5 ms·

Singapore is a city-state with limited space and stellar public transport...the absurd cost of owning a personal vehicle is easily justifiable. You can hardly j

Singapore is a city-state with limited space and stellar public transport...the absurd cost of owning a personal vehicle is easily justifiable. You can hardly justify this structure in most other places...residents will revolt, lol A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It's where the rich use public transportation.

bryanlarsen 3y ago
Fees to own gasoline cars in Norway and Denmark are fairly comparable as far as I understand, and they haven't revolted.
- HideousKojima 3y ago
  Fees to own cars vs. fees to own gasoline cars, I'm sensing there's an important difference here.
- seper8 3y ago
  Fairly comparable? Not even close
- dagw 3y ago
  The 'fees' are primarily in the form of high taxes on new gasoline cars, and especially high taxes on new cars with large/powerful engines. If you want, say a BMW M3 with the biggest and most powerful engine, then you're probably paying a $76k premium compared to the US. If you want to buy a small 30 year old piece of crap then the additional taxes aren't anywhere near that high.
- karaterobot 3y ago
  It looks like they pay a VAT, plus a greenhouse tax. But the greenhouse tax seems relatively small, equivalent to around $100 USD—though there are many factors that would change that number a little bit. The VAT is much higher, something like 25% of the vehicle price. But I would not consider VAT a tax on car ownership, per se, since it is applied to many other goods, and we would not consider a VAT levied on, say, a microwave to be a tax on microwave ownership.
  - bryanlarsen 3y ago
    I thought the VAT on new gasoline cars was 180% in Denmark. Turns out they cut it to "only" 100%. 180% of an average car price of $40K is very close to $78K.
  - silvestrov 3y ago
    No, Denmark has a extra tax. For gasoline cars: First you add 25% VAT to the price. From this you calculate extra tax as: 25% of first $10k of price. 85% of price from $10k to $30k. 150% of price above $30k. https://motorst.dk/en-us/individuals/vehicle-taxes/registration-tax/registration-tax-and-rates https://motorst.dk/en-us/individuals/vehicle-taxes/registrat...
    - voisin 3y ago
      This is amazing. How did the public respond when this was introduced?
      - gerikson 3y ago
        You can get along quite well in Denmark without owning a car. Hence, car-owners are proportionally not as big a voting bloc as in the USA.
        playing_colours 3y ago
        It is true for Copenhagen, but I wonder how it feels to families living in rural areas.
        wink 3y ago
        If I can trust Wikipedia over 1/3 of the 6m people live in the Copenhagen Metro region, that's ignoring all the other towns. Also now I wonder how this works with used cars.
      - cyanydeez 3y ago
        ... public transportation
- pjmlp 3y ago
  No, the citizens working for international organisations like CERN and WTO buy the cars without taxes instead, as per countries agreements with said organisations.
- dragonsh 3y ago
  Not really comparable after paying for CoE for open category 152K SGD (US$104K), in Singapore there is a advanced registration fee called ARF,then there is additional tax on top. So a typical BMW X5 will be around SGD 540,000 (US$ 394,600) and that too for 10 years, after 10 years need to buy a new CoE or discard the car. A Tesla Model S will be more than 400k for 10 years after that need another 100k for 10 year renewal. Also fuel prices and road tax are high in Singapore which needs to be paid regularly besides buying costs.
saltysalt 3y ago
Monaco is considerably smaller. Have you seen their cars?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- walteweiss 3y ago
  Do you mean the ones they travel through the sea? And on top of that, it’s just a ‘country’ for rich. Singapore is not a fake country, far from it.
  - saltysalt 3y ago
    My point is space is not the issue (Monaco is smaller), policy is.
  - davidjfelix 3y ago
    I feel like Singapore is also largely a country for the rich, perhaps just larger -- they import something like 30-40% of their workers as migrant workers.
    - walteweiss 3y ago
      Singapore is super modern futuristic place, while Monaco is just a tiny city with no infrastructure, but a dock for yachts, casinos, restaurants and some mountains. I don’t know much about Monaco (visited once), but it feels like a place to invent some laws and install money laundering schemes, or tax evasion, or whatever else similar. Singapore on the other hand feels like super futuristic utopian dream city. I lived shortly there, but not long enough to dive into local culture and meet many people. While I would like to come visit Singapore again and again, I see no point in visiting Monaco ever again, for me it’s just beyond boring.
      - davidjfelix 3y ago
        I think if you find money laundering and tax evasion schemes to be scummy you might want to look closer at the migrant work force that helped build that utopian dream city and ask important questions like: * How do they afford such an expensive city? * Where do they go when the work is done? * Why don't they get the same rights as citizens? * If the city needs them so badly and has such a hard time finding work, why aren't they allowing migrants a more permanent residency that isn't tied to a specific company? * Why are companies and the government restricting migrant movement? * Why do companies (sometimes) charge their migrant workers for the right to work? * Why do companies (sometimes) withhold the passports of their workers? * Why does the government punish overstaying a visa with caning? I think there are a lot of parallels to western wealth disparity but there's still a lot of grossness to the systemic human labor trafficking that is the backbone of the country.
mytailorisrich 3y ago
This is a red herring. It is a conscious decision of the government rather than a consequence of being a city-state. Because of limited space owning a car will be expensive in any casem
- boeingUH60 3y ago
  > It is a conscious decision if the government rather than a consequence of being a city-state. Sometimes, drastic solutions like these are needed. Singapore strikes a good balance between freedom and responsibility IMHO.
  - jeswin 3y ago
    > Sometimes, drastic solutions like these are needed. Singapore strikes a good balance between freedom and responsibility IMHO. Some of them make sense. But executing people for drug crimes can be called barbarism.
  - gottorf 3y ago
    > Singapore strikes a good balance between freedom and responsibility IMHO. Singapore is a one-party state, probably as close to a perfect implementation of a benevolent dictatorship as there ever could be. It's a great place to live if you don't care about political freedoms and aren't a dissident of any kind. It's only had three prime ministers since self-governance began in 1959 (64 years ago), and the third and current prime minister, who has been in office for nearly 20 years, is the eldest son of the first prime minister, who was in office for over 30 years. The same party, the People's Action Party, has had over three-quarters of the seats in parliament throughout the country's whole history. There are many things to be admired about Singapore, a "good balance between freedom and responsibility" is not one of them. And endemic to all governments of this type, it remains to be seen whether it can be maintained for another few generations of Singaporeans. https://freedomhouse.org/country/singapore/freedom-world/2023 https://freedomhouse.org/country/singapore/freedom-world/202...
    - karmakurtisaani 3y ago
JadeNB 3y ago
> You can hardly justify this structure in most other places...residents will revolt Those statements may both be true, but it's worth noting that people revolting against a measure doesn't mean it's unjustified. People would revolt in the US against any measure meant to control car ownership, but we definitely need such measures in our car-first societies.
pan69 3y ago
> You can hardly justify this structure in most other places Because most of those place where build to be car centric (most of the US?). I live in Sydney/Australia where there used to a massive tram infrastructure which was destroyed (allegedly) under the pressure of big oil to make the city more car centric. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jul/28/erased-from-history-how-sydney-destroyed-its-trams-for-love-of-the-car https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jul/28/erase...

bryanlarsen 3y ago

Fees to own gasoline cars in Norway and Denmark are fairly comparable as far as I understand, and they haven't revolted.

HideousKojima 3y ago
Fees to own cars vs. fees to own gasoline cars, I'm sensing there's an important difference here.
seper8 3y ago
Fairly comparable? Not even close
dagw 3y ago
The 'fees' are primarily in the form of high taxes on new gasoline cars, and especially high taxes on new cars with large/powerful engines. If you want, say a BMW M3 with the biggest and most powerful engine, then you're probably paying a $76k premium compared to the US. If you want to buy a small 30 year old piece of crap then the additional taxes aren't anywhere near that high.
karaterobot 3y ago
It looks like they pay a VAT, plus a greenhouse tax. But the greenhouse tax seems relatively small, equivalent to around $100 USD—though there are many factors that would change that number a little bit. The VAT is much higher, something like 25% of the vehicle price. But I would not consider VAT a tax on car ownership, per se, since it is applied to many other goods, and we would not consider a VAT levied on, say, a microwave to be a tax on microwave ownership.
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  I thought the VAT on new gasoline cars was 180% in Denmark. Turns out they cut it to "only" 100%. 180% of an average car price of $40K is very close to $78K.
- silvestrov 3y ago
  No, Denmark has a extra tax. For gasoline cars: First you add 25% VAT to the price. From this you calculate extra tax as: 25% of first $10k of price. 85% of price from $10k to $30k. 150% of price above $30k. https://motorst.dk/en-us/individuals/vehicle-taxes/registration-tax/registration-tax-and-rates https://motorst.dk/en-us/individuals/vehicle-taxes/registrat...
  - voisin 3y ago
    This is amazing. How did the public respond when this was introduced?
    - gerikson 3y ago
      You can get along quite well in Denmark without owning a car. Hence, car-owners are proportionally not as big a voting bloc as in the USA.
      - playing_colours 3y ago
        It is true for Copenhagen, but I wonder how it feels to families living in rural areas.
        wink 3y ago
        If I can trust Wikipedia over 1/3 of the 6m people live in the Copenhagen Metro region, that's ignoring all the other towns. Also now I wonder how this works with used cars.
    - cyanydeez 3y ago
      ... public transportation
pjmlp 3y ago
No, the citizens working for international organisations like CERN and WTO buy the cars without taxes instead, as per countries agreements with said organisations.
dragonsh 3y ago
Not really comparable after paying for CoE for open category 152K SGD (US$104K), in Singapore there is a advanced registration fee called ARF,then there is additional tax on top. So a typical BMW X5 will be around SGD 540,000 (US$ 394,600) and that too for 10 years, after 10 years need to buy a new CoE or discard the car. A Tesla Model S will be more than 400k for 10 years after that need another 100k for 10 year renewal. Also fuel prices and road tax are high in Singapore which needs to be paid regularly besides buying costs.

saltysalt 3y ago

Monaco is considerably smaller. Have you seen their cars?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
walteweiss 3y ago
Do you mean the ones they travel through the sea? And on top of that, it’s just a ‘country’ for rich. Singapore is not a fake country, far from it.
- saltysalt 3y ago
  My point is space is not the issue (Monaco is smaller), policy is.
- davidjfelix 3y ago
  I feel like Singapore is also largely a country for the rich, perhaps just larger -- they import something like 30-40% of their workers as migrant workers.
  - walteweiss 3y ago
    Singapore is super modern futuristic place, while Monaco is just a tiny city with no infrastructure, but a dock for yachts, casinos, restaurants and some mountains. I don’t know much about Monaco (visited once), but it feels like a place to invent some laws and install money laundering schemes, or tax evasion, or whatever else similar. Singapore on the other hand feels like super futuristic utopian dream city. I lived shortly there, but not long enough to dive into local culture and meet many people. While I would like to come visit Singapore again and again, I see no point in visiting Monaco ever again, for me it’s just beyond boring.
    - davidjfelix 3y ago
      I think if you find money laundering and tax evasion schemes to be scummy you might want to look closer at the migrant work force that helped build that utopian dream city and ask important questions like: * How do they afford such an expensive city? * Where do they go when the work is done? * Why don't they get the same rights as citizens? * If the city needs them so badly and has such a hard time finding work, why aren't they allowing migrants a more permanent residency that isn't tied to a specific company? * Why are companies and the government restricting migrant movement? * Why do companies (sometimes) charge their migrant workers for the right to work? * Why do companies (sometimes) withhold the passports of their workers? * Why does the government punish overstaying a visa with caning? I think there are a lot of parallels to western wealth disparity but there's still a lot of grossness to the systemic human labor trafficking that is the backbone of the country.

mytailorisrich 3y ago

This is a red herring. It is a conscious decision of the government rather than a consequence of being a city-state. Because of limited space owning a car will be expensive in any casem

boeingUH60 3y ago
> It is a conscious decision if the government rather than a consequence of being a city-state. Sometimes, drastic solutions like these are needed. Singapore strikes a good balance between freedom and responsibility IMHO.
- jeswin 3y ago
  > Sometimes, drastic solutions like these are needed. Singapore strikes a good balance between freedom and responsibility IMHO. Some of them make sense. But executing people for drug crimes can be called barbarism.
- gottorf 3y ago
  > Singapore strikes a good balance between freedom and responsibility IMHO. Singapore is a one-party state, probably as close to a perfect implementation of a benevolent dictatorship as there ever could be. It's a great place to live if you don't care about political freedoms and aren't a dissident of any kind. It's only had three prime ministers since self-governance began in 1959 (64 years ago), and the third and current prime minister, who has been in office for nearly 20 years, is the eldest son of the first prime minister, who was in office for over 30 years. The same party, the People's Action Party, has had over three-quarters of the seats in parliament throughout the country's whole history. There are many things to be admired about Singapore, a "good balance between freedom and responsibility" is not one of them. And endemic to all governments of this type, it remains to be seen whether it can be maintained for another few generations of Singaporeans. https://freedomhouse.org/country/singapore/freedom-world/2023 https://freedomhouse.org/country/singapore/freedom-world/202...
  - karmakurtisaani 3y ago

JadeNB 3y ago

> You can hardly justify this structure in most other places...residents will revolt Those statements may both be true, but it's worth noting that people revolting against a measure doesn't mean it's unjustified. People would revolt in the US against any measure meant to control car ownership, but we definitely need such measures in our car-first societies.

pan69 3y ago

> You can hardly justify this structure in most other places Because most of those place where build to be car centric (most of the US?). I live in Sydney/Australia where there used to a massive tram infrastructure which was destroyed (allegedly) under the pressure of big oil to make the city more car centric. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jul/28/erased-from-history-how-sydney-destroyed-its-trams-for-love-of-the-car https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jul/28/erase...