Finance
The New UAE Corporate Tax
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is famous for, among other things, zero tax. That ended this year. The UAE now has a 9% tax rate for all but a very few exempted industries. The implementation of a corporate tax is not because the UAE needs the money to build new roads, hospitals, schools or public facilities. The UAE is home...
The Misguided Quest for “Fair Share”
“Grab your torch and pitch-fork” was the rallying cry of the left in the recent debate over stage three tax cuts. And so the mob was led to follow a trail of sprinkled money to the door of high income earners to rob them of tax relief. In the debate over Australia's tax system, the concept of "fair share" has...
Lawfare
“Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime” is the famous statement attributed to Lavrentiy Beria, Joseph Stalin’s secret police chief. This is an example of lawfare: the manipulation of legal processes, civil or criminal, to serve political, ideological, or personal interests rather than upholding justice. Lawfare involves the misuse of the law by various means including selective...
Good Reasons for Suspicion
Worldwide outrage engendered by the SWIFT Affair seems rather quaint today. Operating since 1973, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication is the messaging system that accounts for almost all international financial transactions. Evidence emerged in 2006 that the United States government had been covertly monitoring SWIFT transactions since the late 1990s and in collaboration with SWIFT since 2001. SWIFT’s...
China 2024 and Beyond: A Troubled Future
My recent discussions on Liberty Itch have painted a picture of China’s landscape as a prison-like surveillance-intensive system, and as a no-privacy technology-driven cashless society. In this article, I want to further explore the future of China as we look towards 2024 and beyond. I will examine the implications of China’s expanding surveillance state, the tightening grip of authoritarian...
(Don’t) Be Your Own Boss
By ‘closing the loopholes’, Labor ultimately seeks to undermine self-employment, casual employment and competition, Libertarians must take note. November 17 2023 The scene is the 2023 HR Nicholls Society conference in North Sydney; the speaker is Ken Phillips; the topic: Federal Labor’s ‘Closing the Loopholes’ bill. Phillips is unassuming, plainly dressed, but he means business. In a conference otherwise dominated by...
Go Where You Are Treated Best
‘Go where you are treated best’ is the tagline of entrepreneur, Andrew Henderson, founder of the business Nomad Capitalist. Andrew and his team help entrepreneurs, retirees and others move their lives out of countries like Australia to countries where they will be treated best. It is a business that has being growing exponentially in recent years. When I first heard...
Curse of The Planner
In her excellent book The Siberian Curse, British-American author Fiona Hill describes how the settlement of Siberia in the twentieth century and the mass movement of people and industry into this vast region by central planners lie at the root of many of Russia’s contemporary problems. Central planning – whether geo-political, social, urban or economic – has caused many a...
The Lure of Government Benevolence
Why is it that in many countries, including Australia, governments consistently spend more than they collect in taxes, thus increasing the national debt? Most governments understand that budgets should be balanced. They have seen what happens in countries that accumulate too much debt and cannot service it. And yet, the debt keeps growing. The explanation is rather uncomfortable for many of...
The ABS Just Found 188,000 Public Servants Hiding Behind The Lounge Cushions.
The Numbers Grow Ever More Staggering Every Year. Around early November of every year, the ABS publishes statistics on the number of public sector employees in Australia. The numbers grow ever more staggering every year. The ABS says there were 2,430,400 public sector employees in Australia as at 30 June 2023. That is across Commonwealth, State, Territory, and Local Government. By...
