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> 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.

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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.

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.

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