SINGAPORE — While the U.S. unemployment rate “dropped” to 7.7 percent last month — a figure even the Washington Post acknowledged was due “in large part because the labor force fell by 350,000” — here in this modern and prosperous city-state of slightly more than 5 million people, unemployment is practically nonexistent at 1.9 percent.

In part, this is due to a work ethic that seems to be in the genes here. But there is something else at work that should astound Washington politicians struggling with expensive “entitlement” programs and with those who receive them.