You must log in or # to comment.
I also live in a country with very high tax and I’d need to make more than 120k USD per year to have the same standard of living if I lived in the USA. It’s impossible to make that much driving trains and also working 40 hours a week in the US as far as I know. Lower tier blue collar work is even worse.
Low tax is for billionaires.
Yeah exactly, we don’t pay our workers a living wage in the USA, it’s very well documented at this point. It’s a pay problem.
You can make fun of demark for legitimate shit. Like the little mermaid or putting people with long covid in psych wards or just being shittier Holland. That last one really bugs the Danes. Or Belgium if we’re talking politics.
Now accepting tolls in crypto and euros
Yeah but all those payments mean we have a bigger GDP so take that, Danes.
I mean the Dow isn’t even over 50k. What are we even doing? #sadge #prayforbillionaires #MAGA #thesoundofgarglingGOPballs #voat
Because we’ve been lied to so well that we can “Make it!” that we never accept the idea we’ll never make it in the USA.
Ironically, the USA rank only 27th in the Global Social Mobility Index. The 1st is… Denmark, followed by other Northern Europe countries with high tax rates.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index
You have more chance of “making it” in Denmark, providing you accept “making it” means getting a cozy comfortable life and not becoming filthy rich.
america is obsessed with taxes of other countries yet they dont like paying taxes in thier own countries, probably projecting and living vacariously through what high taxes can benefit people.
Those red boxes aren’t nearly clear enough, here, I improved it!
The one asking about taxes and how they ruin your life is always the dum dum
Yeah, I don’t understand why those red boxes were added in the first place.
Thanks for this, I wasn’t sure where to look.
deleted by creator
I got you!
thanks brother <3
Found a better version i think
US tax rate is only like 5% less too. We wouldn’t even have to pay higher taxes to get most of what other countries get. We’re just dumb fucks who see all our money going to the military and can’t even be bothered to vote once every 4 years. It’s pathetic
Why pay for healthcare when you can pay for israeli genocide
Israel has healthcare paid with taxes. And our taxes fund 12-15% of their military.
Dems should introduce the same healthcare plan and if anyone votes against it call them antisemitic.
Btw, Israel has universal healthcare.
Cause paying for all the genocide is being done by the West.
Americans are also obsessed with the notion their taxes would benefit anyone but themselves.
I don’t understand why no one can grasp the concept. If your taxes benefit you, and the homeless guy on the corner, that means you’re getting more value from your taxes.
I’m wondering if that could have ANY relation with oligarchs controlled medias repeating all day long how bad taxes are and how inefficient public anything is.
Edit: and adding this: conservatives (not MAGA, racists, etc. I mean genuine conservatives) are generally not against the idea of paying to help homeless, poors, etc. They are against the idea to defer that to the government. They want to make donations themselves. That boosts the ego, and that also allows them to cherry pick who deserves their help, and government is inefficient-blablabla. The irony of the logic is non-profit typically spend 20–40% of their budget on fund raising and administration. This is not a very efficient system from an economic standpoint. As for choosing who to help, they end up rewarding marketing skills rather than ranking who needs the most their help.
I think the problem arises when you pay a crapton on taxes, and then comes a billionaire that makes millions of profits and pays zero.
So then the average person gets angry about inequality but instead of demanding that everyone pay their share they think “who knows how many other cheaters are out there. If we can’t hold them accountable, then I want to pay less too!”.
Which of course is the wrong way to go about it but alas
I argued at length with an American who used to hang out in my friend group for a while. He could stand the idea that his taxes would pay for anything other than his own problems. He called it “giving free handouts”.
He’d repeatedly use arguments like “but if my taxes pay for healthcare, I’d be wasting my money on morbidly obese people who created their own problems”.
He also loved status and exclusivity.
…and he also fails to note how miserable his life would be if not for taxes from others.
The guy is really well off. Works a desk job pushing finance papers for the American military. He believes his well paid job secures him from relying on anything at all.
It’s a cultural thing that’s hard to even push back against. Like, I want people to be helped, I want nobody to have to go hungry or have to live on the streets or go broke from medical bills, regardless of how they live, and I know that taxes are the most effective way to do that, but still I find myself instinctively framing it as “taxes are the cheapest way for me to ensure I don’t have to deal with a homeless person begging outside my apartment”
Also I think the idea that we’re each personally entitled to approve of everything the government spends tax money on is a long game from the right to combat things like pushes for universal health care, government assistance of reproductive healthcare (I first saw this about abortion), and really any form of the government actually helping people instead of demanding charity make up the difference
I did the math in the USA. When I was married with kids my effective rate for a the highest year was 52%. My last year as a single male and all kids over 26, it was 46%. Effective, not marginal, because that matters in the USA as we don’t track those “other salary deductions” for taxes. Effective for those ready to argue include stupid shit like deductibles, copays, uncovered care, out of network care (that happens more than you think with kids). one year we spent 40k (max. In network deductible) because one of my kids had a spiral fracture of his leg on a growth section that had he not endured 3 (THREE) surgeries, he would be left side shorter. That was 190k for all surgeries and 40k out of pocket. Dental, HSA, FSA, Vision, Medical… People need to realize that even though its pre tax, you’re still paying for it and that needs to be considered for effective rate.
I was offered a job in Denmark, so I know this for fact: Denmark was a near match at marginal rate to USA effective rate assuming I never needed critical care in the USA (i would be in debt). BUT, Denmark has effective tax rates in the 40% for those making less than 85k (USD). I think there’s a rich person tax above that at 49%, but I never accepted the job because my Ex wife was a shithead so I didn’t find out.
I’m now in spain paying around 47% effective, but get Beckhams law will make that be 24% at tax time for the next 10 years. After that I need to pay like everyone else and at 10 years I get a pension (small one) for spain.
So yes, Americans pay more. Waaaaay more.
190k is a very large amount, I’m not sure if by 40k out of pocket you mean the insurance covered the rest.
Still, 40k is a lot of money and 190k is pretty much my salary for the next 10 years. I’m sure jobs are a bit better paid in the US; but I’m also quite convinced it is not that common to have that amount of money laying around.
An expense like that falling on you can definitely ruin your life.
I borrowed money to pay for it. I was lucky, very lucky.
Correction: We pay waaaay more for waaaay less.
Also wages might be higher in well paying jobs that people on Lemmy seem to have, but plenty of people in the US are dirt poor even with jobs. In Europe that happens as well but I feel like they often have more stability though tenant and worker rights and things like that. So at least you won’t be fired on the spot from your lousy job or have to renegotiate rent every few months.
Yeah, here in the UK if you’ve worked somewhere for longer than three months then your employer has to have good cause to let you go. Thanks to the Tories, we don’t get full employee rights until two years, so if, after two years we’re made redundant, we can claim redundancy pay. But in the meantime, if you feel you’ve been treated unfairly you can claim unfair dismissal. You might have some success at getting some lost earnings, but you’ll have to represent yourself because there’s no hope of getting legal aid for that. However, the tribunals who hear the cases often tend to lean towards the employee. Or at least, that was the case when I went through it some years ago.
And if you are let go, then you can immediately claim unemployment benefits, which really aren’t great, but they do come with the added benefit of free prescriptions.
It’s also because they pay their workers a living wage, which we don’t in the USA.
Jokes on you, I cost taxes!
It isn’t just taxes, Denmark pays for their social democracy with neocolonialist super profits including capitalist exploitation of Greenland and bank accounts that are still paying interest on profits from being the largest shareholder of the slave trade.
I’m pretty sure Greenland is a massive financial sink for Denmark…
We aren’t socialists
Can someone explain what is the difference between that and socialism?
In Socialism, the means of production (aka the businesses) are owned by everybody. It is a completely different economical model to Capitalism, which is where the means of production are owned by individuals, like it currently is.
Just a couple of social policies do not make socialism.
I think workers owning the means of production is communism, not necessarily socialism. I’m not an expert though.
As I understand the terms (which may well be wrong), you’re correct and Denmark would be socialist. There might be some distance between “full” socialism wherein all public services are owned and controlled by the public (= the state), but the direction of social policies seems about right.
However, particularly in the US, that distinction has been smudged into one collective “evil leftist” scarecrow. I’d assume the person in the OP either doesn’t know or consciously accepts that fudging to make a case for why their system is beneficial rather than the “scary socialism”. Deflecting from the label to a descriptor (particularly in the context of profit-oriented mentalities, where “good accounting” would be desirable) dodges the preconceptions and propaganda attached to the former.
And ultimately, I think that’s more fruitful for explaining an ideology. Starting with a label that carries connotations primes expectations accordingly. Starting with and focusing on the benefits invites engaging with the topic and creates a different foundation for productive conversation.
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet. SoRomeowould, wereheit notRomeoSocialism called,
Retain that dear perfection whichheit owes
Without that title.I’m not gonna suggest we stop calling socialism by that title, but I do see a case that aome discussions should be led with descriptions and arguments instead of terms that have been vilified to the point of stifling any reasonable discourse.
Denmark and most of Europe are social market economies i.e. capitalism + welfare state.
Gotcha. So comparatively closer to socialism than to communism, but not really socialism either.
Just capitalism with safety net.
Communism is considered the next step - a stateless and classless society without money.
Some will say it never existed since it would need to be worldwide, some will say its entirely possible within country borders. Many ways to interpret it and many more ways to disagree with what it means. However, most will agree that workers owning the means of production is part of it, but just workers owning the company they work for on its own generally isn’t enough to say its communism. We have companies which operate that way even today. Its a more broader term for how a whole society functions.
To sum up my response to the other person further down the thread directly to you as well:
I don’t think the difference is that significant.
I’d more consider this a rhetorical sleight of hand to lead away from the term and its perception as “evil bad scary socialism” (particularly in the US). Describing the benefits as a good thing (particularly in the context of profit-oriented mentalities, where “good accounting” would be desirable) dodges the propaganda directed at a specific label.
Thank the Lord in heaven, in Jesus name and the holy Trinity there were two red boxes to show me what to read.
I’d like to thank my parents, my wife, and most importantly my coach. Without them I would be unable to find the red boxes.
