Word: vat
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...produce more crude than it required, a happy circumstance that the government celebrated as a political victory. "Study Daqing!" chanted legions of Red Guards during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, when the country's best-known "model worker" was Wang Jinxi, who was said to have plunged into a vat of Daqing oil during a freezing winter and stirred it with his body so it would continue flowing. Oil and gas discoveries in the South China Sea and Bohai Gulf, where drilling began in 1979, made China seem all the more invulnerable to oil shocks, and the country remained...
Perhaps some would say that Dartboard’s despair is a little over-the-top, but she has heard the same cries from others. Cereal is the one beacon of hope lying between you and that pathetic food in the vat before you. It’s purpose? That you may have one moment of dietary joy to light up your ever-so-banal existence...
...Indeed, having to pay more taxes for less service is a common lament these days in Europe, where taxes and social charges have risen sharply over the past 30 years and are now among the highest in the world. Adding together corporate, personal, social security and value-added tax (VAT), the highest-taxing countries in the world are in Western Europe: France, Belgium, Austria, Italy and the four Scandinavian countries - Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway. (Germany and Britain are further down the list, but still ahead of the U.S., Japan, Canada, Mexico and Australia.) This week, a French antitax group...
...roughly on a par in Western Europe and the United States. Today, it's far higher in Europe, at about 40% of gross domestic product in the E.U. compared with about 29% in the U.S. Income taxes have jumped, but so too have taxes on social insurance contributions and vat on goods and services. "Everyone feels like they are paying too much tax - and they are," says Baudouin Velge, chief economist at the Federation of Belgian Enterprises. Reducing that burden wouldn't just help taxpayers; it could help the entire euro zone, which is suffering from a long-term decline...
...Unlike the U.S., Europe has a powerful, Continent-wide tax instrument at its disposal: vat. (Sales tax in the U.S. is administered by states, and thus can't be coordinated for economic effect.) Many economists argue that consumption taxes such as vat are inherently fairer than other types of taxation because you only pay the tax if you buy something. Some even argue that vat rates - which are now largely aligned in the E.U. - could be raised and lowered depending on how the economy is doing, just as the European Central Bank raises interest rates to prevent overheating, and lowers...