Bukele’s Vision: Slash Taxes and Adopt Gold-Backed Money to Spark Salvadoran Growth

The column traces President Nayib Bukele’s trajectory from a teenage advertiser to the nation’s leader, noting his rapid crackdown on crime that drove homicide rates from 38 to 1.9 per 100,000 between 2019 and 2024. Despite this security win, El Salvador’s per-capita GDP still hovers at about 6.5% of the United States, a level unchanged for sixty years, whereas Singapore surged from 13.7% to 110% of the U.S. benchmark in the same span.

The author points out that El Salvador’s tax structure—top personal income tax of 30%, combined payroll taxes of 26.5% and a 13% VAT—produces a tax-revenue-to-GDP ratio of roughly 24%, higher than the U.S. while yielding lower revenue. To emulate Singapore’s model, the proposal calls for abolishing individual and corporate income taxes, reducing payroll taxes to a more payable level, and introducing a gold-backed stablecoin akin to Tether Gold as a dollar alternative. Citing Ireland’s 1980s-90s tax cuts that propelled it from poverty to prosperity, the piece argues that such fiscal reforms could trigger rapid GDP growth and raise El Salvador’s relative wealth.