Cristina Kirchner's courageous plan to increase the digital divide

I’m not sure how I missed this, but Argentina’s already high taxes on electronics are going up.

Essentially Cristina proposed to raise the VAT from 10.5% to 21% on all electronics not manufactured in Argentina. Now you have to remember that this is on top of the import duties. It is a bit hard to find the exact figure of the import duties for regular wholesale importers, but from this government customs site it looks like it is 50%. Diego Gomez confirms via Twitter that it is indeed 50% of purchase value and 50% of shipping cost.

Here is a real world example using the cheapest MacBook White, which currently retails for $999 in the US:

In Argentina it costs $1599 in Argentina at MacStation. I’m not sure what the wholesale price is from Apple to MacStation on a MacBook, but it sounds about right.

Note the ad says $1499 but that is if you pay in USD. AR$5999 is US$1,596.09 at todays rate of (1 USD = 3.75855 ARS). If you like most people in Argentina make your money in Pesos, you pay the extra $97.

I am not sure how they reach these calculations but most news reports says that prices to consumers on computers and cellular phones will go up by 35% with this tax hike.

In any respect. This is bad news for Argentina’s consumers and real tech industry. This tax was done to in the typical Peronista corporatist fashion to protect a small insignificant electronics industry.

Argentina is a country filled with smart educated people. I’m willing to bet that Argentina’s highly skilled and sought after offshore programmers who’s rates are climbing due to their high quality of work do more to help Argentina’s GDP than these 2 or 3 television companies (or whatever they are) selling (probably crap) equipment to Argentina’s poor.

I’ve written before about how the protection of Industria Argentina is nothing but bad news to consumers.

The real threat to Chavez

These 3 photos were part of a publicity campaign designed by a German company, Ogilvy & Mather, for the International Society for Human Rights (ISHR). It won a bronze medal in the prestigious CLIO Awards which took place last week in Las Vegas. The publicity campaign was prepared by the ISHR to let the world know how 3 dictators, Raul Castro, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chavez are scared of the Internet.

Also Raul and Ahmadineyad.

Thanks to Real Cuba for finding these.

God's own country

Growing up in Denmark I always heard the term “Gud’s eget land” or “God’s own country” used about the US. I never quite questioned it, until recently when a Danish blogger living in the US keeps using it.

I started thinking that you hardly ever hear that expression in the US. In Denmark it is always used with a kind of snarky tone implying that us atheist Danes are smarter than those silly religious Americans. I do have some vague recollection of hearing it used the same way in English by the famous chattering classes in the UK.

So I googled it in English. Almost all references are to the state of Kerala in India. Wikipedia has a neat list of all areas calling themselves by the name God’s own country. These include New Zealand, Rhodesia, Kerala and Yorkshire. No mention of the US.

As I know the term more in Danish than English I figured I should google it in Danish .

Besides a bunch of people using it about the US, the Danish paper Politiken took the time to research it’s use :

It isn’t exactly possible to discover why exactly people say “God’s own country” about the US. According to “Gyldendal’s History of the US” by Erling Bjøl American’s started calling it “God’s own country” after the 1st world war. During the war American soldiers were in war for the first time in Europe and they missed the US, where the quality of life was growing and their appeared to be possibilities for all. The concise Oxford Dictionary says that “God’s own country” means a paradise on earth, in particular with regards to the US. When you search Danish news databases and compare them to American ones, you will see that we in Denmark use the expression “Gud’s eget land” a lot more than American journalists use “God’s own country”.

I am not quite sure I by the Mr. Bjøl’s explanation of it. It certainly doesn’t explain Dane’s obsession with the term. Also I couldn’t confirm the Oxford’s dictionary reference as it doesn’t seem to occur in the online version nor does it pop up in dictionary.com.

The term God’s Country does exist in Dictionary.com which says:

1. an area or region supposed to be favored by God, esp. a naturally beautiful rural area.
2. an isolated rural area.
3. one’s native region.

I’m wondering if it comes from people saying during wars “God is on our side”? But just about every country under the earth has said that as such time, in particular during times of war.

The other more likely possibility is that many religious immigrants to the US did consider it the promised land.

Anyway even if it has it’s roots in the US, it still doesn’t change the reason it is used by Danes. It will probably always be a very sarcastic term used between Danes showing that we are better than them. As a Danish/American it does however leave me slightly annoyed.