Is there anything we can learn from other countries?

I could write a book about this:

Russia - a country which is actually committed to true conservatism.... true conservatism necessarily MUST involve the suppression of liberalism.... if place any value above morality and capitalism (such as "freedom", "free speech" or democracy) you are something less than a conservative. 99% of American republicans would go ape shit if I started talking about how free speech must be abolished, with the only permissible speech being pro-capitalist speech consistent with traditional morality.... because 99% of American republicans deep down value "freedom" over capitalism and the most timeless moral truths of the human race. To me, that means that when push comes to shove, American republicans are willing to budge on defending capitalism, and they are certainly willing to budge on moral issues, all in their devotion and worship of their idol "freedom".

Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin is ACTUALLY fighting back against leftists.... passing laws against homosexual propaganda, suppressing the liberal media, and ACTUALLY running a fiscally conservative government. Look at Russia's balance sheet - and this, after years of low oil prices combined with economic sanctions... and a 13% flat tax rate

You can't achieve fiscal conservatism if you allow dissent... any society which allows people the "freedom of speech" to promote leftist ideologies and fiscally unsound policies is a society whose fiscal condition, in the long run, is hopelessly doomed.

Kazakhstan - again, for cracking down on the liberal media.... I don't even know if they HAVE a liberal media in Kazakhstan. TV stations in Kazakhstan were not allowed to report on the Zhanaozen labor strike, and then of course the government came in and broke it up with military force. Subsequently, they passed a law making it a felony to advocate for the formation of new labor unions, while existing labor unions are met with severe crackdowns.

People laugh about Kazakhstan because of the movie Borat, but this is an extremely rural country in a very remote corner of the world, which only emerged from communism a few decades ago.... and there is a Ritz Carleton and Bentley dealerships in Almaty, and the Kazakhstan stock exchange has been one of the top 3 or 5 performing stock markets globally over the past 12 or so months. Their commitment to capitalism and economic growth puts western democracies to shame.

Also, like Russia, they have a proven commitment to fiscal conservatism, when faced with falling oil prices, President Nazarbayev simply gave a speech warning the people that hard times were coming so everyone must tighten their belts, so to speak. Basically, the message is "now is not the time to be taking on more government debt, now is the time to be cutting spending so we can get through the downturn in a solid fiscal position". Doesn't that make sense? Compare their approach with the way most western democracies respond to even the HINT of an economic downturn - basically "we must SPEND our way out of this!!!". At this point, Keynesian economics has basically been accepted as RELIGION by most western democracies - and therefore debt to GDP levels correspond to this.

Along with their commitment to fiscal conservatism, they also have a 10% flat personal income tax rate, and only 5% tax on dividend income.

Also, you get the sense that Kazakhstan is more of a "pro-establishment" type of society.... for example, golf is the fastest growing sport in Kazakhstan, after being aggressively promoted by President Nazarbayev. Usually, golf and liberalism are culturally incompatible. So it would seem that while they are clearly aggressively modernizing their society, they are doing so without all the "progressive" culture you see in the west. They embrace capitalism, without really embracing democracy or progressive culture generally speaking.

Hong Kong under CY Leung's Administration - throughout the Occupy Central protests, he refused to bend even once inch to the pro-democracy protestors' demands... even going so far as to state in a widely cited interview that he cannot accept full democracy in Hong Kong because that would not be in the best interests of the business community as it would give the masses an unfair advantage by allowing them to leverage their voting rights against business interests. In a press conference setting with multiple media outlets, including the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, and South China Morning Post, he staunchly defended his position that democracy is an existential threat to capitalism, and therefore he would not allow democracy as all it would do is hurt the business sector in Hong Kong. As reported by South China Morning Post (link below):

Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying told media that if the government met pro-democracy protesters’ demands it would result in the city’s poorer people dominating elections.

In an interview with foreign media, carried in the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times and the International New York Times, the embattled chief executive reiterated his position that free elections were impossible.

Leung said that if candidates were nominated by the public then the largest sector of society would likely dominate the electoral process.

“If it’s entirely a numbers game and numeric representation, then obviously you’d be talking to the half of the people in Hong Kong who earn less than US$1,800 a month [HK$13,964.2],” Leung said in comments published by the WSJ, the FT and the INYT.

His quotes also echo that of Wang Zhenmin, a well-connected scholar and regular adviser to Beijing.

Wang said recently that greater democratic freedom in the semi-autonomous city must be balanced against the city’s powerful business elite who would have to share their “slice of the pie” with voters.

“The business community is in reality a very small group of elites in Hong Kong who control the destiny of the economy in Hong Kong. If we ignore their interests, Hong Kong capitalism will stop [working],” he said in August.

Isle of Man - although this is an extremely pro-business and low tax country, they are unfortunately a democracy (actually, the longest continually democracy on earth), so that means they are something less than a truly conservative nation. However, there is much to be learned from their aggressively pro-business nation and approach to taxation. **While in most western democracies, including the United States, half of the media is hysterically obsessed with "wealth inequality" and "income inequality", advocating for progressive tax rates, the Isle of Man actually has a somewhat REGRESSIVE tax regime, in that the maximum tax bill a person can pay is £125,000 (£250,000 per couple). In other words, for high earners, at some point once you earn enough money, you are paying a progressively lower tax rate than average earners. Now, for most western democracies, this would be viewed as unfair to the middle class, with the theory being that somehow the middle class is worse off because the rich are getting a tax break. However, the Isle of Man has one of the healthiest economies in the world - their unemployment rate as of this September was 0.40%.

Guernsey - another "Channel Island" tax haven with essentially the exact same regressive tax rates as the Isle of Man, with a very solid economy to show for it. They understand money goes where it is treated best, and that the key to promoting economic growth is to ACTUALLY PROMOTE it, rather than penalize it.

In both nations the idea of a capital gains tax is considered abhorrent by the wide majority of the population.... in the Isle of Man, the public backlashes to even the MENTION of a capital gains tax would probably be comparable to the backlash you'd expect in the United States if they took away social security..... a political non-starter for the vast majority of society.

And despite what the liberals tell us about how the best way to help the middle class is to tax the rich, these two tiny tax haven islands with no real economic resources besides sheep and goats... have seen their economic growth outpace the vast majority of the world on a percentage basis over the last several decades, and the people there enjoy a standard of living they could never have dreamed of if they were just a tiny island country full of pastures and sheep and goats. Lacking any inherent ingredients for economic dynamicism, they made up for this by ACTUALLY USING THEIR BRAINS and proving to the rest of the world that they way to promote economic growth is not to PENALIZE it, but to EMBRACE IT through business friendly and investors friendly government policies, reducing regulation to the absolute minimum, and slashing taxes.

/r/askaconservative Thread