first world?

The ‘Singapore as First World’ Election ‘Debate’

Let’s examine this term ‘First World’ for a minute or two. How do we actually define what is ‘First World’?

Wikipedia gives a pretty decent, brief political history of the term, and states that in its current usage, the term “has come to denote the 'developed' Industrialized-Capitalistic nations that in 2000 had a higher GDP per capita than $15,000, as stated by the World Bank. This would include the United States, Canada, Japan, the countries of the European Union (in 2000), Taiwan, Israel, Australia, New Zealand, and South Korea. Additionally, Singapore and Hong Kong may be described in these terms but they are exceptions as these have particular characteristics not representative of a country. The World Bank also denotes these as "High Income Economies".”

Now I’m not gonna waste too many brain cells thinking about how useful GDP is as a measure of peoples’ economic conditions. Most of the time it’s just this number that’s thrown around in popular discourse that’s supposed to be some kind of marker of success – the bigger the number, the better you should feel about your country, apparently. But I think it’s safe to say that while GDP is a commonly-used indicator of the (capitalist) economic wheel-turning of countries, it doesn’t really say anything about how that economic wealth is distributed (i.e. unequally and unjustly). It doesn’t tell us much about where that wealth has come from. Quite convenient, considering most of the countries in that list of ‘First World’ were (England, Spain, Portugal, Holland, etc) and are (US, Canada, Israel) (neo)colonizers and imperialists - extracting wealth from the labour of the majority in the colonized world and through theft of land and natural resources (case in point: Operation Iraqi Liberation), and not to mention displacing hundreds of thousands of indigenous peoples especially in settler colonies (for info on one current struggle, see the Six Nations Standoff Resource Page). And GDP also doesn’t tell us how profit/wealth is generated.

So by extension, that makes the term ‘First World’ become this vague and almost meaningless thing, doesn’t it? Except for the fact that the term is constructed in such a way as to identify any nation associated with it as superior and somehow doing the right things compared to everybody else. A sense of superiority is something that I’m sure the PAP identifies with quite easily, but I’m kinda disappointed that some Opposition candidates have also fallen into using the same language in response, instead of critiquing it. These kinds of things just seem like a distraction from the things that should really matter in this election - growing income disparities, healthcare, education, the death penalty, democratic participation, a truly just justice system, government accountability and transparency, violence against women, etcetera etcetera.

I hope that, with Nomination Day now out of the way, the level of political debate will improve.