[Zenbun]

That's not so remote (nor impoverished to not have people who can spend on audio), there are more people there who are into audio than you think. And there's probably a quiet enough cafe somewhere if you're in Tel Aviv or in an area like that, more so when the Iron Dome keeps the kabooms far up in the sky than on the street. Checkpoints also got more effective that people going kaboom on the street changed tactics to knife attacks, possibly because one can reason that they're butchers a lot more easily than claim they're miners or construction workers who somehow have strap-on C4 instead of a crate of dynamite.

I live in Tel Aviv area.
We don't have booms or political stabbing every day you know, Iron dome was active only in the last operation (which was three years ago), there wasn't a political stabbing for many months now.

"nor impoverished"
Oh it is, the cost of living here and taxs are super high, much higher than Europe, on par with New York and SF, only you don't get much back because all the budget goes to defense and the orthodox.
It's a third world country.

 

[ProtegeManiac]

I live in Tel Aviv area.
We don't have booms or political stabbing every day you know, Iron dome was active only in the last operation (which was three years ago), there wasn't a political stabbing for many months now.

Just clearing up in case what you might think of as lacking anywhere quiet has anything to do with the political situation in the area rather than just getting around the city and looking for a coffee shop in an area with lower foot traffic.

I live in Tel Aviv area.
"nor impoverished"
Oh it is, the cost of living here and taxs are super high, much higher than Europe, on par with New York and SF, only you don't get much back because all the budget goes to defense and the orthodox.
It's a third world country.

The thing is though there are countries that have lower taxes, but you can't get quality services from the government anyway. Look at the Philippines. Taxes might be low compared to Europe, but streets suck (you have to wonder where the rich people drive their low slung Italian cars), people who earn what would look like a lot of money blow it on private schools for their children because public schools suck (my Dad was a junior government official and my mother was a bank manager, and Americans think we're rich or my dad's corrupt because we went to private school, and I have to explain how much the public schools suck and how I had to attend a...errr, can't discuss here...particular kind of non-state operated school since none of the expensive tuition ends up as profit margin), and if we're going to compare the two countries, when schiit goes down, your main protocol is to round up everybody and jump into Merkavas. Our main protocol is...er, we don't have an official one. Unofficially it's "everybody open up your own damn gun lockers and shoot anybody that gets into the cities." Which is practically everybody in an invading force (ie, the entire PLA), since we have nothing in the way of sinking or shooting down transports before they even get here.

And yet, we have a ton of audio stores in Metro Manila, and can organize meets. If anything this can't just be down to population density, which is why I'm saying try to start a thread and see how many people are near you.

 

[Zenbun]

Philipines have enemies? Why would the Chinese go all the way there? The Americans will probably won't let it slide anyway.

And it's a little different, you're closer to China, and taxes are low as you said, so the market is stimulated to buy for cheap from close by (China) and sell. You're also in a semi-English speaking country, so people have access to more information on the web.

 

[ProtegeManiac]

Philipines have enemies? Why would the Chinese go all the way there? The Americans will probably won't let it slide anyway.

And it's a little different, you're closer to China, and taxes are low as you said, so the market is stimulated to buy for cheap from close by (China) and sell. You're also in a semi-English speaking country, so people have access to more information on the web.

Well Japan was here from 1941 to 1945 and they're even farther out (well, technically, Japanese have always been here, just not their military and government). Until we have Gundams that can be dropped from space and fighting in space to take out some giant death ray, the Philippine islands will continue to be a strategic location due to operating limitations on current military equipment. Also, before I go too far off topic, just Google "West Philippine Sea" and "South China Sea territorial disputes." It got bad enough that even the Hague got involved and Britain and France, not wanting the Liberal global order to lose legitimacy, started hinting at China that they should follow the ruling (except it wasn't followed by "or else...," because that is even more destabilizing).

As for taxes, I'm only talking about income taxes. Import taxes can be as high as 100%, and individual imports are at the mercy of corrupt Customs agents. The old law was recently updated to not cover anything worth 10,000PhP and below (that's around $200), but they didn't remove the clause that basically comes down to "Customs agent has the right to call BS on what your receipt says and can look up the price himself online," so buying it cheap or on Massdrop (which knocks off the price on the page once the drop is over) is useless.

At the same time, income tax rate might be relatively low, but the income itself is relatively low. I'll use my family again as an example. My parents used to earn the equivalent of $2,500/mo in 1998. That's low even for a US family in 1998, but considered high here...until you consider that my brother and I had to attend private school that cots $1500/year. Each. Not counting textbooks, how far it is from our house that results in high fuel/transportation costs and food expenditure because we have to eat out before slogging through traffic as opposed to everybody getting home at 9pm and then trying to cook dinner, fuel costs are high, electricity costs are also sky high and yet you have to choose between a concrete house that will survive storms but will require A/C or one made of straw that will be cool in the dry season but you get roaches laying eggs in the straw, etc.

In short, you're only looking at low income tax and not taking into account how everything else sucks, something I've been pointing out. If we lived in Finland, sure, we'd be paying a huge income tax, but we won't be worried about having to spend that much of the income on a private school, only for other people in better countries to think we're one of two things: stupid (because in some countries, private school means "can't cut it to get it free from the government," like in Japan) or corrupt ("how can a midlevel bureaucrat send kids to private school?" duh, it's a non-profit kind of private school). And if we actually were corrupt enough to roll in a nice car in the US, they'd think "private school" means something like "Manhattan Prep school" rather than what it really is, which is more like "private school in Boston or Brooklyn where the administrators problematize our junk too much, because What Would..." (ah crap I can't discuss that on this forum, but it has something to do with something that happened over there around 2,000 years ago).