The simple difference between Nigeria and America is this: in America, wealthy people pay big taxes; in Nigeria, most “wealthy” people are bailed out by AMCON, a crazy financial vehicle which weaponizes stupidity, and ironically is funded by the poor citizens.
You take a loan of $100 with Company A, you move the money to Company B. Then, you default on the loan (i.e. refuse to pay back) for Company A. Then magically, a government institution comes to bailout Company A even when Company B is doing just fine. Check the records, the person owns and controls both Company A and Company B.
Why do these things happen?
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Electric-car maker Tesla Inc’s Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk said on Sunday on Twitter that he will pay more than $11 billion in taxes this year.
Earlier this week, Democratic U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren took to Twitter to say that Musk should pay taxes and stop “freeloading off everyone else” after Time magazine named him its “person of the year”.
Musk responded by saying that he “will pay more taxes than any American in history this year”.
Musk is the world’s richest person and his company Tesla is worth about $1 trillion. Over the last few weeks, Musk has sold nearly $14 billion worth of Tesla shares.
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Comment 1: We are still too engrossed in achieving personal successes, to point that we have near zero institutional capabilities, so when people tout how great Nigerians are, ask them in what sense exactly? Doing relatively well as an individual does not mean you can build and run a working system, the sets of capabilities required are worlds apart.
Whenever we set out to solve problems here, we end up inflicting pains and creating bigger problems, at the end, it’s all round disaster. This is a product of flawed thinking, the depth is lacking, the robustness and nuances that help unpack things to critically examine finer details are lacking; add that to morally compromised and ethically challenged mentalities of those spearheading these policy ideas. It takes more than coincidence to be subpar so often.
As always, everything is rigged against the small guys, so the people who mismanage institutions and run companies into the ground are never held accountable, instead we create avenues for them to brag about how they ‘gamed’ the system, and we consciously or unconsciously hail them as smart guys. We have too many deficiencies that impair sound judgment, that is why it’s difficult for best of us to lead, because we despise excellence.
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