Loading...
  OR  Zero-K Name:    Password:   

Forum index  > Off topic   > Asylum   >

"taxes and other revenues" in the CIA factbook

15 posts, 369 views
Post comment
Filter:    Player:  
sort
While researching uzbekistan, I have stumbled on an interesting statistic:
https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/taxes-and-other-revenues

The "taxes and revenues by GDP" (i dub thee "TER") is a percentage determined by adding taxes, kind-of taxes (i.e. hospital insurance), grants (presumably by international funds) and net revenues from state-owned companies; and dividing this number by GDP. This number basically shows how much of the money made by the economy goes to the government. To my understanding, this does not include printing money, which all countries with a national currency do to a certain degree.

Now, why did the CIA find TER important (or interesting) enough to include it in their factbook?

Here are some interesting numbers:
The World average is 15%.
The communist Cuba has 58% TER. Only 2 nations have a higher TER than cuba: The tiny island nation Tuvalu (107% TER! How is that possible?) and the small city state Andorra (60% TER).
The United States has 12% TER.
However, Germany only has 11% TER. You would think this number would be higher in a country famous for its social welfare. Could this be because the US spends its money very inefficently, i.e. the inefficent healthcare system, the suburban sprawl, high rents for student debt/mortgages which go to rich people, the bloated military?

Logically, a higher TER would indicate that the state plays a larger role in the economy and the welfare of its citizens, whilst a lower TER implies that private persons (rich people and corporations) play a larger role for the economy and social welfare, right? But what if the state is run by oligarchs? Wouldn't a part of this money would get funneled corruptly into their own pockets? What if a country is a small developing nation dependant on international grants? What if a nation has so powerful corporations, they only need a small cut to finance their welfare spending? What if a nation prints 12 trillion moneys? There are a ton of variables which could skew TER's meaning.

In the case of measuring citizen's welfare, one could do this directly. In the case of how much powerful private interests are, one could use the gini coefficent to check how unequally money is distributed.

So, what does TER really mean? Does it mean nothing at all? What is its purpose?
+1 / -0
I have edited the post a bit, I didnt check it thoroughly before posting
+0 / -0
CIA factbook has some quality issues with their statistics, in that they sometimes compare apples with oranges.

If you look at the stat for Germany it says 'note: central government tax revenue as a % of GDP'.

In Germany taxes go to the federation (central government), the states and the municipalities. So the number is not the total amount of taxation, but a part of it.

Tuvalu is heavily impacted by climate change and is receiving a lot of foreign aid.
+1 / -0
3 months ago
You seem to know a lot on this. Are there any sites/sources you recommend or don't recommend? Is oec.world reliable?
+0 / -0
3 months ago
Tuvalu gets quite a bit of revenue from renting .tv internet domains to video platforms, and that might be counted in TER but not GDP.
+0 / -0

3 months ago
moved to offtopic...
+0 / -0

3 months ago
moved to asylum
+1 / -0
What's asylum? Am I CRAZY!?
+0 / -0

3 months ago
asylum is the offtopic of offtopic.
+0 / -0

3 months ago
Aquanim decided to hide your post from the forum main page, because he didn't like it / it confused him.
+1 / -0
We can only speculate.

Speculating:

Aquanim holds the idea that he is protecting the community from weird spam (see Cliver5 posts).
Aquanim glanced over your post and felt it made little sense.
Aquanim scanned the posters and didn't see people he particularly liked.
Aquanim resolved the overal cognitive dissonance of not instantly understanding the contents by demoting this post to 'the asylum'.

A possibility is that he enjoyed doing this without any further explanation; as a sign of personal dissaproval and simply because he can.

We can only speculate.
+0 / -1

3 months ago
Read rule 7 of the Code of Conduct.
+1 / -0
Admittedly, that was also a good reason. One that crossed my mind but deliberately did not mention because I wanted to moan.
+0 / -0

3 months ago
NLrankMSPR
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_attribution_error
+0 / -1

3 months ago
You have identified the joke
+0 / -0