Resolution

So I promised myself that I would write a little bit every day on this blog. Today I have all sorts of things coursing through my mind: a conference abstract that I need to write, a research project I need to finish, but I keep getting distracted. While I keep telling myself that I'm not as in love with my cellphone as the gum-chewing 7th graders whose essays I've been reading looking for features of African American English, I keep finding myself drawn back to it and the feed it gives from the hive. For example, I've just spent five minutes reading (and chiming in from the peanut gallery) on a conversation on Facebook between two friends with diametrically opposed opinions that don't seem open to any compromise position. One participant presents an argument, "American tax rates are too low to be sustainable in a country where infrastructure and education are necessary for prosperity," while the other presents the counter-argument, "Taxes are theft."

So that got me thinking: what countries have no income taxation? Well, Brunei has no taxes. Alas, few of us want to live in Borneo. Andorra has no income taxes, but even I don't like sheep that much. Their major sources of revenue seem to be tourism and some exports. They have no military-industrial complex, are geographically small, and seem to be based largely around catering to people who want to hide their money from the places in which they make it.

When "objectivists" and "libertarians" talk about low-taxation countries and systems, do they even have a model that they're looking toward? I can think of some, but none of them are good. Feudal Europe had few personal income taxes, but no industrial base. Oh, and yeah, the overlords weren't that great either.