4 ms·

I'm not in Denmark but in a very similar European country. I don't want the high taxes. The current taxes and mandatory payments feel unfair. The generations b

by hedgew 10y ago

I'm not in Denmark but in a very similar European country. I don't want the high taxes. The current taxes and mandatory payments feel unfair. The generations before us worked during the greatest economic boom in history, were mostly employed in safe and high paying government jobs (still are), bought houses before their values tripled, and are now receiving monthly pension payments that are almost twice what most young people earn through work. My effective tax rate is more than 50% (including mandatory pension payments that are more than 10% of my pre-tax pay). A good part of that goes to pay the pensions of existing retirees. A third of my remaining pay goes into paying rent for the apartments owned by the older generation. In the end, I get around 1.5k euro out of the 7k I cost my company (employers also have to pay additional social and pension payments). Looking at the current luxurious lifestyle of the older generations, and the rapidly ageing population, and increasing youth unemployment — I want out.

mcv 10y ago
Your problem is not the high taxes themselves, but the way they are used. If young people are taxed in order to provide pensions for old people that are higher than the salaries of working young people, then there's something wrong, and I can totally understand the resentment. I think the main reason why people object to taxes, is when those taxes are wasted on stupid things. But if taxes are efficiently used to provide a better society, then I think most people would support even fairly high taxes. Like in Denmark. Or in many European countries and the US just after WW2. Taxes were insane back then, but they were used to build up the country.
mstade 10y ago
This sounds like Sweden or Norway, and I couldn't agree more.
- verinus 10y ago
  or austria
- MrBuddyCasino 10y ago
  or Germany
- vidarh 10y ago
  Sweden is #8 in terms of total tax wedge in the OECD. Norway is the 18th highest and just barely above the OECD average, compared to e.g. US at #25, Belgium at #1, Germany #2. Sweden is high, but still 6-8 percentage points below Germany, Italy, Austria, Hungary, France, and about twice that beow Belgium, which is an extreme outlier.
  - egman_ekki 10y ago
    ...but the structure of the tax wedge is quite different. In Denmark, almost all of it comes from income tax while in other countries it's usually 40% paid by the employer...
    - vidarh 10y ago
      That's a good point. I'm generally opposed to including payroll taxes when talking about tax for that reason, because what people tend to compare when talking about income, tends to be their contracted salary excluding anything paid by employers. If you then include payroll taxes when comparing tax, you should compared it income + payroll taxes as your "actual" gross income. But when you discuss with people who want to quote high tax rates, they almost always include everything in order to try to get shockingly high numbers, which is why I now tend to use the OECD numbers because they too favour that, and their numbers still tend to come out far below what certain people like to think they pay (I was shocked at first to find out that there is a huge number of people out there that have no idea what their actual tax rates are, but just blindly go by the marginal rates and assume that's what they're paying...) But of course that comparison also goes the other way if you try to compare against countries where the relative split is wildly different.
purplelobster 10y ago
Another view is: I could definitely invest especially the forced pension better myself. The problem is most people would use that money for consumption if they had a choice, and then at old age they would blame society for having to live on the street (and in the end probably get a handout anyway). Perhaps in the end all of us are better off if we "force" these saving for most people.
- guard-of-terra 10y ago
  However, we probably should withhold paying obviously unsustainable pensions to current generation of retired citizens. There's this desperate feeling that despite paying a large chunk of money into pension fund, my generation won't get any pensions at all, because of population ageing there just won't be any money for that. But brace yourself. And have a nice mood. (c) We're just giving those money to aged people without hopes of getting anything back. And no, immigration won't solve this, because every immigrant you bring today will retire (or try to), too.
pjc50 10y ago
The intergenerational inequality is an increasingly serious problem, and as you suggest might kill the welfare state if it's no longer percieved to be fair. The flashpoints are more likely to be in the south of Europe, such as Greece.
- vonmoltke 10y ago
  The critical failure of the welfare state, as it is currently implemented, was that it relied on ever-increasing payrolls in the younger generations to fund the pensions and subsidies of the retirees. Once that breaks down, as it is starting to, so does the system built upon it.
  - calgoo 10y ago
    Yea, here in Spain most people under 35 dont expect to have any public pensions when we come of age. The system is so underfunded and corrupt that I expect to work until 75 at least and really dont expect there to be any public funding left by then. As I tell others here, get a private plan, even if you cant put a lot in it, setup an automatic transfer each month and done.
    - josu 10y ago
      >The system is so underfunded The system is not underfunded, its main problem is the aging population. Or maybe even the system, in Spain, as in most countries in Europe, pensions are paid by the current generation, so the moment that the ratio of pensioners to workers becomes unsustainable the system will collapse. >and corrupt There is some corruption going on in Spain, that's undeniable, but I wouldn't say that the pension system is corrupt. What are your bases for that statement?
splintercell 10y ago
> In the end, I get around 1.5k euro out of the 7k I cost my company (employers also have to pay additional social and pension payments). Is your pension program a personal pension program or is it like Social Security taxes like in America? Also, one of the biggest reason why there is no real right wing in Europe because people who might think that way (low taxes, personal responsibility) all move to America (so should you). Also check out https://www.reddit.com/r/IWantOut https://www.reddit.com/r/IWantOut
- ionised 10y ago
  Are you serious? Most governments in Europe right now are right-leaning.
_Codemonkeyism 10y ago
The borked pension system sounds like Germany, where it was changed in 1957 by Adenauer to win the election because of older voters. To win one election, borked the future of millions.
sharemywin 10y ago
But the problem is a lot of them paid in already. so, should someone that worked 40 years for a system get screwed out of all the money they put in? I don't have a good answer.
- sliverstorm 10y ago
  You try not to leave them totally high and dry, but you can't shift the entire burden onto people who weren't even born when those deals were made. It wasn't the unborn that screwed them, it was their own elected politicians who did it, in other words, themselves.
badsock 10y ago
Wait, you've got it backwards. At the risk of stating the obvious: the wealthy older generation are the ones who want the tax cuts for the wealthy. In a progressive taxation scheme the young and poor get more benefits from the government than they pay in via taxes, so what you're arguing for would hurt you and help them. The real problem is that assets are taxed (sometimes significantly) less than income. We're in a world where assets are becoming much more valuable than labour, but have a taxation and pension scheme that is built for the opposite (post-WWII). The older generation has assets like houses and stocks. Youth have the ability to work. Here in Canada, the capital gains tax is literally half of what the income tax is. So when old people make their money (house prices go up, investment portfolios increase) while literally not lifting a finger, they get to shift half of their tax burden onto the people that get up every morning and work for a living. /That's/ unfair. This is all happening in a time when we've got so much cash floating around that interest rates might go negative, which means the usual "oh, but if we tax assets then it will reduce the available investment pool and it will hurt the economy" is complete self-serving horseshit. Taxes are one of your biggest tools for redressing the screwing over that the younger generation has got. You'd be crazy to consider them the problem. Furthermore, with pensions the older generation basically wrote themselves a blank cheque that the younger generation had to pay. I don't think we should feel obligated to follow it to the letter - and that doesn't have anything to do with tax rates, that's just a contract re-negotiation.
- tpeo 10y ago
  The situation you're referring to, where older citizens own more assets than average, might indeed seem obvious in Canada but it might not be the case at all in any country with a differently structured social security system, since the decision to save money for a rainy day or not is directly affected by the availability of social security. In a country with an ageing population and with a pension system overwhelmingly funded by intergenerational transfer, then voting for tax cuts is optimal for young voters. In a country where pensions are mostly funded by private savings, then sure, taxes are nice.

by hedgew 10y ago

mcv 10y ago

Your problem is not the high taxes themselves, but the way they are used. If young people are taxed in order to provide pensions for old people that are higher than the salaries of working young people, then there's something wrong, and I can totally understand the resentment. I think the main reason why people object to taxes, is when those taxes are wasted on stupid things. But if taxes are efficiently used to provide a better society, then I think most people would support even fairly high taxes. Like in Denmark. Or in many European countries and the US just after WW2. Taxes were insane back then, but they were used to build up the country.

mstade 10y ago

This sounds like Sweden or Norway, and I couldn't agree more.

verinus 10y ago
or austria
MrBuddyCasino 10y ago
or Germany
vidarh 10y ago
Sweden is #8 in terms of total tax wedge in the OECD. Norway is the 18th highest and just barely above the OECD average, compared to e.g. US at #25, Belgium at #1, Germany #2. Sweden is high, but still 6-8 percentage points below Germany, Italy, Austria, Hungary, France, and about twice that beow Belgium, which is an extreme outlier.
- egman_ekki 10y ago
  ...but the structure of the tax wedge is quite different. In Denmark, almost all of it comes from income tax while in other countries it's usually 40% paid by the employer...
  - vidarh 10y ago
    That's a good point. I'm generally opposed to including payroll taxes when talking about tax for that reason, because what people tend to compare when talking about income, tends to be their contracted salary excluding anything paid by employers. If you then include payroll taxes when comparing tax, you should compared it income + payroll taxes as your "actual" gross income. But when you discuss with people who want to quote high tax rates, they almost always include everything in order to try to get shockingly high numbers, which is why I now tend to use the OECD numbers because they too favour that, and their numbers still tend to come out far below what certain people like to think they pay (I was shocked at first to find out that there is a huge number of people out there that have no idea what their actual tax rates are, but just blindly go by the marginal rates and assume that's what they're paying...) But of course that comparison also goes the other way if you try to compare against countries where the relative split is wildly different.

purplelobster 10y ago

Another view is: I could definitely invest especially the forced pension better myself. The problem is most people would use that money for consumption if they had a choice, and then at old age they would blame society for having to live on the street (and in the end probably get a handout anyway). Perhaps in the end all of us are better off if we "force" these saving for most people.

guard-of-terra 10y ago
However, we probably should withhold paying obviously unsustainable pensions to current generation of retired citizens. There's this desperate feeling that despite paying a large chunk of money into pension fund, my generation won't get any pensions at all, because of population ageing there just won't be any money for that. But brace yourself. And have a nice mood. (c) We're just giving those money to aged people without hopes of getting anything back. And no, immigration won't solve this, because every immigrant you bring today will retire (or try to), too.

pjc50 10y ago

The intergenerational inequality is an increasingly serious problem, and as you suggest might kill the welfare state if it's no longer percieved to be fair. The flashpoints are more likely to be in the south of Europe, such as Greece.

vonmoltke 10y ago
The critical failure of the welfare state, as it is currently implemented, was that it relied on ever-increasing payrolls in the younger generations to fund the pensions and subsidies of the retirees. Once that breaks down, as it is starting to, so does the system built upon it.
- calgoo 10y ago
  Yea, here in Spain most people under 35 dont expect to have any public pensions when we come of age. The system is so underfunded and corrupt that I expect to work until 75 at least and really dont expect there to be any public funding left by then. As I tell others here, get a private plan, even if you cant put a lot in it, setup an automatic transfer each month and done.
  - josu 10y ago
    >The system is so underfunded The system is not underfunded, its main problem is the aging population. Or maybe even the system, in Spain, as in most countries in Europe, pensions are paid by the current generation, so the moment that the ratio of pensioners to workers becomes unsustainable the system will collapse. >and corrupt There is some corruption going on in Spain, that's undeniable, but I wouldn't say that the pension system is corrupt. What are your bases for that statement?

splintercell 10y ago

> In the end, I get around 1.5k euro out of the 7k I cost my company (employers also have to pay additional social and pension payments). Is your pension program a personal pension program or is it like Social Security taxes like in America? Also, one of the biggest reason why there is no real right wing in Europe because people who might think that way (low taxes, personal responsibility) all move to America (so should you). Also check out https://www.reddit.com/r/IWantOut https://www.reddit.com/r/IWantOut

ionised 10y ago
Are you serious? Most governments in Europe right now are right-leaning.

_Codemonkeyism 10y ago

The borked pension system sounds like Germany, where it was changed in 1957 by Adenauer to win the election because of older voters. To win one election, borked the future of millions.

sharemywin 10y ago

But the problem is a lot of them paid in already. so, should someone that worked 40 years for a system get screwed out of all the money they put in? I don't have a good answer.

sliverstorm 10y ago
You try not to leave them totally high and dry, but you can't shift the entire burden onto people who weren't even born when those deals were made. It wasn't the unborn that screwed them, it was their own elected politicians who did it, in other words, themselves.

badsock 10y ago

Wait, you've got it backwards. At the risk of stating the obvious: the wealthy older generation are the ones who want the tax cuts for the wealthy. In a progressive taxation scheme the young and poor get more benefits from the government than they pay in via taxes, so what you're arguing for would hurt you and help them. The real problem is that assets are taxed (sometimes significantly) less than income. We're in a world where assets are becoming much more valuable than labour, but have a taxation and pension scheme that is built for the opposite (post-WWII). The older generation has assets like houses and stocks. Youth have the ability to work. Here in Canada, the capital gains tax is literally half of what the income tax is. So when old people make their money (house prices go up, investment portfolios increase) while literally not lifting a finger, they get to shift half of their tax burden onto the people that get up every morning and work for a living. /That's/ unfair. This is all happening in a time when we've got so much cash floating around that interest rates might go negative, which means the usual "oh, but if we tax assets then it will reduce the available investment pool and it will hurt the economy" is complete self-serving horseshit. Taxes are one of your biggest tools for redressing the screwing over that the younger generation has got. You'd be crazy to consider them the problem. Furthermore, with pensions the older generation basically wrote themselves a blank cheque that the younger generation had to pay. I don't think we should feel obligated to follow it to the letter - and that doesn't have anything to do with tax rates, that's just a contract re-negotiation.

tpeo 10y ago
The situation you're referring to, where older citizens own more assets than average, might indeed seem obvious in Canada but it might not be the case at all in any country with a differently structured social security system, since the decision to save money for a rainy day or not is directly affected by the availability of social security. In a country with an ageing population and with a pension system overwhelmingly funded by intergenerational transfer, then voting for tax cuts is optimal for young voters. In a country where pensions are mostly funded by private savings, then sure, taxes are nice.