[halayli]

> Never underestimate developing countries' governments' willingness to absolutely bend their people over to extract tax revenue (and then their corrupt representatives extract bribes on top of it)

being a developing country or not is orthogonal to what you have described. The top developed nations have one or more of these issues.

[anthk]

Man, I am a native Spaniard and even with Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Bilbao and industrial powerhouses we can't compete with furthern North Italy/Germany/Netherlands in some areas, but I've heard horror stories from Latin America that wouldn't happen in Spain without making the news.

[margalabargala]

Developed countries may have exorbitant taxes and fees, but generally not bribes.

Someone may say "a tax or fee is just a legalized bribe to the state!"

Which, sure, you could look at it that way, but it's codified and predictable and that lack of surprise is extremely valuable.