Legend of the Seas made it under the Great Belt Bridge with CENTIMETERS to spare. ๐คฏ
Now sheโs on her way to the Euro summer of the century, sailing from Rome in just 14 days.
๐ Legend of the Seas at the Great Belt Bridge in Denmark
In 1965 Malaysia kicked Singapore out of the Malaysian federation, and Tunku Abdul Rahman thought he had won. He had dumped a port city with no oil, no farmland, no fresh water, and two and a half million people crammed onto an island smaller than Lake Tahoe. Sixty years later Singapore's GDP per capita runs past $84,000 while Malaysia limps along under $12,000. The man who got expelled built the richest patch of dirt in Asia. The man who did the expelling built the New Economic Policy.
Let's study what happened.
Start with what Singapore lacked. No resources. No hinterland. No domestic market worth the name. By every theory that says a nation needs raw materials to prosper, Singapore should have starved. Instead Lee Kuan Yew made his country a place where capital felt safe. Low tariffs. Easy entry for foreign firms. Courts that enforced contracts instead of shaking down the parties. Corporate tax dropped to 17 percent, personal rates capped at 22, no tax on most capital gains. Money flowed in because money is not stupid.
Malaysia chose the opposite. The New Economic Policy was racial central planning dressed up as fairness. Bumiputera quotas demanded that ethnic Malays hold 30 percent of corporate equity, that government contracts favor Malay-owned firms, that universities admit by race rather than ability. The state picked winners by bloodline. Predictably, the productive Chinese and Indian minorities took their capital and brains elsewhere, much of it to (where else) Singapore. You distort prices and incentives long enough, the talented people leave. They always leave.
Lee Kuan Yew was not perfect. The man jailed opponents, sued journalists into poverty, and ran a soft authoritarian state with a fondness for caning. He banned chewing gum, which is the kind of thing a control freak does when he runs out of real problems. Singapore is no libertarian paradise. The government owns Temasek and GIC, sovereign wealth funds sitting on close to a trillion dollars combined, and public housing covers 80 percent of the population. Plenty there for a free market thinker to dislike.
But here is the lesson Malaysia missed. Lee understood the difference between an interventionist government and a parasitic one. Singapore's state stayed mostly out of the price system. It kept inflation low, the currency credible, the bureaucracy clean, and trade open. Transparency International ranks it the fifth least corrupt country on earth. Malaysia sits at 57th, with a former prime minister, Najib Razak, currently serving time for looting 1MDB to the tune of billions. One country treated public office as a trust. The other treated it as a buffet.
Capital responds to incentives, not slogans. When Singapore guaranteed property rights and kept the rules predictable, Exxon and Shell built refineries, banks set up regional headquarters, and the port became the busiest transshipment hub in the world. When Malaysia told investors that race would override merit and that the rules could change whenever a minister felt like it, the smart money discounted everything by a risk premium. Over fifty years that premium compounds into a $70,000 gap in living standards.
And sheโs off! ๐ Legend of the Seas has officially departed from the Meyer Turku shipyard in Finland and is now heading to Cadiz, Spain to get her finishing touches. ๐
๐The brand-new Legend of the Seas, sailing in 15 days from Barcelona and Rome
Noong gabi raw na inaresto si Digong, kasama raw si Leila de Lima sa meeting doon sa Townhouse.
E sino ung kasama ko sa Bilyonaryo News? Na inienterview live ๐ญ
Shet pati ako nagkaka crisis kung boss ko ba talaga ung kasama ko that night ๐ญ๐ญ๐ญ
ON THIS DAY: 80 TAON MULA ITATAG ANG KOMPANYA NA NAGING ABS-CBN NATIN NGAYON โฅ๏ธ๐๐
Sa 8 dekada, naging simbolo na ng Kapamilya network ang Millennium Transmitter tower nito sa QC.
Balikan ang makasaysayang kwento ng torre na ito at ang papel nito sa paghangad ng ABS-CBN na...
A swarm of bees invaded the wing of a Delta Air Lines B737 in Cancรบn. With pest control taking forever to arrive, the captain was like, โHold my beerโ โ a blast of 150 mph airflow soon cleared them off.
EVER SEEN A VERTICAL BILL BEFORE?
The Supreme Court unveiled the design of its commemorative P3000 bill and P125 coin in honor of its 125th anniversary this year.
The front of the bill features former Supreme Court Chief Justice Cayetano Arellano, the first chief justice of the high court, while the back reveals a vertical design with the roster of the previous chief justices, and joined by incumbent Chief Justice Alexander Gesmundo.
According to the Supreme Court, the currencies, which will be available for purchase at the Supreme Court's gift shop, will be legal tender.
๐ท Supreme Court via Facebook
Ang araw na ito ay paalala na ang kalayaan ay may kaakibat na pananagutan. Tumindig tayo sa ngalan ng dangal, katotohanan, at bayan.
Maligayang Araw ng Kalayaan, Pilipinas! ๐ต๐ญ