What made America great was a long period of true economical freedom (long gone now).
A period when private initiatives, entrepreneurship, new ideas could flourish unincombered by taxation, regulations and other bureaucratic government interventions.

Exactly and the closest candidate of this concept, although still far away, is Trump. Sanders would turn the US into Venezuela but at least he has excellent foreign policy. Cruz, Kasich and Clinton are basically the same as Bush/Obama, all bought and paid for by the establishment. With the exception that Clinton is a proven criminal that helped destroy Syria and Libya. Expect more wars, more debt and more government with those three. I'd rather try something new - Trump or even Sanders as a last resort.

My country does not have tax treaty and I received the same thing.

I guess we don't have to do anything since taxes are withheld at the source, when applicable.

I was almost excited when I got my first sale a few weeks ago. Last time I tried these "new friendly markets" that barely sell anything. They set up the bait, then as soon as they have enough content they remove all incentives that brought us in the first place. Scammers just like PhotoArabia.

I'm sure having a great time watching the globalists freak out over Trump 

Or is it just fake? Someone tries to boost the number?

Yes, same for Envato.

DT trying to stay relevant by devaluing our work, since they don't have anything else worth mentioning.
Bad reviews, bad search, bad sales. Pathetic little site.

DT has the worst reviewing policy of any stock agency. They don't get my work anymore.

Having a local guide can be quite useful, but the best idea is to avoid ** places like Detroit, Malmo, Cairo, Salvador altogether. If you must go, bring your worst equipment, a crappy give-away phone and just cash for the day. Traveling in two or more is a good deterrent, but not enough if they have guns or in large groups. More likely they just want to rob you and keep out of trouble. If they really want to hurt you, not many options left - run or fight back.

Most of my images are 4MP and they sell fine, even EL.

* Downsized from 12MP camera.

I was just thinking about that. I stopped uploading to them a while back, they still bring some money but my life is so much better without clicking on useless keywords. I should try a marathon-uploading just to catch up sometime and see the results, but definitely won't do this regularly. Too much pain involved.

Keeping this pace, December will be 40% lower than November. And holidays didn't even started yet.

On the way to be the worst month in SS since June.

It's spiraling out of control, new images don't get any traction.

The "new" search is already a complete mess, an ocean of low quality spam. If I'm a buyer looking for new content that has never been used before, I would be completely frustrated. You have to type at least 3 keywords to find relevant images, imagine what it will look like in a couple years.

Shutterstock is just looking for a cheap way to increase margins in the short term, but the lack of long term thinking will prove disastrous not only for contributors, but for the company itself. Of course by the time SHTF, SS managers won't be holding their stocks anymore.