The salaries also reflect the negotiating power of people from somewhat poorer and much poorer countries. If they decided to lower Malaysian and Singaporean bus drivers to the same level as PRC, there wouldn't be any Malaysian or Singaporean bus drivers. The pricing of labor is exactly what you'd expect from economic and political incentives: don't lay off native labor, source foreign labor from multiple countries so they can't form a powerful union bloc, pay as little as possible.
Right. And the 0 compensation of slaves before emancipation in the United States reflected their relative negotiating power.
>The pricing of labor is exactly what you'd expect from economic and political incentives
Right. If you get the police to beat up union organizers and throw them in prison it does tend to exert downward pressure on wages - which was exactly my point.
That's partly why it's the "2nd best country" to do business according to CATO: docile, servile labor.
Note that the only disagreement I have here (that I felt like articulating) is that the pay scales are "racist." Though I do want to point out that prohibiting unions from forming based on racial or country-of-origin lines is obviously a very reasonable thing for a country like Singapore to do. And so is prohibiting strikes without notice, or strikes, period, in essential sectors -- if you don't like it, go work in a non-essential sector.
