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English: Overview of Singapore’s financial district (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Singapore, a tiny island city-state with no capital but only a downtown area, has the highest percentage of millionaires in the world. One out of six Singaporeans are millionaires with at least $1 million cash, not including net worth of their businesses, properties and luxury goods. There are 200,000 foreign workers in Singapore working as live-in housemaids.

Singapore became an independent nation in 1965, a relatively very young country of 48 years only but became one of the original Four Asian Tigers , meaning economic super powers of Asia. With its size of 274 sq. mi., it is twice the size of Las Vegas ( 135.8 sq. mi ) and half the size of New York City ( 468.5 sq. mi.). Singapore has a population of 5 million people with half are native born and half are foreigners working in the country. The population of Singapore is similar to the population of the state of Minnesota but Minnesota has an area of 86,939 sq. mi. compared to Singapore’s 274 sq. mi. It is located in the southern tip of Malaysia in Southeast Asia.

Singaporeans are the most hardworking people, taking pride in working 45 hours a week and there’s no minimum wage set in the country. The government rejects the welfare system common to rich countries today but instead tells the people to work and save for their future retirement. Welfare is only provided to the very poor but acute poverty is hardly present in the country.

The Singaporean government has two global investment sovereign wealth funds and uses the income to pay for government budgets on education, research and development, health care for the poor and others. There’s no inheritance tax so whatever wealth the parents accumulated can be passed on to the next generation ( US has 40% inheritance or estate tax ).