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>the US has far less taxes that most western countries I own my own LLC, and lose 45% of my "salary" to taxes (in large part because I pay both 7.5% "halves" o
by endtime 16y ago
>the US has far less taxes that most western countries
I own my own LLC, and lose 45% of my "salary" to taxes (in large part because I pay both 7.5% "halves" of my Medicare tax). Is that far less than it would be in most other Western countries?
- middus 16y agoI think you should put "lose" in quotation marks. It is not gone. The money is not gone, it is spend on you for hospitals, police, roads and what not.
- endtime 16y agoI'm 24 years old...I have zero expectation of ever seeing a penny for the 15% of my salary that goes to Medicare.
- jleyank 16y agoThat's not bad. 2x social security/medicare and you're a bit under 50%. I'm a wage-jockey in Canada, and I'm paying over 50%. So yeah, US taxes DO look like some of the lowest in the Western World.
- abalashov 16y agoYep, you're right. The real problem is that for roughly the same tax burden, you don't get a fraction of what Western European or Canadian counterparts get. No socialised healthcare, no government-subsidised education, a pitiful two weeks of paid vacation at best, joke unemployment benefits, etc. I'm not necessarily arguing that any of that should be the government's job or that all aspects of it are fundamentally fiscally sustainable. I'm just pointing out that you get quite a bit less for your money; an alarming preponderance of your income tax goes to prosecuting pointless wars, Wall Street bailouts, and other suitably kleptocratic endeavours. Local and state government operations are substantially funded by sales taxes, property taxes, excise taxes, and other taxes not even accounted for by your 45% figure; the income taxes do not yield many practical, down-on-the-ground results apart from the relatively small portion of the federal budget that goes to state-bound block grants.