Comparing Jamaica to Singapore

This post was sparked by a Facebook friend posting a link to mapfight, a website that compares counties by their geographical size. I spent a few minutes idling around comparing Jamaica to a variety of countries such Japan, Zimbabwe, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands etc. Then came the bomb when I compared the size of Jamaica to Singapore which states that Jamaica is 15x bigger than Singapore. While I knew little about Singapore as a country I knew that they were an affluent country with strong economy that was lead by Lee Kuan Yew (I had to Google his name) for many decades.

Lee Kuan Yew

I remember learning that Mr Yew had used Jamaica as an economic model in the 1950’s and 60’s to plot out a path for his own country. Fast forward 50+ years and Jamaica and Singapore are in very different places economically. I did some searching and came upon the website nationmaster that compares countries on far more than just the size of their landmass. I’m no economist neither will I dive into the politics of it all but there is a story being told in the numbers. Continue reading