No Representation without taxes: Oil producing States
Posted by: adonis49 on: January 4, 2011
Oil producing States generate more income than the State budget can spend; thus, the tendency of these governments are not to taxing citizens or in many instances subsidizing many daily food ingredients and gas for cars. For example, in the State of Alaska every individual, adult or child, receives an annual check of $1,305.
In Turkmenistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Venezuela, and other big oil-producing countries subsidize gas for cars and other food staples such as wheat, rice, sugar,… The State of Louisiana, and the States of Alberta, Terre-Neuve, and Labrador in Canada experienced one-party hegemony for many decades because their citizens were freed from paying taxes,or the taxes were minimal.
The damnation for relying solely on natural resources and generating surpluses in State budgets is that democratic processes are practically abolished in return for no taxation.
The embargo on Iran pressured the government to cancelling subsidies and gas; thus, the citizens in Iran will have to be taxed higher and consequently, more equitable representation will have to be restored: “No taxation without representation”. The theocratic leadership or “willayat fakih” will be content to becoming figure-head as Queen Elizabeth of England.
Norway has this foresight of preserving its oil revenues from political discourse or being used in political campaigns. The citizens of Norway are being still taxed but the tax rate is not increasing as in other developed nations; thus, politics is shifting to the right-wing parties because of abundance in oil surpluses.
In big oil-producing States, women are the first to pay the heavy price in the abridgment of their right to work and constituting a larger part in the productive structure. For example, in States poor in oil resources such as Tunisia, Morocco, and Lebanon women had to participate in the work force for running the small and medium industrial and service enterprises: In this case, women have more liberty and the potentials to demanding equal rights and responsibilities. The Saudi women are revolting because they are forbidden to drive and to travel inside their borders without being accompanied by a male member of the family.
States rich in natural resources with the exclusion of oil are not witnessing the same consequences for several reasons: First, extraction of the raw materials is expensive and require constant investment in transport, machinery, and maintenance; it not like you build a pipeline and watch the oil flow in terminals. Second, the regimes are maintained in power by the multinationals backed by their government and thus, citizens are getting poorer because of fictitious lousy extraction contracts.
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