. Fundamentally, they can't stand differences and find it very difficult to deal with them. The Bhumiputra laws and the National Cultural Policy of Malaysia and the propensity for Islamic countries (though not unique) to declare Islam as state religions are examples of this inability to deal with differences. It was also a similar reticence to diversity that led to the Sri Lankan Civil War. Much of the strife in the Islamic World fundamentally has to do with the inability of the main religionists there to live alongside people with different religions, not to mention of the strife of the minorities there. The FM may not say it directly, but if the active multiculturalism he propounds is to do with the room allocation policy in HDB, then he is basically talking about how the government of Singapore has successfully defanged the tendency of members of ethnic or religious groups to group together. This has had good results in Singapore, a city state. How successful such a model would be in England, a country with a thousand years of history with a predominantly native population, is for time to tell. In the same train of ideas as those of the FM here, is the oft-repeated idea circulating in the Indian media (and others with interest) of the 'idea of India' and how it is being somehow being stolen by populism. Fact Check: India is not an idea. Heaven is an idea. You can take plane tickets to India, land there and call back home. There are real people living there, living real lives. On a positive note, the FM's notes on education, skills and training are instructive. Again there are ways to counter the argument for state intervention here. The fact that social democracies such as India made "education" (which they limited to literacy and a bit of math) a state priority, it has led to over-investment in qualifications which has produced a glut of poorly trained engineers and other professionals while large parts of the economy needing human input (i.e. scope for jobs exist) remain unmanned.

[@jklim4714]

You are confused He is not our FM but our DPM

[@郑诚-l8u]

Policy is not rocket science. Not saying impossible, but passive multiculturalism has been proved to create segregation among people in most of places empirically. As for active multiculturalism, it’s not perfect, but it worked in Singapore, and it keeps working well.

[@krishnanunnimadathil8142]

@@郑诚-l8u You are right, and I congratulate Singapore for it. But the price which it brings with it is the need for eternal vigilance on the part of the state; and the level of intrusion which this calls for can only be considered anti-freedom. The question is whether the inter-cultural linkages are natural creations or whether they are temporary arrangements; if the latter is the case, it is always at the risk of breakdown at the slightest impulse whether from within or without. In Singapore's case, I could only postulate that a major business of the Home Ministry equivalent would be to keep foreign interference from Malaysia at bay - never know when they'd all start going 'bumiputra' on the rest of the Singaporeans! The real question is whether a common society is being created, or whether people are simply living their lives on rent, and feeding off of a common pond instead of contributing to the story. I suspect there is a lot of the former.

[@JS-rg8yh]

I would boldly say this only work for Singapore. As for the arguments why it would not work in India, that you hv to figure it out yourself as historical context, circumstances and invocations / justifications are very emotional topics. We hope India the best but to criticize Singapore policies from a differing perspective is both counterproductive and invalid.

[@franciscody9622]

Singapore is still not a First World country in terms of standard of living. Let that sink in.