I've been here for close to a year now and enjoying it. It is a very well run country that is clean, safe and modern. That said, I thought expats here can't really make use of most of the public health, housing and education services? Those that I know also are all sending their kids to international schools and have private health (thankfully the private health packages that come with employment are decent).
Have to agree on the tropical weather front. As someone who has lived in Australia close to my whole life you would expect I'd be used to heat, but it's the humidity that kills me. Australian heat is like being on a frying pan, Singapore heat is like being in an oven.
I lived in Sydney for a while. The heat is usually worse in Singapore, but at least the ozone layer is thicker.
Expats can still rent HDB. Just can't buy subsidized HDB.
If you have kids here and want to use the local schools, I would suggest getting PR or citizenship perhaps.
I've paid out of pocket for medical expenses recently. Wasn't that bad overall, and all fairly transparent up front. But am back on company provided insurance now. With gold plated insurance, my raw medical costs are sure to go up, since I don't care about keeping them low anymore.
I live in Singapore and my experience is healthcare is extremely expensive unless you have insurance (which I have). Schools for expats are incredibly expensive too unless you want to put them in local ones.
Cost of living is very high. I pay SGD 6000/mo to live centrally but with no trees around me.
Most parts of the city I've been to have patches of green at least. I guess the core CBD doesn't have much but even a little bit outside (River Valley, Tanjong Pagar) are quite nice. What area are you in?
Fresh grads at Google get about 5k SGD (~ 3.7k USD) a month plus equity. That's lower than FAANG in the US.
With any kind of experience, salaries quickly ramp up. For example, I know an unremarkable Facebook E6 with 550k SGD (~ 408k USD) total yearly comp. You can also work in the tech department of finance companies, like Goldman Sachs or some funds.
Take home pay is about 80% of gross. There's no capital gains tax.
I think Singapore is one of my other favourite cities in addition to Helsinki!
In many ways it's very different though - while the taxes are lower, its generally much more expensive, especially if you have kids. Singapore is a very dense, packed, hot city - you get a bit of island fever and are not so close to nature. Helsinki is literally the opposite. Singapore and Helsinki are both very, very safe, but I find Singapore has more extreme ends of wealth distribution (very badly paid migrant workers).
Both are super functional though, with good universities, and both great options for running a company/working in tech. I would happily live in either city.
Helsinki could also have badly paid migrant workers, if they wanted to. Instead they don't let migrant construction workers nor gardeners nor cleaners etc into the country, which is worse for global inequality. But, out of sight, out of mind.
(There's more to say about income distribution in Singapore, but having migrant workers, even if badly paid, is a plus in my book.
If Singaporean immigration was more open, they would have even more low paid foreigners. Making the situation look worse, but be better purely in terms of global equality.)
With kids: I think it's mostly expensive if you are an expat and go the expat route with everything. If you go more local and earn a decent amount of money, the amount you save in taxes should more than make up for some extra costs.
(There's also a breakeven point for expats with kids at private international school, but it's obviously much higher.)
>Helsinki could also have badly paid migrant workers, if they wanted to. Instead they don't let migrant construction workers nor gardeners nor cleaners etc into the country, which is worse for global inequality. But, out of sight, out of mind. (There's more to say about income distribution in Singapore, but having migrant workers, even if badly paid, is a plus in my book.
I also think low-skilled migrants are ok, to a degree. Migrants from EU can travel and work in Finland freely without visa. There are many Estonian, and some Bulgarian etc construction workers - but there also legally enforced minimum salaries for everyone. In Singapore there is no minimum salary and that is one of the causes of their extreme income distribution.
> With kids: I think it's mostly expensive if you are an expat and go the expat route with everything. If you go more local and earn a decent amount of money, the amount you save in taxes should more than make up for some extra costs.
(There's also a breakeven point for expats with kids at private international school, but it's obviously much higher.)
This is true - but getting a space for a foreign child in local schools in Singapore is really, really difficult. So you almost have to factor in private school fees. Other costs are fairly comparable to Helsinki, except health care, and cars are even more expensive in Singapore - you don't really need one though. But you're right, post-tax income quickly becomes attractive in Singapore for people on higher levels of income.
> I also think low-skilled migrants are ok, to a degree. Migrants from EU can travel and work in Finland freely without visa. There are many Estonian, and some Bulgarian etc construction workers - but there also legally enforced minimum salaries for everyone. In Singapore there is no minimum salary and that is one of the causes of their extreme income distribution.
You are mixing up two things. First, Singapore doesn't have minimum wages for locals. There are much more interventionist for foreigners: there are different visa categories, and they come with restrictions like minimum salaries and various levies etc.
(And that's independent of any critique of the notion that outlawing jobs for people with low productivity does them a favour.
Interestingly, Finland also doesn't have a universal minimum wage. Just like my native Germany didn't use to have one.)
But yes, you are right to remind me that the EU is rather big and has parts that are much poorer than Finland where the Fins might draw construction workers.
About cars: for most people they are status objects here. There's more of a real need for cars for people with lots of kids, but even there ride hailing has gotten much more convenient in the last decade.
About the costs: the well to do foreigners that can afford private schools are also exactly those that the country is most open to offering permanent residency and citizenship to.
You are right, Finland doesn't have universal minimum salary, but it does have a similar, interesting state sanctioned relic - most industries with unions have a union enforced, national minimum salary for their industry - this includes construction, hospitality, manufacturing etc. It has been criticised for creating lack of flexibility in the job market - perhaps so, I don't have a strong opinion.
Absolutely right that Singapore wants to primarily attract foreigners longer term who won't place a burden on the already stretched public services (state provided housing or schooling). Though even for many of them PR/citizenship can be a long, long time away.
Helsinki should also increase capacity of English speaking private schools to attract well-to do foreigners interested in living in Helsinki, that's one of the things this "City as a Service" plan isn't able to arrange at scale right now - there are simply not enough places since there are only 1-2 private schools for English speaking kids.
The tax situation couldn't be much different between the two, but beyond that I think both countries offer a high quality of living and a vibrant tech sector. Also, for people running their own companies there are always ways to plan your tax affairs, regardless of where you live.
> Absolutely right that Singapore wants to primarily attract foreigners longer term who won't place a burden on the already stretched public services (state provided housing or schooling).
I'm not sure those public services are 'already stretched'. Perhaps at most in a relative sense compared to the rest of Singapore's generous infrastructure?
> Also, for people running their own companies there are always ways to plan your tax affairs, regardless of where you live.
That there are ways to optimize your taxes in multiple places doesn't make them equal, nor even similar. (Otherwise, eg the American corporate tax cut a while ago wouldn't have been such big news.)
In any case, regardless of tax rate, taxes here are much simpler. There's less overhead in doing your taxes.
Some friends of mine ran businesses both in Singapore and in Poland. Their accounting in Singapore is vastly simpler.
> You are right, Finland doesn't have universal minimum salary, but it does have a similar, interesting state sanctioned relic - most industries with unions have a union enforced, national minimum salary for their industry - this includes construction, hospitality, manufacturing etc. It has been criticised for creating lack of flexibility in the job market - perhaps so, I don't have a strong opinion.
I am familiar with the system from growing up in Germany. Alas, I'm also familiar with trying to foist higher wages on a part of the country than the market can support. That's what led to decades of high unemployment in East Germany.
(Though to be honest, the German unifiers were between a rock and a hard place. It was either high wages and people migrating away from unemployment, or otherwise people migrating away from low wages.
Politically, it was an easier sell to convert the East German Mark and associated contracts etc at the symbolic rate of 1:1 (and 1:2), instead of the more realistic black market rates of 1:5 to 1:10.)
> Absolutely right that Singapore wants to primarily attract foreigners longer term who won't place a burden on the already stretched public services (state provided housing or schooling). Though even for many of them PR/citizenship can be a long, long time away.
One more remark on that: Singapore isn't a monolith. In general, the government is more open to migration and capitalism than the population. Many (but far from all) of the existing restrictions are to keep the voters from rebelling.
> I think Singapore is one of my other favourite cities in addition to Helsinki!
You have a really open mind if two such different cities are your favourites! In my view, Helsinky is a really nice place, but Singapore is a scary, hellish dystopia.
It's perhaps not for everybody. But the usual complaint from the set of people who have been and don't love the place, is that it's perhaps a bit too boring and well ordered.
It's pretty much the opposite of scary here. I like that I don't have to constantly use 20% of my brain when out in a cafe to keep an eye on my stuff like in London, where things get nicked left and right.
> to constantly use 20% of my brain when out in a cafe to keep an eye
Same thing for me. Singapore would stress the heck out of me, I'd have to constantly use 20% of my brain on whether I can drink that coffee or it is an illegal substance and police will just casually murder me. No way I'm setting foot on that crazy hellhole.
Huh? The police doesn't just casually murder people, we have the rule of law and all that.
Most other places have illegal substances as well. It's just that the list differs from place to place.
There's no capital punishment for consuming illicit drugs here. That's reserved for dealing. (And in any case, there's no penalty for consuming anything by accident.)
It's all fairly boring. If you are set on wanting to be stressed out, you'd have an easier time complaining about long working hours in local companies. (Working for multinationals is fine.) See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiasu
It's a legitimate position that you want more drugs to be legal. But it's rather weird to clad your complaint in the words of stress.
the locals who really want to do those things have long moved out of the country. those who choose to remain here enthusiastically enforce the order of the country. caning and hanging continue to enjoy popular support.
Don't come, if you like to partake in recreational drugs.
(Though plenty of expats usually just hop on a plane on the weekend and indulge in one of the surrounding countries. Drugs are no more legal there, but their governments are not as competent in enforcing their laws.)
If you are not ethnically Chinese you are an underclass in Singapore. If you are not black you are not an underclass in the United States. I have no idea what it is like to be black in Singapore but for anyone else, I would think "not being an underclass" is high on anyone's list.
It's nowhere near that simple. Broadly speaking, Singapore is more classist than racist: moneyed expats of all colors have it pretty good here, and locals of all colors are treated much better than workers doing menial jobs. Yes, there's currently a backlash against Indian immigrants in professional middle-class roles, but not long ago there was a similar backlash against mainland Chinese.
Doesn't having a popular black president in the US from 2008-2016 rather undermine the idea that black people are an underclass in the US? As opposed to being a group that on average have lower income than other groups in society?
Couldn't assuming that any individual black person has low income or is part of an "underclass" be considered racist, in the sense of making judgements about individuals based on their skin color?
That's not what he's saying at all. What he's saying is "If black people are an underclass in the US, then why did a majority of them vote one of the "underclass" in as President?"
Which I think is a valid point.
Could you see an Algerian voted in as President of France?
To be extra pedantic, Barack Obama ain't a classic African-American. His dad came to America as an immigrant.
Recent migrants with black skin seem to do much better than African-Americans who ancestors have been in the US for generations. Feel free to insert your own speculations as to why.
Sorry if I'm being rude, but ... seriously, I would be curious how much you know about U.S. history and current events. What's your context / are you a young person / do you not watch much news, or know much history?
LOL. I'm definitely assuming that you don't live in the US otherwise you could not ever make a specious claim like "black people are not an underclass in the United States." Even the hardcore Trumpies will agree with this claim, they will just blame it on the black people themselves and say it's the consequence of poor choices rather than racism, they won't point to Barack Obama and Neil DeGrasse Tyson and say "no they're not."
Very startup friendly as well and excellent food.
The tropical weather takes a bit of getting used to, though. I much prefer gloomy European skies.