01 June 2008

Necessary conditions for economic growth and the varnished truth

An international commission's report about how poor countries can achieve economic growth was reported by the Straits Times in a way that trumpeted the Singapore government's line about "good governance", non-necessity for democracy and high salaries for officials. Full essay.

5 comments:

yuen said...

so ST, as part of the PR unit of Singapore Inc, diligently extracted parts of the report that suited its purpose; why should that surprise you?

obviously, a disciplined population is important for economic development; how to maintain discipline while leaving scope for democratic participation, flow of ideas, criticism and fault correction, and what constitutes a fair distribution of the benefits of economic development - these are issues PAP says it continually works on; whether it could have achieved more is of course a perennial question

Anonymous said...

Well done bread! When I first saw the headline I too suspected something. Thank you for taking the time to dig the stuff up. The mainstream media fully deserves its 150 something ranking. As usual no integrity and cannot be trusted.

Yawning Bread Sampler said...

Yuen -
It doesn't surprise me, but what activism has taught me through the years is the importance of collecting evidence to prove one's case.

Anonymous said...

NYU economist and author William Easterly makes the case for freedom to experiment over listening to expert authority (and slams the entire report) in his Financial Times op ed. Link below:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4ee1a00e-2cb6-11dd-88c6-000077b07658.html

Yawning Bread Sampler said...

The correct link to FT's William Easterly commentary.