Politics

I sent time in Singapore and I did not see anyone hurting nor little old ladies sweeping the streets. Clearly capitalism is alive and doing extremely well in Singapore. Perhaps the cleanest city that I have ever been to. That said, I would not want to get crosswise with their legal system, not real fond of caning.
I was in Singapore when in the Navy in the early 70s. I was impressed how clean it was. It had really nice restaurants.
 
Singapore is an interesting mix of capitalism and benevolent dictatorship. Seems to work well for them, unless perhaps you like chewing gum.
 
I’ve visited Singapore tens of times. Personally, I would not want to live there for a number of reasons, but it is admirable how they have lifted themselves out of third world country status and became a first world country within one generation. That evil capitalism lifting people out of poverty and offering chance at a better live… How dare they achieve it all without the social “justice”! As for the cleanest city, Singapore is clean, but I think the cleanest city I’ve been to is Minsk in Belarus, what a strange place that is.
 
Moscow is the cleanest city I have seen!
 
Vienna is the cleanest city I've been to as an adult. We lived in KL, Malaysia when I was a kid, and went to Singapore more than once.
 
The reality of living in a country that has a government is that you will have to pay taxes and abide my laws, all of which infringes upon your rights. Unless advocating for anarchy, that is a reality of any political system. Now, you can make the argument that taxation for the purpose of financial aid for others is more morally wrong than taxation for the purpose of infrastructure since the first is not paying for a service that you use, but that is not what you seem to be saying unless I am mistaken, and that is what I was trying to clarify in my question to you.
I would be fine with a national sales tax. I could pay it, or I could trade in kind. But one thing that would do quickly is get people to realize that we have far too much government.

But under no circumstances should a man's money go to people who donn't provide him any value. We are all better off for value-for-value trades because those are always win/win. If I have to work for another man's benefit and not my own, the only difference between that and chattel slavery is one of degree, not in underlying philosophy.

Voluntarism is the hallmark of a free and prosperous people. Compulsion is the hallmark of tyranny.
 
I would be fine with a national sales tax. I could pay it, or I could trade in kind. But one thing that would do quickly is get people to realize that we have far too much government.

But under no circumstances should a man's money go to people who donn't provide him any value. We are all better off for value-for-value trades because those are always win/win. If I have to work for another man's benefit and not my own, the only difference between that and chattel slavery is one of degree, not in underlying philosophy.

Voluntarism is the hallmark of a free and prosperous people. Compulsion is the hallmark of tyranny.
That is a very well-reasoned explanation of your stance, thank you.

Personally, I oppose a national sales tax because I believe that it would stifle spending. I would prefer a national income tax but no state income tax. States could generate their income from sales and townships from property.

My follow-up questions for you are what, if any, role do you see for the government in providing financial aid for those who are genuinely unable to provide for themselves? Do you think that with a lower tax burden from eliminating social welfare programs there would be more money available for charity? Also, what is your opinion on a flat negative income tax as a replacement for social welfare programs?
 
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I can’t believe that they don’t start the nightly news with the “What the f*ck did Bidumb say today” segment!
Need to check out Sky News Australia. They do a pretty good job of reporting his WTF! moments.
I wonder, are we enjoying the "return to normalcy" that was voted for?
 
Moscow is the cleanest city I have seen!
My wife visited Moscow briefly on a business trip about two years ago and actually compared Moscow's cleanliness to Minsk, albeit she's only seen the centre of the city and only for a day. She's been to Singapore about a dozen times too. She says it's a tough one but she reckons Singapore is the cleanest. Mind you, she's visited Minsk and Moscow in the cold months. She hates cold and it can never be too hot for her so this might be affecting her opinion a bit. Anyway, some bizarre facts you hear about because you enjoy hunting.
 
That is a very well-reasoned explanation of your stance, thank you.

Personally, I oppose a national sales tax because I believe that it would stifle spending. I would prefer a national income tax but no state income tax. States could generate their income from sales and townships from property.

My follow-up questions for you are what, if any, role do you see for the government in providing financial aid for those who are genuinely unable to provide for themselves? Do you think that with a lower tax burden from eliminating social welfare programs there would be more money available for charity? Also, what is your opinion on a flat negative income tax as a replacement for social welfare programs?

Private charity is more than up to the task of taking care of those who truly cannot do for themselves. As I wrote previously, government doesn't do charity because charity is voluntary, not compelled. It is the least efficient way to get help to people who need it, and worse, what government "charity" does to its recipients in a metaphysical sense.

Not advocating for a return to Jim Crow at all, but in spite of Jim Crow, black people made continuous economic advances, improving their lives. That largely ground to a halt with the Civil Rights Act of '64. Prior to that, white and black literacy, numeracy, and bastardy rates were about the same. Most black kids grew up in 2 parent homes and were better off for it. Read anything by the late Walter Williams or Thomas Sowell on the value they obtained from that.

As to national sales tax...
prices wouldn't be hugely different than they are now, but the lie would be put to the government's story about soaking the rich and big business with high tax rates. And the reason is a simple economic reason - prices on goods and services will fall in the absence of businesses passing on their costs of compliance and actual tax owed to their customers.

If you go to the grocery and spend $100 right now, probably $25 of that pays the tax bill all the way up the supply chain. That sounds like a pretty good windfall if that $25 stays in the pockets of the business owners, but it will not, at least not for all of them. If I'm a competitor in the national grocery market, I seize the opportunity to drop my prices by 25% and increase my market share. The other grocery chains would need to follow suit. So on that $100, I also pay local sales tax. I'm paying a tax on a quarter of my bill which was also tax.

So assume your grocery tab is now $75, and that gets the exact same quantity of stuff $100 previously. Well, let's suppose a national sales tax of 25%. - that brings up your total bill to $93.75, still $6.25 cheaper than it was before.

Bear in mind that not a small portion of the income tax bill all the way up the supply chain isn't merely what's remitted to the government, it is in large measure a cost-of-compliance issue as well. Under the old system, the federal government never collected that 25%, it only collected a portion of it.

There are some who would suggest we go to a flat income tax. The problem with that theory is that we already had that - and when the 16th amendment was ratified, the only people who paid any income tax were those who earned money from rents, dividends, and the like. And the threshold was, I believe, $500,000 in annual income. Of note is that remuneration for services rendered (aka "employment") was not taxed.

The 80K page obscenity we have now grew out of that very simple tax. Any "new" flat tax will do the same.

Government "service" always comes at significant cost, and relative to disposable income, the cost of government is born most heavily by the people who can least afford it, not "the rich," however that term may be defined.
 
@Opposite Pole

This is political thread, so I may add for Moscow, for the infirmation of the members who have never been there.

Moscow is the place with biggest number of bentley cars, mercedes maybach, or e class, and similar class cars that i have seen in my life.
There is no blackmarket like money exchange on the streets. The exchange rate is mostly the same in offices, banks or reception desks. Shops are full with foreign or local products of every kind. What you can imagine, you can find it there.
Streets are clean, and covered well with cctv cameras, makes me feel safe. Beer, wine, food, is cheap to my standard. People are nice, kind and polite.
Museums and history is amaising. Russians are proud with all eras of their history, (tsarist, stalin times, post war communist era, cold war era, and modern post communist era) and it is visible everywhere, from monuments and museums, down to street souvenirs.
Intersting is the taxi, or yellow cab service, as this reminded me of new york. The starting job in big city, can easily be yellow cab driver, and many asian people (who dont speak english, or maybe even russian) start as yellow cab drivers. They use smartphone application for pick up and drop of point, navigate moscow streets by gps, and show the price on screen when dropping of. So there is no language barrier for cab transport. Nor words are spoken As per google infirmation average pay in moscow is higher then in some other countries in eu.
 
I sent time in Singapore and I did not see anyone hurting nor little old ladies sweeping the streets. Clearly capitalism is alive and doing extremely well in Singapore. Perhaps the cleanest city that I have ever been to. That said, I would not want to get crosswise with their legal system, not real fond of caning.
I lived in Singapore (Yew Tee Kranji) and understood how their welfare system worked. Nobody was denied basic living including medical but if a person could contribute with public service, they did. You're right about their laws and bylaws and there is a saying "Singapore is a fine city, you can get fined for anything". In their defence, the government say that all countries have bylaws, Singapore is one of the few who actually enforce them".
 
Not factually accurate.

They took operations overseas because of high corporate taxation and regulation. Full stop.

If you think it wasn't taxation and regulation that drove them out, perform this thought experiment.

Image a United States where the corporate income tax had been repealed, and the earth salted.

Now see if you can figure out how many American businesses would repatriate themselves to US soil, and how many foreign companies would choose USA as the base of their operations.

Every business in the world with the capitalization to do so would domicile themselves here.

Your thought expermient makes little sense to prove your point. Assuming the earth was salted American workers to would be willing to work for pennies an hour. This is not the case nowadays. How can American labour compete with the Chinese who are willing to work for pennies? Nowadays you have to pay an American factory worker what $7 or so dollars an hour, a Chinese factory worker may make that in a day.

Walmart and most other major US retailers predominately sell dirt cheap shit that breaks after 2 uses. There is no place on the planet where it is cheaper to produce cheap low end manufactured goods than China. That is why you see many small American businesses having their products made overseas. You cannot compete with the Chinese when it comes to this.

Find me an American who is willing to work for a $1 an hour...
 
Kevin, Here in the U.S. if someone is a freeloader, he's usually worshiped as someone who's beaten and gamed the system. We have inner city males who father 10, 20, 30 children, everyone with no future and supported by someone else (a working taxpayer). At some point there will be an implosion. I just hope I'm not around when it occurs.
African-American or even for that matter most "new world" black cultures are bizarre to say the least, especially when it comes to children and procreation. About 2/3rds of black or African-American children live in a single parent household as opposed to only 15 % of Asian kids.


And what is even more interesting look at family incomes of different races:

Interesting how the races that have the most 2 parent households also, unsurprisingly, have the highest family incomes. I am willing to bet that most of the problems facing African Americans today would be cleaned up if they got their family structures in order.

But its not just black men who view it as an accomplishment to impregnate and sleep with as many women as possible and be dead beat dads. You also have black women who are willing to spread their legs for a dude they literally just met on the street. And as a result they have multiple kids with multiple different dads. Bizarre behavior to say the least.

As Chairman Mao said: "to straighten, you need to overbend":) The Western world (not only the United States) now serves as a source of memes for the whole world. And the purpose of all this is completely incomprehensible. In general, the Anglo-Saxons rarely voice the real motives of their behavior; in the case of the Democrats, this is especially well felt. Surely madness cannot be contagious and uniform?

Look no further than the British- they went from enslaving half the world to now being a bunch of hippy vegan SJWs. Who can make sense of them ?
 
Dearly beloved here, Marx wrote something about the trend of the rate of profit :) although he was not the discoverer of the phenomenon that he who works (for himself) gets rich, and he who does not work does not eat. The second, however, was postulated by the Apostle Paul. In China, incomes are growing, including wages, and costs are also growing. Salaries in the industry there have already exceeded the Russian ones (although they are low). Already Chinese capitalists are looking for places with low costs, although it is not easy, as it turned out. Poor countries have poor infrastructure, in China it was built under Mao and his first heirs, but, say, in Bangla Desh-no.
 
Already Chinese capitalists are looking for places with low costs, although it is not easy, as it turned out. Poor countries have poor infrastructure, in China it was built under Mao and his first heirs, but, say, in Bangla Desh-no.
If you start building infrastructure in undevelopped foreing country, to support your industry and employ cheap local labor, they will call it colonialist, or neo-colonialist.
So it is also difficult from pollitical perspective, and it will increase investemment of the project.
 
This is the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) for you:

Outspoken billionaire Sun Dawu jailed for 18 years in China

A prominent Chinese billionaire has been sentenced to 18 years in prison, the latest in a string of punishments against outspoken corporate bosses.

Sun Dawu runs one of the country's largest private agricultural businesses in the northern province of Hebei.

Sun, 67, has in the past spoken out about human rights and politically sensitive topics.

He was found guilty of "picking quarrels and provoking trouble" - a charge often used against activists.

Other charges against him include illegally occupying farmland, assembling a crowd to attack state agencies and obstructing government workers from performing their duties. He was also fined 3.11 million yuan ($478,697; £343,227).

Sun's company is among China's biggest, with businesses ranging from meat processing and pet food to schools and hospitals.

He was reportedly detained last year, along with 20 relatives and business associates, over a land dispute with a government-run farm.

At the time, he said dozens of his employees were injured in an incident with police related to the dispute, according to an AFP report.

Sun is said to be close to some prominent Chinese political dissidents and has in the past criticised the government's rural policies.

He was one of the few people to openly accuse the government of covering up an African swine flu outbreak, which affected his farms in 2019, and later devastated much of the country's industry.

He also was sentenced to prison in 2003, for "illegal fundraising" but the case was overturned after an outpouring of support from activists and the public.

Sun reportedly denied many of the accusations against him in a pre-trial hearing, describing himself as an "outstanding Communist party member".

He did however reportedly admit to making mistakes, including posting messages online.

"The way they're investigating me now is making those close to us suffer and those who hate us rejoice. I wish to take the charges upon myself, even if they're severe, in exchange for the release of others. We are people who have made contributions to society," he said.

China has been cracking down on businesses and entrepreneurs in the country. Major technology companies including Alibaba, Didi and Tencent are being investigated for a range of regulatory issues.
 

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