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Simon Black On Another Form Of Inflation
From Simon Black of Sovereign Man
Another Form of Inflation
Sticker shock in grocery store checkout lines and gas pumps around the western world is starting to set in. At this point, you have to be living under a rock to not notice that prices of goods and services around the world are increasing substantially.
Much of the blame for rising prices has rightfully been levied on the uncontrolled expansion of central bank balance sheets-- the US Federal Reserve, for example, created more money in the last two years than it had created in the previous 200. Rejecting reject the possibility that any of this money could impact consumer prices is just intellectually dishonest.
There is another factor, however, that weighs heavily on inflation, and it is seldom discussed in this context: taxes.
Everybody hates paying taxes... but what few people realize is that tax hikes fuel rising prices. When payroll tax rates, import duties, corporate profits tax rates, sales tax rates, etc. increase, it's always the end consumer at the cash register who gets stuck footing the bill.
This is happening across the world right now, including in the United States. While governments in places like Illinois have made headlines for infamously raising their income tax rates in the middle of the night, local government tax hikes are going largely unnoticed.
At present, 14 cities across California are raising their local sales tax rates, the highest being in Union City and El Cerrito (near San Francisco) to 10.25%. Then there's Prattville, Alabama, a town of 30,000 near the capital Montgomery, which just raised its local sales tax rate 1% to 9.5%
This has the effect of making everything more expensive-- instantly. Now, 1% might not seem like that big of a deal, right? This is how politicians think-- do we really care if we pay $50 at the checkout line, or $50.50? Of course not, it doesn't matter.
It's not about a single purchase, though, it's the aggregate of all of our purchases, and its starts to add up. Not to mention, there's the slippery slope of thinking "well, if 1% didn't matter last time, let's hike tax rates another 1%."
Over time, the same thing happens when income tax rates rise. When individuals have less disposable income to spend, everything certainly feels more expensive... and when corporate and payroll tax rates increase, those increased costs get passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices.
There are some places in the world, however, that are getting it right. Singapore is one such place. Rather than concerning itself with dropping bombs and establishing military bases in other countries, the government of Singapore is living within its means setting conditions for the continued growth and prosperity of its residents.
This morning, I received a welcome email from one of my prime contacts on the ground in Singapore. As it turns out, the government there is cutting its tax rates. Again. And my friend, a "who's who" in the Singapore corporate structure industry, sent along a very helpful guide to show me just how serious Singapore is about growth.
Individual income tax rates, which are already among the lowest in the developed world, are being cut. For example, income in the range of S$80,000 to S$120,000 (S$ is the Singapore dollar... this is roughly $65,000 to $95,000 USD) will now be taxed at a marginal rate of just 11.5%, down from 14% before.
For companies, corporate profits below S$100,000 (roughly $80,000 USD) under the old rate schedule were not taxed. This is still the case... and one of the reasons why Singapore is such an attractive draw to entrepreneurs-- because, for a startup, those initial profits are incredibly important.
The next S$200,000 in profits (roughly $160,000 USD) used to be taxed at 8.5%. This has been cut to 6.8% under the new scheme, so the effective tax rate on roughly the first $240,000 USD is only 4.5%. Pretty reasonable.
The next S$194,118 in profits (roughly $154,000 USD) used to be taxed at 17%; this has now dropped to 13.6%... and finally, all profits above S$494,118 (about $392,000 USD) are taxed at 17%.
As corporate profit tax schemes go, this is incredibly low. A company with roughly $400,000 (USD) in profits would have an effective tax rate of just 8%, and a company with $1 million (USD) in profits would pay an effective tax rate of just 13.5%.
Singapore has also made new allowances in how businesses can deduct expenses through the "Product and Innovation Credit (PIC) Scheme." The PIC Scheme allows businesses to deduct up to 400% of the actual expense for things like research and development, design, acquisition of intellectual property rights, etc.
While these tax benefits are advantageous for all companies, Singapore lends itself particularly well to entrepreneurs and professionals who generate the preponderance of their income online: it's a strong, independent, transparent jurisdiction to structure, it's one of the safest banking jurisdictions in the world, and the government provides generous allowances for royalties and intellectual property.
I've been traveling in the US for almost 3-weeks now, and as usual, I've been pretty amazed at all the gloom, bad news, and overall economic malaise. I'm here to tell you that there are still plenty of places in the world with significant opportunity, where productive, talented people are treated like valuable assets instead of milk cows.
Singapore is one of those places, and I think it makes a lot of sense to consider relocating there (if you're a skilled professional, investor or entrepreneur) or looking to structure a foreign business (especially an online company).
Tomorrow, I'll be releasing interview I just conducted with a friend of mine who is a very successful online entrepreneur. He is another Atlas 400 member, and a phenomenal teacher about what he does.
I hope that, between the valuable insights he provides in the interview about building a new online business, and what we've discussed about places like Singapore, it may give you some ideas for a different direction.
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"globe trotting profiteers" .... Repeat after me "profit is good", "Lots of profit is great", "insane profits are Fucking Great" -- I owe my fellow man nothing, and visa versa...
Please, quit quoting Immelt.
Damn, slimy bastard beat me to it again!
But cats are furry, not slimy! Dog lover.
No no - Immelt slimy bastard, mynhair good kitty
Ok, purrr.
singapore is the corrupt private company town of the Lee family and was built on money laundering for chinese from malaysia and the mainland. the whole lee myth is carefully contrived to lend somekind of legitamacy to the place but in fact its a fake country and fake democracy. its just a company town owned by a mafia boss family and they will sue the shit out of you if you say so.
That's known as paternalistic capitalism. Bismarck would have loved him (aka HK). Deng Tsiao Peng listened to LKY and made the land-mark decision of turning Mao's CHina into what it is today, paternalist, central communist party run (too big for ONE family to own), slave run industrial, capitalistic work house. So understandably, both RN and HK love LKY. That ping-pong game paid great dividends to the 'happy few' that now run America, whose interests RN/HK represented so stead-fastly and that RR finally delivered via Reaganomics! The only trouble is this Reagan's paternalistic model has now become rogue capitalism as 'American hubris' like 'american idol' has totally corrupted the mind set of the top 1% class.
I very much agree with the premise of the article regarding taxes being a form of inflation. Is not a Honda Accord in Singapore $100,000? I know Singapore is well run and has some great Chinese restaurants, but my friends there do say imported items are a bit extreme.
Interesting to see a 10 year chart of cost of living across the world. Tyler?
Its the license fee that will kill you in Singapore. They tightly control the amount of autos on the road. The public transit though is some of the best in the world and dirt cheap.
Is a Honda produced in Singapore? No. They are protectionist.
Not like they have a lot of land area.
Cars are expensive in Singapore due to the requirement to get a Certificate of Entitlement. It's a govt scheme to reduce the number of cars on the tiny island.
This is the most depressing thing I have read in years. How it should be, definately not how it is. Corruption, special interests and greed SUCK!
Depressing was having Pelousy be re-elected. Your priorities are screwed.
In addition to Singapore, Costa Rico has legislated that its military and police force cannot exceed 2% of GDP.
Sources?
Just don't spit your chewing gum on the side walk like I did
My ass still is numb from the caning I was sentenced to.
Singapore
http://data.worldbank.org/country/singapore
Denmark
http://data.worldbank.org/country/denmark
Finland
http://data.worldbank.org/country/finland
Norway
http://data.worldbank.org/country/norway
Libya
http://data.worldbank.org/country/libya
I heard the mayor of L.A> on NPR whining about Prop 13. The lady kept repeating that a balanced budget amendemnt would limit growth "and that's the first thing she learned" back when she was studying Econ. Obviously studied under Krugman. Milk cow is a good description.
Yep, here in NC they raised sales tax to 9%, added another huge cigarette tax to put them at $5 a pack in a state that thrives on tobacco sales (smart huh), yet liquor and beer go undeterred. Ever seen anyone kill anyone under the influence of a marlboro? These state legislatures are idiots. I never vote for these people in an election. It is a waste of time.
Yeah...I want to go a place where I'll never see my family, where I'm a 1% minority, where I don't speak the language, where I'll have to eat snails all to save money on my taxes. I want what Simon is smoking.
Well, you will give me all your assets if you don't.....
I'm fat, Dem, and voted for Obambi.
Government is a faith based religion.
Somehow the sum of individuals can exceed the rights of a single one, a group that can rob and steal from the poor souls at gunpoint, in broad daylight and to the amusement of airheaded cheerleaders on soulless boob boxes.
Tax is stealing. If your silly institution had merit, it would be funded through voluntary agreement.
Ridiculous that anyone thinks government provides a service, or even sillier, creates an economy. The only thing it is meant to provide is a shackle to chain the scoundrels inside the groups of men that form cartels to lie cheat and steal. Give up your silly myths or give up your life.
No one is innocent.
Rise against ignorance, kick a sheep in the ribs with natural law.
Very close.
"Government is a faith based religion."
Replace 'Government' with Liberal.
Correct, or put differently, "Government is the religion of the modern liberal." What is interesting is that this religion will trump any other beliefs the liberal has. It always ranks first and will override, religion, tradition, common sense and even morality. That's why over time it always ends badly.
I have been asking myself the question: How can the US Government ever possibly pay back the Fed all the debt owed to it? It just isn't possible.
Something has to give, so I then pose another question to you here on ZH: What if the Fed forgives the US Treasury debt it holds (as part of all these bailout, stimuli, and other contrivances to keep the world economies moving)? Does that count technically as a default? Even if the lender forgives all on it's own benevolence? Sure, all the dollars injected are forever there and prices will never be the same. But the debt to GDP drops back down to precrisis levels. The Fed is THE central bank, what are the other foreign governments going to do? What can they do?
Did you vote for this? If you did, you should be sleepless.
I didn't - ever.
Bill all Dims $500K, and call it a stupidity tax.
Yes, i know, it doesn't cover it all. The rest of us need to be penalized for not being quicker with our guns.
No, I didn't. I don't think anyone voted to allow the Bernank to do what he has done. But the question remains: What would be the consequences of the Fed essentially forgiving the US Treasury debt it bought and holds?
Sheeple voted for those that put in the Beryank, but you raise an unknown point.
Goobermint debt would be placed on the baccarat table, is my thought. Oh, and all new debt would be refused. Good all around, bad for banksters, and very painful for us residents? Need to think about that last, what does goobermint provide?
Meethinks the TEA party has to get real and propose a 2 trillion cut in the budget now.
I'd like 3 tril, but I hate goobermint.
No consequences for them.
They won't forgive it. It's the service that has to be paid to themselves.
When our pussy faced congress grows a sack and shoves their nose in their silly fiat currency is when I recognize America as a potential nation. Until then we are a global village of slaves servicing a debt that pays for jets, islands, stadiums and quarries.
SHAME on this so-called land of the free and home of the slave.
Jubilee!!! Of sorts.
There would be less total debt. If demand remained the same then
treasury prices would remain the same or go up and corresponding
yields (interest rates) would decline or remain low.
How do you think China, Japan, and Russia would feel about this?
Perhaps the idea would catch on and all would be forgiven.
I like your question.
What a wonderful example could be set by the Fed.
I can think of a few very large treasury holders who are facing this
same issue....Social Security, Medicare, and the Federal Pension
Board. They may have to forgive the treasuries that are owed to
them. Better to forgive than get absolutely shafted. They have no
hold on the IOU's (treasuries in their investment portfolio) e.g., do not
have the option to liquidate this debt in order to pay their bills. At
point all three agencies are on a pass through basis i.e., pay out
what you collect and or send the bill to congress and let them figure
out how to fund the committments.
And congress is supposedly busy at work trying to figure a way to
reduce federal spending. What a joke. The responsible types therein
must feel like puking as they start to put this all together. This does
not include Barnie Frank and types like him. It's party time for them!
Interesting isn't it????
I am Bobert
Yield explosion, default, and a giant heap of bankrupt elderlies.
The Fed holds < 9% of the US public debt, China ~8%...actual citizens: 12%.
Think before you leap.
Consider that all central banks meet in the middle. Which they do. In that case they just keep creating debt that the tax farms (faux govts) service.
Really do you think that Oblamma is in charge? US is lobbing bombs at Libya to protect French pharma oil interests. Connect the dots. They all point to central banking.
Once you realize you are livestock, you are no longer livestock, or at least livestock that's very difficult to contain.
Revolt. It's simple. Scorn their silly system of farming. Show the livestock that life can be led outside the fence.
I very happily pay my taxes knowing the money is being well spent by Obama on his Brazilian vacation.
Piss off. And find a goobermint program to get you bigger tits.
Thats my Kitty!
This video explains food inflation pretty well:
http://www.video.me/ViewVideo.aspx?vid=409832
Enjoy
Excellent video...thnx.
Feels kind of like a huge-ass house of cards that are lightly magnetized and Bernanke's dressed in a clown costume dancing around it throwing bricks blind folded laughing his little sinister ass off at the mere thought of accidentally making the house come tumbling down into the hands of the Nazis.
+ 1000000
I need your nack for brevity.
You are spot on!
Here in Australia, local councils are using red light cameras, parking fines, speeding tickets to tax the proles. You become a criminal, loosing your drivers license if you dont paid said fines. It is a joke....and getting worse.
Simon Black, like Singapore, gets it. And Hank Hazlitt agrees. Says Hazlitt: The result of Draconian taxation “has been to bring chronic and mounting inflation in nearly every country in the world.”
America is following Great Britain down the road to serfdom, led by her Pied Pipers of Keynesianism and New Dealers.
Hazlitt wrote in 1978: “[G]overnment has nothing to give without first taking it away from somebody else—or from themselves. Increased handouts to selected groups mean merely increased taxes, or increased deficits and increased inflation. And inflation, in the end, misdirects and disorganizes production...
“We need merely point to Great Britain,” Hazlitt wrote more than 30 years ago (before some conservative governments returned a semblance of free enterprise to the British economic system). “Its government has been taxing personal income from work (‘earned’ income) up to 83 percent, and personal income from investment (‘unearned’ income) up to 98 percent. Should it be surprising that it has discouraged work and investment and so profoundly discouraged production and employment? There is no more certain way to deter employment than to harass and penalize employers. There is no more certain way to keep wages low than to destroy incentive to investment in new and more efficient machines and equipment.”
What Britain has today, and what America is creating with her captured one-party government economic intervention by the Redistributive State - i.e., “all the policies of expropriating money from Peter in order to lavish it on Paul” - is the development of a “national welfare industry.”
Says Hazlitt: “One of the worst results of the retention of the Keynesian myths is that it not only promotes greater and greater inflation, but that it systematically diverts attention from the real causes of our unemployment…”
The peak and size of the British Empire was at its height in 1901...
So how does 15% on cap gains compare with 98%? Should I cry about the 22% effective rate paid by the top 1% on average who take home 22% of the income in the US and control 38% of the wealth?
How much tax-free investment in 401ks, muni bonds, or 'development zones' will be 'enough'? How big a tilt in the playing field for investment income and hedge fund management will be 'enough'?
The biggest 'welfare industry' in the US doles out money to corporations at the expense of individuals. It's 'redistributive' alright...from the middle-class to Jeff Immelt, Dickhead Scott, the Koch Brothers, corn farmers, and defense contractors.
I'll be writing a 5 figure check to the Feds and a 4 figure one to my state in about a week and a half, but I guarantee you that it doesn't make me or my wife want to give up our top 3% jobs or stop striving to be in the top 1% one iota. Your theory is ludicrous. Anyone who claims they "aren't working harder" because of taxes is either lying or mentally fucking retarded.
I' In a Million years, WOULD HAVE NEVER imagined Snowball and JR having an (Imaginative conversation.) Sweetness.
;-)
And I can top that: GE doesn’t pay any taxes!
The fact is, the transfer of wealth to the non-producers in England helped to destroy one of the most industrious countries in history. And when England wanted to wage a war against an industrious Germany, she didn’t have a bean. Britain has now moderated down to a level of common misery…and America’s on the way – whatever the size of your “five figure” check.
The biggest factor in our economy is the transfer of wealth from the middle class to the non-producers on both ends of the spectrum. We have a monster-size Leviathan of a government that’s eating us alive—and we are feeding it with TAXES. All that money funnels into the banks of the Potomac, primarily to the people who are going to vote for the people on the banks of the Potomac… The Federal government is broke, the states are broke, the middle class is broke, our children are broke…
One of these days Americans are going to wake up and guess what? Good morning, it’s Britain! And who’s going to pay when some great big ol’ nasty aggressor comes over and slaps us on the jaw? NOBODY!
Good article. Reminds me of a series of interviews I receantly read about. The reporter interviewed hundreds of people here in the USA, Europe, South America and China.
The most pessimistic and least confident people are now Americans. The most optimistic and confident are......can you guess?
Chinese.
With or without the gun to their heads? Did they poll anyone at Foxconn?
For products with inflexible demand (gas, staple foods) this is most definitely an instance of corporations acting as tax collectors on behalf of the government, but where consumers are spending in discretionary fashion, it is more a problem with margin compression as the cost cannot easily be passed on to the consumer without killing off sales.
That being said, the increased price of fuel bleeds through to higher prices across the board for any product that must travel any distance to the consumer.
But would we rather have increased consumption taxes...or (even more highly) increased income taxes?
Who better to tax the shit out of than people too stupid to moderate their consumption of discretionary items?
Perhaps we could offset some of the taxes on staples with 'sin taxes', but then we'd need some consensus on what constitutes sin and which sins we find acceptable enough to allow 'for a price' (beyond OJ, Bare-ass Hillpeople, or Lindsay LoClass).
I'd love to see idiotic maneuvers like prosecuting and jailing people for soft drug crimes at great expense go by the wayside, but that will require a populace that can actually do a cost/benefit analysis without knee-jerk voting for anything that satisfies their desire to control the behavior of others at every turn when the vested interests of the jailer's union blasts them with ads full of Willie Hortons.
another form of sales tax inflation: as prices go up, the more sales taxes you pay.
The so-called central banker “planners” have got a world boiling up because of their actions. And now the financial situations are boiling up all over. The bottom line is: you cannot pay for something with nothing. Nathan Martin has it right: there is a point where you can’t print. Yes, there is! And we’re getting close to that point. The debt is beyond all understanding, and it’s closing in.
And beware the “pollsters.” When the captured pollsters do a poll, they load it. And they don’t spell out the bias in their poll “story”; they just come back with the “results.”
For instance, according to Steve Frank’s Political News and Views, 60 to 70 percent of people polled during Schwarzenegger’s reign in California favored increasing taxes to help the Governor meet his budget. When the vote came, they turned him down 2 to 1.
FOX and CNN(BOTH) are on my cerebellum right now.
In Singapore, income tax is only the appertiser. While income tax remains the lowest after Hong Kong, its indirect taxes is heavily present in all other purchases.
GST remains low (compares to the west) at 7%. It is slated to go up to 10% after election this year. This makes Singapore the highest sales tax in Southeast Asia. This is across all goods. No repreive for daily necessities or medicine. Hong Kong has no sales tax.
To buy a car, you will have to purchase an entitlement paper. This paper depreciates linearly daily over 10 years. The current cost of this paper for a 1,600cc and below is US$34,700. To put a new Toyota Vios 1.5l on the road, it would cost $68,000. Forget about the BMWs and the Mercs. This COE was touted as a congestion measure. Car population continues to grow since the scheme was implemented and zero growth was never a reality. This scheme did much to grow the government coffers while doing nothing to congestion.
Public transportation prices are "recommended" by a council consisting of motorists. The members are figures known to be friendly to the ruling party. This council in effect becomes a separate arm of the inland revenue department.
Inflation tax is high in Singapore. Latest CPI is at 5.5% YOY. This is depite a strong SGD. So inflation is almost certainly much higher.
SGD is strong not because of the strong economy which consists mainly of construction and property development. This can be seen from the major bulk of commercial and consumer bank loans going only to these 2 industries. SGD is strong because of USD is crap.
Home price to income ratio is the highest after Beijing and Shanghai, topping even Tokyo and Korea. (Courtesy of numbeo.com) Higher home prices is a tax too.
Singapore is an attractive place if the cost of living and strong SGD are taken into consideration. So for aspiring expats, make sure you cut a good deal.
Valuable additional input, rukidding.
Singapore is a unique place -- most Singaporeans live in high-rise apartments (with a home ownership rate of 87.2%) primarily because Singapore is 1/5th the size of Rhode Island with a land area of 255 square miles and a population of more than 5,000,000 - the third most densely populated country in the world. But it’s not all that crammed if you know the crowded places to avoid, and "if you just keep walking along with everyone else” it matters not that there are only 111 private cars per 1000 population.
As for living conditions, Singapore's rated one of the best with a high standard of living (as Simon Black points out): a per capita GDP of $57,238 (third highest in the world 2010 according to the IMF), a life expectancy rate of 81.4 at birth, a literacy rate of 95.5%, and a divorce rate of around 7%.
AND, annual inflation in Singapore is among the lowest in the world, not only according to Simon Black but to Contact Singapore.
As you say, "just make sure you cut a good deal."
http://www.contactsingapore.org.sg/exp_pro/live/quality_cost_of_living/
As usual when pigmen talk about taxes in US, it's always lies. The data as shown for tax rates in Singapore is higher than in US. The effective average tax rate in US of the 10-25% top income wage earners is only 9.3%.
http://taxfoundation.org/news/show/250.html
The people that get screwed are the lower and middle classes: they pay all the local and state taxes. Corporations in US pay virtually no taxes. They contribute maybe 7% of all Federal taxes collected.
As usual when pigmen talk about taxes in US, it's always lies...The people that get screwed are the lower and middle classes: they pay all the local and state taxes.-- linrom
Really! Funny that, when the bulk of them escape federal taxes.
According to the Associated Press on April 7, 2010, Yahoo!Finance, “nearly half of US households escape federal income taxes.” Here’s the story:
About 47 percent will pay no federal income taxes at all for 2009. Either their incomes were too low, or they qualified for enough credits, deductions and exemptions to eliminate their liability. That's according to projections by the Tax Policy Center, a Washington research organization…
In recent years, credits for low- and middle-income families have grown so much that a family of four making as much as $50,000 will owe no federal income tax for 2009, as long as there are two children younger than 17, according to a separate analysis by the consulting firm Deloitte Tax…
It is a system in which the top 10 percent of earners -- households making an average of $366,400 in 2006 -- paid about 73 percent of the income taxes collected by the federal government.
The bottom 40 percent, on average, make a profit from the federal income tax, meaning they get more money in tax credits than they would otherwise owe in taxes. For those people, the government sends them a payment…
In 2007, about 38 percent of households paid no federal income tax, a figure that jumped to 49 percent in 2008, according to estimates by the Tax Policy Center…
Last year, Obama signed the economic recovery law that expanded some tax credits and created others. Most targeted low- and middle-income families.
Obama's Making Work Pay credit provides as much as $800 to couples and $400 to individuals. The expanded child tax credit provides $1,000 for each child under 17. The Earned Income Tax Credit provides up to $5,657 to low-income families with at least three children.
There are also tax credits for college expenses, buying a new home and upgrading an existing home with energy-efficient doors, windows, furnaces and other appliances. Many of the credits are refundable, meaning if the credits exceed the amount of income taxes owed, the taxpayer gets a payment from the government for the difference.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Nearly-half-of-US-households-apf-110556732...
That just tells you how expensive it is to live in The US. Inflation, bitchez! Wanted to do that.
If you need tax deductions for people making $50,000 (according to the article) so that they can pay their debts... something is wrong. And we all know that the poverty level issued by The Government is bullshit.
+1, the "poor" pay NO "income taxes".
Instead of sending my check to the IRS, I might as well cut out the middle man and cart the money over to my neighbor with the 7 children.... LOL
LAFFER CURVE...... look it up!
A gallon of milk has gone up 25% in the past six months; $2.00 to $2.50
I live in a valley that has 8 dairy's within 10 miles of two plants and all the grocery stores in town.
A pound of good bacon has gone from $3.99 to $7.99.
Cabbage and potatoes are still pretty cheap, but, it's cabbage and potatoes.
This video explains food inflation pretty well:
http://www.video.me/ViewVideo.aspx?vid=409832
Enjoy
Another bullshit article comparing apples and oranges.
Comparing population sizes, infrastructure costs, total land area, etc... is the way to go when making these kinds of arguments. Does Singapore have to pay for Superfund cleanup sites? Monitor several thousand kilometers of border? Manage millions of square kilometers of public and private lands? Maintain hundreds of thousands of kilometers of road, rail, and sea lanes? Monitor thousands of aircraft over hundreds of thousands of cubic kilometers of airspace? Educate millions of school children? The list goes on and on and on...
Does Singapore have to do all that? Or, are they one city of 4,000,000 people covering a few hundred square kilometers? Thought so.
So, when comparing one city's tax rate to that of an entire nation is sheer stupidity and intellectual dishonesty. Just another bullshit article.
The richest woman in the USA once said : I never pay taxes. In fact when a stud wants to f**k me, he pays for the meal. And I'm over sixty!...
That's how far money's odor reaches out. Can't be truer than that about what makes the world go round. As someone once said :
'f**k me' is more powerful today as an expression of existential bliss that 'God bless'.
Singapore is a great place, been there several times, and I agree that it can be a great place to do business. The government does seem to have a good, long-term, outlook for the betterment of the country and its people. One essentail thing missing for the article, that I belieive is important to mention, is the mandate that all Singaporeans are required to save a meanful percentage of their personal earnings in a government managed savings account; I believe it is upwards of 20% but I'm not sure now. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, the funds seem to be well managed and it is for such things as education and retirement and the people can "borrow" from their savings to help purchase property.
The Singapore government is very autocratic and can't really be called a democracy, since it is a single party system. It takes a very dim view of those, particularly corporate entities, who attempt to skip on their tax contributions.