Singapore can teach us something

Joe Stiglitz has a very laudatory article about Singapore.  Granted he does not stress some of the undemocratic means by which it has done well in several of the ways he mentions.  I see his article as another effort to convince this country that we should really analyze our situation, rather than simply assume that we are better than all other nations.  My take-away from this article follows:

Democracy, we now recognize, involves more than periodic voting. Societies with a high level of economic inequality inevitably wind up with a high level of political inequality: the elites run the political system for their own interests, pursuing what economists call rent-seeking behavior, rather than the general public interest. The result is a most imperfect democracy. The Nordic democracies, in this sense, have achieved what most Americans aspire toward: a political system where the voice of ordinary citizens is fairly represented, where political traditions reinforce openness and transparency; where money does not dominate political decision-making; where government activities are transparent.