Saturday, September 29, 2007

Neato Political Risk Chart

I've always likened taxes to the level of abuse a husband may dish out to his wife. For if you want your wife to stick with you, you would shower her with gifts, adoration, praise and take her out for nights on the town of dancing, dining, flowers and muchas schmoochas. If you want her to leave, ignore her, treat her poorly and cheat on her.

With business, capital, investment and labor it is the same way.

If you want to attract these things to your country and keep them, then you should treat them nice. Treating them nice meaning you keep taxes low, you make regulation non-existent or unburdensome and have a good and fair legal system. And while I primarily focused on taxes, there are other things you have to focus on just as you would your wife.

The Eurasia Group has this "Honey Do" list that companies must follow if they wish to emulate the likes of Ireland, Bermuda, Jersey Island and the whole host of other countries that beat out the economic growth rates of the US. The higher the score, the more points you score with business and capital markets, and thus the happier economic marital bliss you have;

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This chart focuses rather heavily on stability, though - so any country which hasn't made changes, for good or for bad, is favoured in it over countries that have less short-term predictability, even if that unpredictability has been for the good. (The map version of it doesn't even make distinctions between first-world nations.)

Captain Capitalism said...

Adiiran,

There's a map? where? That too would also make a neato chart.