I had the great fortune to make a friend in Hong Kong last April from a random meeting while waiting for a table at a restaurant. Subsequently we visited one evening over a couple bottles of wine and a duck. We began to write each other. This is from his recent letter. The lesson to America couldn’t be more clear:
“Hong Kong is a small place. What has made Hong Kong a city actually serving the world as a genuinely global financial center are: the common law system in the city, English proficiency, a free vote, a free way of life, convertibility of the currency, simple and low tax regime – there is no value added tax (VAT) for exchange of goods, and personal income tax stands at only 12%. 99% of the population are formerly refugees escaping from Chinese Communism in the mainland.”
~
Maul cows