Iran doesn't have legal control over the entire strait; approx half of the strait is Iranian territorial waters and the other half is Omani territorial waters.
For Iran's toll system to work, they would need to strike at ships sailing in Omani territorial waters, which is an act of war.
but iran has physical control. lets call it a buffer zone for toll collection. And funny that you mention act of war like it was(would be) caused by iran.
international law doesnt actually exist. the strait is close enough to irans borders such that they can enforce police activity, so its theirs.
the alternative is that oman and many others can also do the same thing, and the lot of states interested in trade in the area need to get together an negotiate a setup that everyone can agree to
When Lithuania was fighting for independence from USSR civilians gathered around key government buildings to protect them. in a sense they were human shields as none of them were armed. but they did it voluntarily. this happens when you threaten total annihilation of your homeland.
how do you know that iranians are forced to do this now by their government and not doing this in support of their country? do you think there are gunmen taking them to the bridges?
It was a government call. I grew up in USSR and know very well how those government "calls to volunteer" work in totalitarian regimes. Especially in a wartime country where even in peacetime they would kill people even just for being incorrectly dressed.
Anyway, as i said in the other comment, it is actually not that important how all those people got there. The key thing here is that it was a deliberate government act of human shield creation.
what a coincidence i too grew up in USSR and my parents and friends were part of above mentioned human shield. And i can tell first hand that there was no coercion. just call to action.
Threatening total annihilation was possibly the dumbest move Trump could have made.
“ Soldiers when in desperate straits lose the sense of fear. If there is no place of refuge, they will stand firm. If they are in the heart of a hostile country, they will show a stubborn front. If there is no help for it, they will fight hard."
this somehow excludes such human concept as sense of belonging. might be in usa it has atrophied already but sense of home is really important in some places. place where you spend most of your life, where you have you real social network, neighbors and childhood friends. sometimes its lower tax is not worth loosing it all. its not everything about money (for some)
ps im talking about real persons here, not corporations
You're talking about people who aren't ultra wealthy there. Once the tax bill gets high enough relative to elsewhere it doesn't make sense not to jump through the hoops to change your place of residence.
Once you are ultra-wealthy you don't need to worry about taxes unless you are so greedy as to make earning infinite money your only goal in life even if it hurts you in every other way. And it is silly to set general policy based around how irrational and neurotic individuals will act.
I'm uncertain if I should have included "ultra" there. Point is that the father up the tax bracket you are in this scenario the more of the bill you foot and the larger your monetary incentive to relocate.
But at the same time the more money you make the less paying a bit extra to live where your friends and family are is really that big of a concern. Otherwise why are wealthy people living in and around big expensive cities when they can move to any number of other states and pay a fraction of the cost for housing and services. Many people are sitting on a decades worth of pay or more because they don't want to sell their property and move somewhere cheaper.
I expect that cost of living as a percentage of income goes down even as absolute prices go up in most cases. Whereas the taxes we're talking about here go up.
Your logic amounts to assuming you can significantly raise the price relative to other states on the basis that they already pay a bit more which I don't think follows. The degree is off but also the relative difference isn't there. Living in an expensive house in a big city is going to cost extra no matter where you do it but the taxes we're taking about will only exist in some of those cities.
Meanwhile the higher up the income ladder you go typically the fewer constraints there are tying you to a particular physical location. On the extreme end, if you make it high enough it can get to the point where you can literally relocate to a different country without much issue and it may be worthwhile for you to do so.
I don't buy it, we don't really see it on a smaller scale now despite the same incentives being in place on a smaller scale, in fact it is rare enough to warrant fearmongering news stories when it does happen and PR statements. Nobodies moving out of high tax countries to go live in Somalia without taxes. And if they do leave, then who is to say they can even maintain the same business relationship to the US? They either pay the taxes because the US taxes citizens even outside the US, or if they abandon their citizenship to avoid it then they become subject to the same costs and fines and restrictions as any other foreign persons and businesses.
I really don't really see much of any chance for downsides to 99.9% of the population, but plenty of upsides. If the only thing maintaining the US economy is a a small percentage of rich people sitting on stacks of capital, the US economy is already doomed and the people on top are just trying to be the last ones down into the water.
We do see it though. But usually they hide the income overseas because that's more straightforward or cheaper or whatever. However there are several small island countries that are known for hosting ultra wealthy expats on very favorable terms. This isn't some hypothetical.
In the business world how many companies are just coincidentally booking all their revenue in Ireland?
I'm really not clear what point you're trying to argue here. Someone upthread suggested that a sense of community would prevent the disproportionately wealthy from relocating to nearby states to avoid higher taxes. I call bullshit, dependent on the size of the relative tax gap. They don't even have to sell their house, just purchase a second one and reside there more of the year.
Wealthy people move between countries and change citizenship to avoid overtaxation. Moving between states isn't as big a move.
Countries fight back with exit-taxes, controlling asset movement, and taxing (now) foreign owned assets. The US in particular makes it very difficult to take your theoretical winnings from the table.
Dreaming of the day where the average non-American doesn't know who the US attorney general is, the name of their secretary of war, and the details of every internal political machination.
I don't mind the name change because it more correctly signals what the position has always been -- a secretary of war with a "secretary of defense" mask on.
You say that, but the world has been a relatively peaceful place since the US became the world's only superpower. The "multi-polar" world the Europeans are always dreaming about could very well be one in which much of Europe looks like Ukraine today.
basically make decisions that make no sense but benefit you financially. Sample. you run a printing business. you dont own it just run it. you sell your main printer and assign a performance bonus to your self. next month your business is closed because you dont have equipment to print, but you also have your bonus in pocket.
what do you mean by single country? All the cultures in these countries can not disappear in 10, hell even 100 years. And i would prefer that they would not.
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