by Eric Feigenbaum
When I first traveled to Thailand at age 23, friends warned me that should I ever encounter the police – for any reason, whether I was right or wrong – to quickly offer them 100 baht. One friend I made during my backpacking period got in trouble for smoking a joint on the beach – marijuana being VERY illegal in Thailand at that time.
“They arrested me and I knew I had no longer than the time it would take to get to the police station to bribe my way out,” my friend told a group later. “So I asked to go to the ATM and they took me! They told me 10,000 baht [roughly $230 at that time] would be good. So I gave it to them and they let me go with a warning to never make that mistake again.”
While $230 wasn’t a small sum to a 22-year-old backpacker, it was a very small price to avoid potentially a decade in a Thai jail.
During the year I lived in Thailand, I learned it was common for businesses to pay “protection fees” to the local police. When I subsequently worked in Taiwan, I learned the same basic rules applied. In China, a little money ensured government officials stamped contracts and forms. When I lived in Bali, the police sometimes setup “checkpoints” along key roads where drivers slowed, rolled down their windows and handed cash – usually 20,000 rupiah (roughly $2 USD at that time) to an officer – not a word exchanged.
Corruption has a long history across most Asian societies.
When Singapore became an independent republic in 1965, it was no different. Only its largely British educated founders – many of whom studied at Cambridge and the London School of Economics – hated corruption. Besides the inherent iniquity of it, they understood the drag corruption places on economic development. While none are free from corruption, first world countries generally eschew graft and do their best to minimize it.
“It is sad to see how in many countries, national heroes have let their country slide down the drain to filth and squalor, corruption and degradation, where the kickback and the rake-off has become a way of life, and the whole country sinks in debasement and despair,” said Singapore’s founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew.
Unfortunately, corruption is costly to extinguish.
“Once a political system has been corrupted right from the very top leaders to the lowest rung of the bureaucracy, the problem is very complicated. The cleansing and disinfecting has to start from the top and go downwards in a thorough and systematic way,” Lee once articulated.
Singapore’s leadership took the view that by and large corruption stemmed from people who didn’t earn enough trying to fill the gap between what they made and what they wanted to make – or maybe what they needed. If police officers, for example, made a healthy living instead of the basic wages they were used to – their need for bribes would be reduced. Moreover, it’s easier to hold someone accountable when they have something worthwhile.
For perspective, Retired Singapore Police Force Officer Tuan Sabeer Zain made $480 SGD per year – roughly equivalent to $1700 USD per year in 2025 dollars when he was hired in 1948. This wasn’t even a living wage – leading Singapore’s early leaders to conclude this may well be why police officers were on the take. By contrast, a college-educated new-hire police officer today makes roughly $54,000 USD per year and a $14,830 USD sign-on bonus with significant increased earning potential with seniority and specialization. In one of the safest policing jurisdictions on Earth.
Accordingly, Singapore set about increasing wages for all manner of civil servants and then enacting strict standards for ethical behavior and performance.
This new approach included the judiciary, Members of Parliament, the Cabinet and the Prime Minister. For example, a Member of Parliament makes $142,000 USD per year whereas beginning-level Cabinet Ministers make $816,000 USD per year and can increase to almost $1.5 million USD with experience.
The Prime Minister of Singapore is the highest paid top official in the world making $1.69 million USD per year and with annual bonus targets typically nets closer to $2.25 million. This is a giant rung up from the next highest-paid head of state, the President of Switzerland who makes roughly $570,000 million per year.
Critics feel this salary structure is itself a form of corruption – people at the top paid disproportionately well, feeling no pain.
Proponents say running Singapore should be treated the same as running a major corporation. When you consider the Singaporean government took in $65 billion in 2024 for a country with an economy worth an estimated $548.15 billion in nominal GDP – the idea of Prime Minister as CEO makes sense. Singapore has roughly the same net worth as ExxonMobil whose CEO has a compensation package of about $36.9 million.
Much like a corporate CEO, a portion of the Prime Minister’s compensation package is a bonus for reaching targets set by Parliament including Real Median Income Growth for Singaporean Citizens, Real Growth Rate of Lowest 20th Percentile Income for Singapore Citizens, Unemployment Rate of Singapore Citizens and Real GDP Growth Rate.
The American President may not get paid as well, but also has no direct accountability for any of these outcomes except how public sentiment affects reelection. Even then, the criteria by which a president is elected are variable and amorphous.
Of course, the proof is in the pudding. In 2023 Transparency International’s Transparency Perception Index ranked Singapore 5th least corrupt in the world and the only Asian nation in the Top Ten. In the same year, the World Justice Project Rule of Law Index ranked Singapore third for absence of corruption.
The United States ranked 69th on the TI-TPI – out of 180 ranked countries.
Three American Presidents have opted either not to take their salary or to turn it over to charity: Herbert Hoover, John F Kennedy and Donald Trump – all independently wealthy. While the first two turned their paychecks over to charity, Trump tried to accept no paycheck at all. This ran into a snag. The President ultimately is a federal employee working for the people and can’t go completely uncompensated. Therefore, Trump worked it out to accept $1 per year.
The underlying question is one of having “skin in the game.” Many Americans love a self-made man or woman serving their country. The idea of giving back traces to the Founding Fathers – who were all of means and to whom public service was a hybrid of honor and noblesse oblige.
From a Singaporean perspective, a leader without a salary is untethered. How do you create accountability for someone who doesn’t need the job – or who at least doesn’t benefit from it materially? Singapore has a clear contract with its leadership – metrics of success and outlines of expectations.
Naturally, size of a country plays an important role.
“A good administration is essential but in a developing country, let me add, a good political leadership is critical. It is life and death,” Lee once explained. “In a developed society, you can have mediocre, indifferent ministers and the country will get by.”
To this end, Singapore maintains the Corrupt Practices Investigations Bureau – holding government employees at all levels accountable. As you might expect given the country’s transparency rating, the number of high-profile corruption cases are few – though there are a couple that stand out.
In 1986 Minister for National Development Teh Cheang Wan committed suicide after a CPIB investigation found he had accepted more than $1 million SGD in bribes from private companies seeking to buy and develop public lands. The report and information were not yet public when Teh took his life, but the impending shame was more than he could bear.
Last year Minister for Transport S Iswaran plead guilty to 24 various charges all resulting from a CPIB investigation. Iswaran accepted roughly $300,000 USD in gifts from a major property owner and developer over the course of seven years and with plea bargaining was sentenced to one year imprisonment.
It’s hard to imagine an American Cabinet member being taken down for such indiscretions. It’s even harder to imagine them being flagged down and investigated successfully for $300,000 over the course of seven years.
The principle as articulated by Lee Kuan Yew is, “‘If government workers are adequately paid, they deserved to be punished with severe punishments when they take bribes.’
Perhaps serendipitously, the same policy allows Singapore to tackle another important issue: talent. Singapore seeks to recruit the best minds into serving their country. A mediocre civil service salary makes it difficult to attract and retain top tier talent.
The United States knows this well. In California, for example, a judge makes between $217,785 and $238.479 per year. This is certainly a healthy living. At the same time, the median take-home for a partner in a large law firm is $800,000 and for an equity-holding partner, $1.9 million. Accordingly, some of the best, most experienced and specialized attorneys to serve their state as judicial officers, would need to accept a 75 percent pay-cut. This explains why so many judges come from the public sector – usually District Attorneys and Public Defenders.
Singapore understands it needs to pay for the best in order to create and innovate effective and efficient systems and services. Therefore, having a Cabinet member making roughly $1 million USD is both a bulwark against corruption and an investment in the effectiveness and vitality of government.
At a time when the United States is hotly debating the size of government, the role of wealthy persons in government and its priorities for budgeting – Singapore presents salient points of comparison. Clearly, Singapore’s government believes in having quality people at a higher cost per head rather than larger amounts of affordable people. Then it links high wages with accountability to avoid corruption and maintain transparency.
This could well be why Singaporeans have such a high opinion of their government. In 2024 the World Bank reported Singaporeans rated their country 100 out of 100 possible points on government effectiveness while Americans scored theirs at 86 and British at 85. Likewise, and unsurprisingly, Singaporeans rated their government’s control of corruption at 98 while Americans gave theirs 82 and Britain 92.
The results speak for themselves.
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