4 ms·

This is ludicrous. We don't see Swedes and Finns leaving their countries over taxes. They take pride in their welfare states and relative lack of poverty. The

This is ludicrous. We don't see Swedes and Finns leaving their countries over taxes. They take pride in their welfare states and relative lack of poverty. The counterargument is that "we're different". Sure: we're a lot more nomadic. It's not unusual for an American to live 1000 miles away from where he was born, and for a lot of us, living overseas is attractive, but I still don't see this as a mass threat. Besides, if conservative whiners want to leave the country in droves, I'm fine with that. We'll do fine without them. After blocking universal healthcare in '48 (Southern racists didn't want to desegregate the hospitals) and bringing us Nixon's ridiculous drug war, the utter failures of Reaganomics, and a crass consumer culture, I'm surprised we haven't kicked them out yet.

anamax 16y ago
> We don't see Swedes and Finns leaving their countries over taxes. The Swedes and Finns still in Sweden and Finland are descended from folks who didn't move to the US because they were unhappy about something. Americans, for the most part, descended from folks who left somewhere because they were unhappy about something. Which reminds me, as Mankiw showed, the per-capita tax burden in dollars in the US is fairly close to that of European countries. However, it's a smaller fraction of GDP because the US per-capita GDP is higher. In other words, Americans pay about the same and have more. It's unclear why changing to pay the same and have less is a good thing. And, since we're already paying the same and getting less, the whole "but look at what they get for their taxes" argument fails. http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2010/03/taxes-per-person.html http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2010/03/taxes-per-person.html http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=4626 http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=4626
hga 16y ago
This Swede left his country "over taxes": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingmar_Bergman#Tax_evasion_charges http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingmar_Bergman#Tax_evasion_char... How much more abusive would you guess the IRS is vs. Sweden's equivalent?

anamax 16y ago

> We don't see Swedes and Finns leaving their countries over taxes. The Swedes and Finns still in Sweden and Finland are descended from folks who didn't move to the US because they were unhappy about something. Americans, for the most part, descended from folks who left somewhere because they were unhappy about something. Which reminds me, as Mankiw showed, the per-capita tax burden in dollars in the US is fairly close to that of European countries. However, it's a smaller fraction of GDP because the US per-capita GDP is higher. In other words, Americans pay about the same and have more. It's unclear why changing to pay the same and have less is a good thing. And, since we're already paying the same and getting less, the whole "but look at what they get for their taxes" argument fails. http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2010/03/taxes-per-person.html http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2010/03/taxes-per-person.html http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=4626 http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=4626

hga 16y ago

This Swede left his country "over taxes": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingmar_Bergman#Tax_evasion_charges http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingmar_Bergman#Tax_evasion_char... How much more abusive would you guess the IRS is vs. Sweden's equivalent?