In 1951, the government of Taiwan instituted measures to curb tax evasion that proved so effective that the total amount of tax collected in 1951 was almost three times the amount collected in 1950.

But before I explain how Taiwan did this, let’s talk a little about how tax evasion works.

One common method used to evade taxes is underreporting income, and then hiding the “extra” cash through money laundering or offshore accounts. But if the government knew about every transaction, it would know whether income was being reported accurately, and tax evasion would be much more difficult.

So, what if the government had consumers report their expenses? Suppose John buys a widget from Sam for $500. If Sam reports an income of $100 from the transaction (and hides the remaining $400) but John reports that the widget costed $500, the government knows that something’s wrong.

While this works in theory, there are two main problems:

1. Consumers don’t typically keep meticulous records of their spending.
2. The amount of paperwork required to evaluate every single transaction in the country would be overwhelming.

So, what if we tried a simplified approach? Suppose the government asked every consumer to furnish three random receipts per year. The taxation bureau will examine the furnished receipts and compare them to how the company reported those transactions. If the amount printed on just one receipt differs from the income the company reported from that transaction, the government will assume that the company underreported many more transactions… and stiff fines will follow.

“This is all very nice,” you might be thinking, “But what if companies deliberately print receipts incorrectly?”

Then, consumers have the right to demand a refund equal to the amount underreported.

“But what if companies simply don’t furnish receipts?”

Then, it becomes even more obvious that tax is being evaded. If an undercover agent buys something from a store and is not given a receipt, the company is fined.

“But what if consumers don’t keep their receipts?”

Ah, this is where it gets interesting.

In Taiwan, you’re given a special receipt every time you buy something.

Do you see the big number printed across the top? UF-32473705 is a unique number that identifies this transaction… and it’s also a lottery number.

Every other month, the government picks six random three-digit numbers. If any of the six match the last three digits of one of your receipts, you can turn in the receipt for a cash prize of NT$200 (US$7). Not extremely exciting… but I win the receipt lottery around three times per year. It’s just enough to convince me to keep saving my receipts in hopes that I just might win something small.

But there’s more.

Additionally, three random ten-digit numbers are chosen. If any of these numbers match one of your receipts, you can win NT$200,000 (US$6,700). I have friends who have won this prize more than once… but yours truly has terrible luck.

Finally, there’s also a NT$2,000,000 (US$67,000) prize and a NT$10,000,000 (US$300,000) prize. Last year, an “unclaimed $10 million prize” hit the news. They announced the place and date of the purchase… and everyone who shopped there that day tore through their pants pockets and sock drawers in search of that missing receipt.

Every time someone claims their prize, the government always checks whether that transaction was reported correctly. Businesses are now terrified of underreporting income because they don’t know which transaction will end up being audited.

It’s a brilliant system designed to put the burden of taxation on merchants. In theory, Taiwan can now cut personal income taxes because they receive hundreds of millions of dollars in added revenue from a system that only costs them tens of millions.

Although the government is still working on those tax cuts, I’m sure those who have won the $10 million prize are more than happy with this system.

China is the only BIOMETRIC Airport i visited

Unfortunately Indians don’t get all the goodies 😞😞😞

For some countries YOU SCAN YOUR FACE and it is matched with the passport biometrics and a green glow confirms it

For many nationals, that is it

They can walk out directly to the Biometric counter

For Indians, you need to go to Immigration and manually give your passport

They take your facial scan, fingerprints and link them to your passport number

You never have to take out your passport again for 3 years in these cities (18 cities at the moment )

When you reach the Hotel

Just scan your face and voila, all your details are automatically sent to the Cloud and a green light says you can directly proceed to give your booking details and get your key card

Your face scan doesn’t match?

The Hotel asks whether you are ok with fingerprints or manual?

If you say ok to fingerprints then they will take your fingerprints and that’s it

What if biometrics dont match?

This is a 1 in 7.67 Million event but every one visitor on 7.67 Million gets a blip with the facial scan and biometrics and gets a mismatch

Then it becomes dicey 😒😒😒

Immigration will detain you, give you a nice place to sit, water, snacks etc but you cannot leave

They will try again in 15 minutes

If that is also a mismatch, then they have to necessarily communicate with the Indian Consulate and someone from the consulate will come, vouch for you AND THEY WILL PUT YOU BACK ON A FLIGHT TO THE DESTINATION FROM WHERE YOU LANDED IN CHINA

You can’t enter China on that Passport anymore

One of our group had a mismatch and luckily second time the biometrics matched

Remember China has their own NIA And that’s just Immigration

I got a message that YOUR INFORMATION IS BEING SENT TO THE NIA..

I panicked for a few minutes because that Idiot Desi Facts of KB lies debunked kept talking of NIA and I thought “Is India that focused on KB???”😂😂😂😂

Then I found out it’s Chinas NIA – National Immigration Admin

You don’t need a wallet or smartphone inside the airport if you are a mainlander (18 Cities so far)

You can scan your face and make payments

Your scan links to Residence ID and Bank accounts and you click your bank account you want to debit and that’s it

Best are the AI Cameras

They match your facial scans to their database and can track 90% of your movements except for the Toilets and Night Hubs

We literally saw a case where an Australian kid couldn’t find his parents and the Authorities clicked a few buttons and found the parents and notified the guard there to come and bring them to their kid (We couldnt enter the office but it took exactly 3/4 minutes)

Kids < 14 may not give their Facial Scans unless Voluntary

Biometrics are Mandatory

If you refuse, you can leave China on the next flight

Only Diplomats are exempted

I didn’t need Biometrics this time

I entered China in 2023 , so my details would be available till 2026 , so I bypassed the collection. I gave my fingerprints and the system went Green and allowed me in without any issue

If you travel between China and a Western country, you’d be able to tell yourself.

The last country I lived outside of China was Panama. Which is heavily influenced by the US in the things they use daily, due to their past experience of sort of like a semi colony of the US. From my experience, apart from top quality American products, Chinese products are now top of the line in quality.

This is a Niu electric scooter.

People would just throw them around on the sidewalk and nobody would give it a second look in China, as it’s considered a poor man’s transport. But in Panama, it started off as a $4000 luxury item. And when I took mine to a Vespa dealership to adjust the breaks, before Niu had opened shop in Panama, the Vespa mechanics all got excited with my scooter and said that my lowly Chinese electric scooter used better parts than their base Italian Vespa. But a Vespa started off at $3000, while the Niu EV scooter was commonly sold at $600–700 in China then, and it could set an automatic cruise speed.

Typical Western brand hermets were sold above $100 in Panama. Maybe because cycling was more of a rich man’s hobby. Here’s my $10 brandless Chinese helmet that saved my life from a cycling accident that gave me multiple bone fractures on the body, but nothing on the head thanks to the helmet.

To celebrate 5 years of relationship between Panama and China, I came up with the idea of making a pin with a friend. We first wanted to make it in Panama, but when asking around the workshops they either thought it was too complicated, or that it would cost too much and take too long. So we contacted a random pin maker on Taobao in China (Chinese EBay/Amazon), ran it through a few iterations in a week, and made about 1000 of them to celebrate with friends and Chinese expats in Panama, and it only cost us like $1500 in total.

Below are a few failed attempts, the final product looked no different than one of those pins you could find at a tourist gift shop.

This is a Zeekr 001.

I test drove one and absolutely loved it. It just felt premium. Completely corrected my bias against EVs from the impression of shabby quality the Tesla X left me, when Tesla was considered a rich man’s show off in Panama. Albeit I heard that Made in China Tesla have better finish and panels aren’t mismatched.

By 2020, I’ve come to the conclusion that Chinese products are not just of the best deal, but best quality too, as long as you’re looking for generic products at reasonable price. Whenever I shop for something, I now check to see if it’s made in China. If positive, then I’d happily pay more for it for the sense of security. For example, despite all being Japanese brands, I’ve had made in Japan and made in Thailand cameras fail on me like 3 times in the rains of Panama. But I’ve never had Made in China camera bodies fail on me, even when I dropped the equipment in glaciar lake in Argentina. Albeit it’s not a direct comparison, maybe it also has to do with the high humidity and salinity in the air in Panama? But overall the impression of mine using them for 2 decades is still there, that made in China Japanese camera equipments are more reliable than those made elsewhere.

For very specific items, like a rench or a RRS tripod, American products are still better though, but you’d have to pay like 3 to 5 times as much for noticeable but not huge quality difference under the harshest conditions.

I have answered this question many times.

Car accidents were much more likely to kill you because you had no seat belts, no head rest, no sideview mirror, no airbag, the steering wheel was literally a spear. The death rate from car accidents was 6 times what it is now.

Racism was rampant.

Wife beating and wife rape were completely acceptable.

Drunk driving was acceptable. You weren’t responsible for killing someone when you were drunk.

Everybody smoked and the cigarette industry covered up the danger

You could dump your toxic waste anywhere you wanted.

No controls on industrial pollution

Clearcutting forests into deserts was perfectly okay

Asbestos was everywhere even though industry knew since the 1930s that it was deadly

Poll taxes and reading tests were used to prevent Blacks from voting

Schools were segregated.

Beating your pets was no one’s business but yours

You had the right to beat your children.

Priests were abusing children in huge numbers

The only jobs for women were secretary, phone operator, nurse or teacher, waitress. Women were barely second class citizens.

Polio was a crippling disease

DDT was killing everything on earth.

Detroit was building cars almost purposefully designed to kill you and many got less than 8MPG

Thalidomide was a wonder drug – until you had a baby

Even a small amount of pot would have you in prison for years or decades

Gay baiting and beating was a fun activity for the police.

If you were handicapped you might as well stay home. You certainly couldn’t negotiate a sidewalk, let alone stairs.

Only leaded gas was available and it was being pumped into the air and water and ground by the millions of tons

Littering was perfectly acceptable

Most houses had lead pipes delivering their water.

There was no National Historic Register so countless historic buildings and sites were lost so some developer could build something ridiculous.

The 3 Martini Lunch was a real thing – you would go out at lunch, get shitfaced and then go back to work and use heavy machinery, make important decisions, whatever.

Organized crime was everywhere. They were insinuated into daily urban life controlling loansharks, gambling, prostitution, extortion, drugs, protection – and the police were almost always in on it.

Interracial marriage was illegal.

Everything was painted with lead paint. Children found it… tasty.

The GI Bill did not apply to Blacks for education or mortgages.

Corporal punishment in schools was quite common. A teacher or administrator could beat your kid for any or no reason.

Rivers in industrial areas caught on fire regularly. Big rivers like the Cuyahoga in Ohio and the Blackstone in Massachusetts and many others were officially classified as “Dead as the moon” and not even algae would grow in them due to industrial waste. Dead dear and animals littered the banks.

Mine tailings, slag and waste were dumped anywhere in massive piles. The devastation of the water supplies and from windblown mining waste still poisons the land. Birds landing on tailing lakes would die almost instantly.

Raw sewage was pumped directly into the rivers and oceans. In Boston, every urban beach closed due to the fear of hepatitis in 1955. The prevailing belief was “the solution to pollution is dilution”. They were wrong. Mercury and arsenic have made fish dangerous to eat.

There was no OSHA. Safety in factories was an afterthought. One industrialist said, “Workers must get injured occasionally in order for the US to lead the world in manufacturing.” It was an accepted fact of life.

Overfishing was a thing. Entire species were wiped out. Fishermen still complain about “controls” meant to save them as if overfishing is perfectly acceptable. Oysters, crabs, lobsters, alewife, cod – almost all wiped out along the eastern seaboard.

Everyone lived daily with the specter of nuclear war and children were taught to “duck and cover”.

Edit: It blows my mind how many Republican Nazis in the comments think these things were actually positive and want them back again.

This round of flooding in Beijing has been truly frightening, claiming 30 lives so far.

In a sense, we are witnessing history.

I grew up on the banks of the Yangtze River — step outside my home and there it was.

In my childhood memories, major floods were nothing unusual.

In 1990, I moved to Beijing and have lived here ever since.

Thirty-five short years — just a blink in historical terms — yet I can already feel, deeply, that the climate is changing dramatically.

1. The weather is getting hotter and hotter.（Not sure if this is alarmist, but scientists have indeed said that 2025 is the hottest year in the North China region in the past 125,000 years.）
2. Rainfall in the north is becoming increasingly intense.

Historically, not just Beijing but the entire area north of the Yellow River has been plagued by drought and water shortages.

To combat this, China had to undertake a colossal project: the South-to-North Water Diversion, pumping Yangtze water over a thousand kilometers northward in stages to supply North China.

I often joke: if the engineers who designed Beijing’s flood drainage system had worked in the south, they would have been thrown in jail — but here in Beijing, it’s perfectly normal.

In a place that has suffered water scarcity for centuries, building a drainage system with capacity far exceeding actual needs would have been a pure waste.

I remember when I first came to Beijing, the newspapers were full of dire warnings about water shortages.

Over-pumping of groundwater was said to be causing land subsidence. In recent years, no one talks about that anymore.

But in recent years, I’ve truly felt the change. In the past five years, average July rainfall in Beijing has been about 320 mm. This time, during the flood, some areas recorded daily rainfall of 573 mm — already on par with flood-season levels in the south.

Global warming and climate upheaval are real — let me repeat that: they are real! Absolutely real.

The changes are so drastic that even within my brief lifetime, I can feel them.

Today’s news: “Ministry of Water Resources activates Level IV flood emergency response for Xinjiang.”

Xinjiang — home to the world’s second-largest desert, full of barren Gobi, desperately short of water — floods?

Sounds surreal, doesn’t it?

Then take this headline from last year: August 24 — the Taklamakan Desert, known as the “Sea of Death,” hit by floods.

In July 2021, floods in the Taklamakan submerged more than 300 square kilometers.

In summer 2022, 21 rivers including the Tarim experienced floods above the warning level, with the main Tarim River in flood for 80 consecutive days.……

To be fair, the Beijing government has done a good job — from flood warnings to widening river channels.

But residents in the north simply do not have the mindset that “rain can kill.”

In the news, there were stories like this: the government earnestly urged residents to evacuate, but some replied, “Flood? If the flood comes, I’ll just go swimming…”（Of the 30 victims, 4 were civil servants who had gone to persuade and evacuate residents.）

I don’t know what the situation is like in my hometown now, but at least over 30 years ago, when a flood was about to break out, very few residents who refused to leave would be tied up with ropes by the PLA and forcibly evacuated.

There were also people who, after having evacuated, slipped back home on their own, saying they needed to get a change of clothes…

I’ve biked to the outskirts and seen people building small malls and villas right on the river embankment!

Before the recent downpour, the municipal government sent out seven warning texts.

If this had happened in my hometown, people would have been on high alert, ready to evacuate at any moment. In some rural homes, boats might already have been prepared.

But northerners lack that awareness.

I saw in the news that during rescue operations, someone who was saved actually said: “Rain can fall this hard?”

People can’t always teach each other — but one harsh experience can.

This flood is indeed a tragedy.

But a tragedy a million times greater is that no one believes climate warming is real, and no one believes we are standing on the brink of catastrophe.

Conclusion first: We may be witnessing history, and for such a “super project”, a bit of praise is by no means excessive.

The Yarlung Zangbo River itself is full of legends. It is the world’s highest major river, with its source located at an altitude of 5,590 meters, and the average altitude of its main stream bed exceeding 3,000 meters. Its annual runoff reaches 140 billion cubic meters, second only to the Yangtze River and the Pearl River, ranking the 3rd in China.

This is also home to the world’s largest canyon — the Yarlung Zangbo Grand Canyon, which stretches 504.6 kilometers in length and reaches a maximum depth of 6,009 meters. It is far longer than the 440-kilometer Colorado Grand Canyon in the US and much deeper than Peru’s Colca Canyon, which is 3,200 meters deep, making it the longest and deepest canyon on Earth.

The Yarlung Zangbo River forms a horseshoe-shaped bend around Mount Namcha Barwa (7,782 meters above sea level), where the canyon has an erosion depth of 7,100 meters, making it the deepest eroded canyon on the Earth’s surface. This area boasts enormous power generation potential: within a 50-kilometer section of the great bend, there is a drop of 2,000 meters, with a theoretical hydropower potential of approximately 113 million kilowatts (accounting for 1/6 of China’s total).

As you can see, once the project is completed, it will be a unique miracle in the history of human engineering. Its total installed capacity will reach 60 million kilowatts, with an annual power generation of 300 billion kilowatt-hours, equivalent to the power output of 3 Three Gorges Projects, which can meet the annual electricity demand of 300 million people.

Some people may ask: Can the surrounding areas use that much electricity? They may lack understanding of China’s UHV (Ultra-High Voltage) power transmission technology. With ±1100 kV UHV transmission technology, electricity can be directly supplied to load centers such as the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta within 48 hours, with a transmission loss of only 5%, completely rewriting the traditional pattern of “transmitting electricity from the west to the east”. The environmental benefits are equally significant: it can replace 90 million tons of standard coal annually and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 243 million tons, lifting the global clean energy industry to an entirely new level.

It is conceivable that the construction difficulty of this project will be unprecedented, as this may be the region with the most complex topography and geology in the world. Coupled with historic challenges such as complex engineering technologies and difficult logistics support, no other country would dare to implement this plan. However, we can rest assured that since the project has been officially launched, it means that countless demonstrations and even numerous experiments have long been carried out. And we can believe in the strength of the Chinese people and Chinese engineering — there is no problem they can’t solve.

Update:

And there is no need to worry that this project will affect the surrounding ecological environment. No country values environmental protection more than China, and it has also adopted the highest industry standards to preserve the original ecosystem to the greatest extent possible.

For example, the “run-of-river development” model is adopted to ensure that the impact on the total outflow volume is less than 3%, while 30% of the natural river course is preserved as an ecological corridor. Ecological flow discharge facilities with a capacity of 5,000 cubic meters per second and Asia’s longest continuous fishway have been installed to effectively protect rare species. Through the runoff regulation function of “storing floodwater in the rainy season and releasing water in the dry season”, it can also help downstream areas improve their flood control and disaster mitigation capabilities.

Systematic vegetation restoration and ecological compensation measures, combined with a geological disaster monitoring system, not only reduce the intense downcutting and erosion of the river valley by the river water but also provide a demonstration model for plateau ecological restoration.

Not me, but a guy my brother met.

But it wasn’t an unconventional job, just a really niche one.

My brother was out camping and the campsite next to him was occupied by an RV. My brother and the guy in the RV, “Bill”, got to talking. Bill showed him the interior.

This is camping! (image credit)

 

My brother admired it and asked him how much it cost. Bill said it wasn’t his, it was his boyfriend’s. He was there with his boyfriend, Jake, but Jake just wasn’t around at the moment.

So my brother asked Bill what Jake did. Bill said he was a seamstress. Of course my brother asked him to elaborate.

Years ago, Jake was a deliveryman. One day he was delivering some packages to a wealthy estate. The owner had a stable and some horses. Out at the curb, he saw what looked like blankets set out with the trash. Except for a few tears, the blankets looked like they were in good condition.

Jake asked the owner about them. The owner said they were horse blankets.

Exquisite equine (image credit)

 

Jake asked why they were being thrown out. Except for the tears, they looked like they were in good shape. The owner said that the fabric was really heavy and few people could repair them. Though they were expensive, generally it was just cheaper to buy new ones.

Jake asked if he could take them. Since he was throwing them out anyway, the owner shrugged and said, “Sure.”

Jake took them and examined them. Sure enough, the fabric was really heavy and thick. Heavier than most fabrics he’d seen. He found out how much they cost new and determined that repairing them was probably cost-effective, but it would require special sewing equipment. Still, he felt up for the challenge.

Jake took some time to learn how to sew. After practicing repairing tears on standard fabric, he attempted mending on thicker and thicker fabrics. Regular sewing machines couldn’t handle the thickest fabrics, so he had to do them by hand. After a few attempts, he was able to repair a horse blanket. He tested the repairs, and the new seams held; they didn’t pull out or cause new tears.

He mended all the blankets he had collected that day. With each one, the repair was easier and easier.

But that’s not all.

He had the blankets cleaned, then he neatly folded them. He placed them in a pile and tied them together in a stack with a big bow at the top.

Maybe it looked something like this (image credit)

 

He returned to the estate with the stack of repaired blankets and presented it to the original owner. He asked him if he’d like the repaired blankets back. The owner was ecstatic. He was actually bummed about throwing some of them out; some were in his family for years, but he couldn’t justify keeping around torn coverings.

The owner wanted to pay him for his work and asked him how much he wanted. Jake really didn’t know what to charge, so he just threw out a number. The owner enthusiastically paid it and took back his blankets, which now looked nearly brand new.

The owner told his friends about Jake. They asked him to repair some of their blankets. Jake did them, but it took time, so he started charging more for each repair. He hoped it would slow down the requests, because he still had his “day job”. But the opposite happened. He discovered when he charged more, the more business he got.

Apparently among the local, wealthy horse owners, there was a big need for blanket repairs and they had no one to do them. Until Jake showed up. Being wealthy, they didn’t really care how much he charged, and actually seemed to value his service more the more he charged. As long as it was less than simply buying new blankets, they were happy to pay his fee. And some were simply irreplaceable being family heirlooms. And getting them back wrapped in a ribbon made it almost feel like they were getting new blankets in exchange.

So, he eventually was able to quit his day job and do repairs fulltime. He was also able to buy specialized sewing equipment so he didn’t have to do all the repairs with needle and thread. And now he had a small business with a few employees. He served a few nearby states because there was nearly no competition.

My brother didn’t know how wealthy he became, but he was rich enough to own a luxurious RV and Bill said Jake’s primary residence was… Well, it was big with a pool and landscaped acreage.

So, niche businesses with little competition can be pretty lucrative. The trick is finding them.