On Thu, May 12, 2016 at 11:54:41AM +1000 Russell Coker via luv-main said:
On Thu, 12 May 2016 09:12:22 AM David Zuccaro via luv-main wrote:
a sense "own" it. As an aside the whole concept of "ownership" in my view is being eroded by the high tax regime here, speaking as a libertarian. By that the I mean to ask do you really "own" a house if you need to continually pay land rates, water rates, and council rates or if you house if subject to arbitrary entry by government agents as is the case currently in Australia?
Do you own a house if banks can destroy your neighborhood by robo-signing forclosure documents that the residents can't afford to legally oppose?
Do you own a house if corporations own the roads, water, and electricity supplies and can cut off your entire neighborhood if it's not profitable or if there are mostly non-white people living there (IE Flint)?
Do you own a house if a corporation can pollute the air and give you a high probability of cancer if you choose to keep living there?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_rates
If you look at the comparison of countries by tax rates Australia doesn't seem that high. With a couple of exceptions it seems that the countries with higher tax rates than Australia are places you probably wouldn't mind living (Belgium, Finland, Sweden are all good places to live). The countries with the lowest tax rates include Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, and UAE - places where I don't even want to change flights. The middle-eastern countries with low tax are also fairly positive towards slavery, no-one who likes liberty wants anything to do with that.
In the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait you do not pay income tax. In February, under pressure from the IMF, the UAE said it would introduce a 5% VAT in 2018 [1]. Sam -------------- (Sam Varghese) [1] http://bit.ly/27fEDxj