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Pomperipossa in Monismania: a true tale of a 102% tax rate in Sweden
- op00to 9y agoThis is borderline unreadable.
- sushid 9y agoThis is a terrible article/translation. I don't think the post even mentions that the woman in the story wrote Pippi Longstocking. If you're curious, take a look at this link here instead. https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/15235/did-swedish-tax-rate-ever-exceed-100 https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/15235/did-swedi...
- jacknews 9y ago"Creating something of value causes envy. The community cries: no payola! In the banal bickering of bureaucrats you must take part. And help Comrade Castro carry out war in Angola, Or face therapy nursing home style – you old fart," I find these libertarian type arguments, wherein the government is just there to steal from the people who are creating value, to be disingenuous, and quite puerile. They of course ignore all the external inputs that allow the protagonist to 'create' whatever it is of value that they claim ownership over, such as education, law-and-order, scientific research, and all the other requisites of a functioning society, which are of course funded by taxes. But even beyond that they rest on a central fallacy (IMHO), that a free market is the perfect model for how society itself should function; the law of the jungle. Free markets are a specific tool (good at fostering innovation and efficiency) to be used within the context of building the kind of society people want to live in, not the other way around.