{"id":6948,"date":"2015-07-10T16:37:14","date_gmt":"2015-07-10T22:37:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/?p=6948"},"modified":"2015-07-10T23:01:39","modified_gmt":"2015-07-11T05:01:39","slug":"6948","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/2015\/07\/6948\/","title":{"rendered":"America, listen up"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>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&#8217;t be more clear:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;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 &#8211; 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.&#8221;<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">~<\/h2>\n<div id=\"attachment_6949\" style=\"width: 618px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/MG_4168-copy.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6949\" class=\" wp-image-6949\" src=\"http:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/MG_4168-copy-1024x473.jpg\" alt=\"Maul cows\" width=\"608\" height=\"281\" srcset=\"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/MG_4168-copy-1024x473.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/MG_4168-copy-300x138.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 608px) 100vw, 608px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-6949\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Maul cows<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[90,94,7,13,62,57,55,104],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-6948","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-america","7":"category-communism","8":"category-country-life","9":"category-economics","10":"category-freedom","11":"category-photography","12":"category-taxes","13":"category-voting","14":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6948"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6948\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6952,"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6948\/revisions\/6952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}