North Korea and Cuba: balanced budgets. Taxes? never heard of, they are communist countries, everything is shared by everybody, free schools, free hospitals, free funerals, free wives, free apartment...... China used to be the same: no taxes, free apartment, free hospital, free schools, free wives (usually arranged by the communist party)....... But China is modeling after the US now, sad. It seems the only countries you can move to are North Korea and Cuba. Those countries are also beginning to model after the US. North Korea has just self-destroyed its nuclear plant to please the Americans who have promised to give them some long grain rice (The Koreans like rice, not potato). If you move to North Korea, you'd better take some potato with you, because you will not find them in their local markets.
You have to be joking right? Maybe I'm just missing the sarcasm... Do you know about the quality of life in these countries? Why do you think so many Cuban's want to escape to the U.S.? They are extremely poor. People line up outside of a electronic store to watch television; most are too poor to afford one for their own home. And in terms of North Korea, people are completely brainwashed by their leader. They treat him like a savior... its similiar to the Soviet Union under Stalin. N. Korea also has internment camps where they make their citizens do hard labor if they disagree with the government and so forth.
Yeah man, Russia is really fucked up. Russia and some African country (don't remember) are actually the only countries in the world where life expectancy is currently decreasing. The reason in that African country is AIDS, the reason in Russia is drug-related and primarily suicide! Can you believe it? People kill themselves because live sucks so much there. I was born in Russia and everybody I who has left that country told me they would never ever move back, because it is so miserable living there.
in the mean time russians who went back and started new businesses made millions. as usual the herd is wrong. same for poland etc.
not really, those guys that are rich bought government owned business and property for peanuts from friends in the government.
AgeKay, it's obvious you've been a little too naive in your analysis of the Russian economy, particularly, small business. Corruption is wide spread and a few 'Russians' did manage to clean house in the 90's, but I know individuals who have moved to Moscow in the last ten years and gone on to become millionaries. Personally, I'd rather stay in the States than risk getting murdered in the Wild East. Though good sources tell me a top manager will get a 50% pay increase over New York...Oh, and the women.
By the way, does anyone have the deficit numbers corrected for inflation? It can make a huge difference. In 1981, U.S. reported a deficit of $7 billion. Correcting for inflation, they actually had a surplus.