3 ms·

Corruption Gutted South Africa’s Tax Agency. Now the Nation Is Paying the Price. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/10/world/africa/south-africa-corruption-taxes.h

• duxup 8y ago
  Mass tax evasion didn't work out for Greece either (among other things).
• rectang 8y ago
  That raises an interesting question: Can unlimited political money post-Citizens-United buy not just tax cuts, but outright national fiscal suicide in the form of abandoning tax collection?
  • village-idiot 8y ago
    If you're asking whether or not political systems are capable of causing their own completely predictable demise in general: history says yes, emphatically. As far as purposefully starving your own government of all funds and then triggering a collapse of society, it sure seems like we're about to find out.
  • TimJRobinson 8y ago
    Many near future cyberpunk shows/novels feature a corporate congress that began after the government collapsed from debt overload and corporations decided to "help out" by taking over their role. Every year this seems to become more and more inevitable, it's just a natural progression of how things are going.
    • gdubs 8y ago
      “Robocop” and its Delta Corporation is one of the best 1980s satires of exactly this outcome.
  • pjc50 8y ago
    That seems to be the objective, yes - that's what people mean by "starve the beast", and all those people who object strongly to the existence or power of the Federal government.