[ytilibitapmoc]

I thought the comment at http://www.bigstartups.com/wac6/blog/1273/Will-the-Last-Star... by "heretic" was someone merely trolling the comments.

However using the equation and data sets from this blog post (http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2010/03/taxes-per-person.html) results in:

  * Ireland:  34.0% × 39,441 = 13,409.9
  * New Zealand:  36.5% × 26,625 = 9,718.1

Add to the above data that both countries score better than the United States in the Economist Intelligence Unit's "Democracy Index" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index), the Reporters Without Borders "Press Freedom Index" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldwide_Press_Freedom_Index), and the Transparency International "Corruption Perceptions Index" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index). The only bright spot for the United States are the two indices of economic freedom: the Heritage Foundation's "Index of Economic Freedom" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_Economic_Freedom) and the Fraser Institute's "Economic Freedom of the World" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_Freedom_of_the_World); wherein Ireland and New Zealand alternate in bracketing the United States.

I'm beginning to think "heretic" wasn't trolling the comments.