14 ms·

I always found this system very interesting, since the citizen can decide how some of their tax money is spent (besides voting). On the other hand I have alway

by pgz 8y ago

I always found this system very interesting, since the citizen can decide how some of their tax money is spent (besides voting). On the other hand I have always lived in Northern Italy, and around half of my taxes go to the poorer regions of Italy, mostly to be squandered by corruption, clientelism, and organized crime.

21 8y ago
> On the other hand I have always lived in Northern Italy, and around half of my taxes go to the poorer regions of Italy Everybody says that, Catalonia that it pays more to Spain that it receives back, California and New York to the rest of US... But it's the only way to have nation states, otherwise we'd have to go back to city states (which some people like Taleb actually advice).
- jessaustin 8y ago
  It's inevitable given the political structure. Since votes are distributed by area and population rather than by wealth, wealthier political divisions will necessarily bribe poorer ones into political compromises that are closer to the wealthier divisions' preferences than they would have been without bribery. The only way to prevent that would be for the overall polity to have much lower taxes and thus much less money to divert to interdivisional bribery. (In many polities, this would be very much against the preferences of the wealthier divisions, so this "solution" is never seriously contemplated.) Of course, TFA describes a different way to come to substantially the same result. Tokyo still makes the important decisions.
  - overdrivetg 8y ago
    Wait - are you claiming that New Jersey is somehow bribing New Mexico for policy concessions? https://www.moneytips.com/is-your-state-a-net-payer-or-a-net-taker/356 https://www.moneytips.com/is-your-state-a-net-payer-or-a-net...
    - innocentfelon 8y ago
      Seems plausible. 1000mi of mostly rural interstate highways (how NJ gets its goods from points west), plus nuclear weapons development, testing, and disposal are popular enough with the NM locals, as are anti-poverty programs, but yank the federal funding, and the locals would be far less friendly to NJ telling NM to supply or pay for these things on its own.
    - jessaustin 8y ago
      New Mexico may be a bit of an outlier since they aren't deep red like some other western states? I would certainly say that New Jersey is bribing e.g. Montana, North Dakota, etc. If the residents of those states had their way, the Department of Interior would be run differently, entitlements would be lower, Israel wouldn't get so much support, etc.
      - kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
        > entitlements would be lower That's just the political rhetoric. Red-staters love their entitlements just so long as they go to the "right" people.
        jessaustin 8y ago
        The red states are not a monolith. You might get a majority of support for some entitlements in Georgia or West Virginia. You won't get that in Wyoming or the Dakotas. Maybe those aren't the entitlements you're talking about, though. This "right people" entitlement: which one is that? Which entitlement goes to white males but not minority females? If you mean some boondoggle for rich people, I already mentioned the military and Drug War spending upthread. Besmirching all entitlements by association with that crap would be dishonest.
  - simias 8y ago
    "Bribe" is way too loaded, you could also call it social justice and redistribution, a way to give poorer areas better chances to improve their life. Saying that redistribution is bribery is about the same level of discourse as saying that taxes are theft and prison kidnapping.
    - jessaustin 8y ago
      Those who pay attention to our "justice" system might go along with part of that... Besides lots of these transfers have nothing to do with "social justice"; they're military spending or Drug War stupidity or similar. The point is, if Kansas were run the way that actual Kansans would democratically choose to run it, it would be even more awful than it already is. (It would also be better, in some ways, but we don't need to argue about that.) Those sweet federal dollars convince them to make different political decisions than they would have made otherwise.
    - gknoy 8y ago
      > Saying that redistribution is bribery is about the same level of discourse as saying that taxes are theft and prison kidnapping I have friends who say literally that (taxes are theft). How does one argue against that? I have a hard time finding a way that it's technically wrong. I mean, taxation is literally the state taking your money (whether you want it or not, voted against it or not, etc). I can't help but feel that there's some difference, but I can't find what it is. Do you have suggestions on readings that would inform me better on the issue?
      - jlawson 8y ago
        Thieves usually don't give you something in return. It's more like "a deal you can't refuse". You get something back, but it's probably not just what you wanted. But it's something. Taxation is much more like "protection money" than theft.
- blattimwind 8y ago
  Tax redistribution inside nations or in nation unions (like the EU) is pretty much an investment. It generally generates more money than spent on it. E.g. Germany is the largest net contributor to the EU, but guess what would happen if Germany decided to stop putting out those few billions a year. Yeah, not so good for the economy (not just of Germany, pretty much everyone). Turns out, those few billions spurred trade much greater than that. It's literally "one stick, alone, weak — many sticks, together, stronk". Just that the bundle is stronger than its constituents. (I've heard the UK is working earnestly on an experiment confirming this.)
  - thaumasiotes 8y ago
    > It's literally "one stick, alone, weak — many sticks, together, stronk". I can't wait for tax redistribution to be renamed "fascism". :D
    - barrow-rider 8y ago
      For the uninitiated: Italian Fascism was so named as a reference to classical Roman Fasces, which was a bundle of sticks or rods wrapped around an axe that symbolized authority.
      - jlawson 8y ago
        It symbolized solidarity, not so much authority. The small sticks work together and act as one.
        int_19h 8y ago
        Fasces very much symbolized authority initially. It is no coincidence that the rods in fasces were birch. And, of course, there's that ax in the middle...
  - labster 8y ago
    > It's literally "one stick, alone, weak — many sticks, together, stronk". So that's why they say those people are living in the sticks.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  California and New York are the size of countries. Why couldn't they function on their own as countries? I think a lot of states would be better served if they operated more autonomously and the federal government managed less of their business. I get that in certain cases that's not the optimal situation for resource allocation but freedom has a price.
  - pantonia 8y ago
    They are the size of countries like Italy. Read above, they too are annoyed at the freeloaders they have to support. Why should the Bay Area have to subsidize Bakersfield?? Make them city-states and Manhattan will resent the Bronx (not that they don't now).
  - dmurray 8y ago
    They could function as independent countries, for better or worse. But it generally looks like states don't want more autonomy: over 240 years the US federal government has taken on more and more power at the expense of the states, facing minimal resistance apart from a single bloody civil war where the heroes are universally agreed to be the side fighting for more powers for the federal government.
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      > civil war where the heroes are universally agreed to be the side fighting for more powers for the federal government. The Union wasn't fighting for more powers for the federal government, just for the integrity of the existing federal government and it's powers. The war resulted in some expansion of federal power, but that wasn't what motivated the Union.
      - dmurray 8y ago
        Sure, that's a reasonable way to look at it, and the only way consistent with having the victors write the history books. In the same way that the Commerce Clause always allowed the federal government to regulate growing wheat for personal consumption, the Constitution already allowed the federal government to forbid slavery - it just took a civil war or a supreme court hearing to make sure everyone agreed on that. Under that view, the 13th Amendment was legally redundant, but was passed just to leave absolutely no room for doubt.
- DrJokepu 8y ago
  Economic inequalities exist on every level. In a sovereign city state, the wealthier neighborhoods would subsidize the less wealthy neighborhoods.
SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
> On the other hand I have always lived in Northern Italy, and around half of my taxes go to the poorer regions of Italy, mostly to be squandered by corruption, clientelism, and organized crime. Heh, funny that richer parts of the EU say this about Italy itself.
- HarryHirsch 8y ago
  That's just because their unwashed masses are only familiar with economic migrants from Southern Italy. If you paid any of them a holiday to Turin or Milan they wouldn't know what befell them, they couldn't even identify the country!
  - coldtea 8y ago
    Thanks for the subtle racism towards southern italians...
    - delinka 8y ago
      Are Souther Italians their own race?
      - narag 8y ago
        I thought that the current consensus was that races don't really exist. "Modern" racism can be more subtle than that, more about xenophobia or just classism.
        ensignro2340 8y ago
        > I thought that the current consensus was that races don't really exist. Races do not exist biologically[0][1], but they do 'exist' as a social construct[2][3][4]. And I second your second sentence :) [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrKrGkgeww4&index=4&list=PLyVghncmfCibQ1kgPyQEuRfb2V8qQHP_B&t=0s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrKrGkgeww4&index=4&list=PLy... [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/race-is-a-social-construct-scientists-argue/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/race-is-a-social-... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_constructionism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_constructionism [3] https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/05/what-we-mean-when-we-say-race-is-a-social-construct/275872/ https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/05/what-we... [4] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/without-prejudice/201612/race-social-construction https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/without-prejudice/20...
asmithmd1 8y ago
For US income taxes the only amount of your taxes that you can direct is $3 for the presidential election fund. Why not expand this and let you pick from a dozen or so categories?
- kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
  Then people would be gravely offended by who was and wasn't on the list of choices.
  - Brockenstein 8y ago
    Well they're already greatly offended by taxes and the idea that civilization requires money to run... I think outside of being offended, you'd just have a hard to getting any agreements on what would qualify.
    - asah 8y ago
      I'd love to see a large scale survey where people allocate their taxes, and see what the allocation actually comes to! The HN crowd might over-allocate $1000s per person to NSF, NIH and NASA and short Social Security while 100+M people contribute $0 to science, but depend on SS to survive. We might end up with the same budget but people feeling more in control. We'd also see large scale advertising which is actually a good thing: ads are pretty cheap/efficient, make people feel better about their government and society, and employ an army of creative people. I imagine you wouldn't see branches of government running negative ads against each other - it would be more like the feel-good military recruiting ads today. Sorry if this sounds utopian, I've had a rough week (in addition to everybody's rough week) and need something to feel good about.
      - jfim 8y ago
        That would end up in a popularity contest between agencies, which I doubt is desirable, especially considering some of those disliked agencies [1] are actually useful (like the FDA and the department of education). And hang in there, the weekend is almost there. :-) [1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonexaminer.com/which-federal-agencies-do-americans-hate-most%3f_amp=true https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonexaminer.com/whic...
narag 8y ago
...around half of my taxes go to the poorer regions... And then the cause of the problem is presented as if it were the solution.
walterstucco 8y ago
I live in northern Italy, but I am from Rome, "Roma Roma" as we say in Italy This is simply not true Half of your taxes pay for Formigoni that takes bribes from healthcare in Lombardy Pointing out what's wrong in our country is good, blindly believing in black propaganda is not.
ai_ia 8y ago
On a side note, is there any system that exists where citizen can decide to a greater autonomy how there tax money is spent?
- gph 8y ago
  Libertarianism. I hear they are testing it out in Oregon. /s
  - mmirate 8y ago
    Replace "Oregon" by "New Hampshire", and you can say the words with pride instead of sarcasm.
    - int_19h 8y ago
      Still going to be sarcasm, sorry. How many of those who pledged to move have actually moved?
      - mmirate 8y ago
        Sorry, I don't have those numbers on-hand. What I do have on-hand is that NH has a higher median income than any other nation in the world (incl Luxembourg), despite being a net-payer of federal taxes. (Source: https://mises.org/wire/if-sweden-and-germany-became-us-states-they-would-be-among-poorest-states https://mises.org/wire/if-sweden-and-germany-became-us-state...)
        int_19h 8y ago
        I seriously doubt it has anything to do with the FSP. Of course, the median income metric is not the end-all be-all, either. For example, it ignores all the state-provided benefits that those high taxes pay for.
        danso 8y ago
        It's true that NH has traditionally been in the top-tier of states when it comes to median household income. In the 2016 ACS, it appears to have reached the top: https://www.pressherald.com/2017/09/13/the-state-with-highest-median-income-is-new-hampshire/ https://www.pressherald.com/2017/09/13/the-state-with-highes... But its lead is not an overwhelming one. Connecticut's 2016 median hh income was just ~$350 less. According to the the previous ACS in 2015, NH was number 8. And 6 of the top 7 were traditionally blue states. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ... - 1. Maryland - 2. DC - 3. Hawaii - 4. Alaska - 5. New Jersey - 6. Connecticut - 7. Massachusetts
mann1x 8y ago
Amazingly you keep living under your dome of ignorance, blind to the obvious, spreading lies around. Your half taxes are stolen by criminals all around Italy, most of them are your neighbors in the North. Going around on a Ferrari, wearing Rolex and spending hundreds of Euro for an aperitivo. Your money too. That money it's routed to the South and mostly goes back to "hard working" companies from the North. In inflated or just fake invoices, overpriced goods. Most of the successful companies in the South are just plain mafia or subdued by them. Who doesn't get burned to the ground. Honest people in the South they have to either work for them for half your salary or just spread around the world. That's why most of Italian ex-pats are form the South: they work twice hard as you, earn less and are forced to a very uneasy self-imposed exile. You should take conscience how lucky you are. There's the same amount of good & bad people all around Italy: those in the North are just lucky because the South is more beautiful and rich, perfect prey to ransack. Thanks to the populist far-right extremists of the Lega nothing will change anytime soon. They profited on this kind of ignorance to take power, accusing "Romans" to steal your money. While spreading hate, racism, xenophobia and homophobia they took advantage of the system they promised were fighting and stole hundreds of millions. That's their chunk of your half taxes.
- dang 8y ago
  This post breaks the HN guidelines. Personal attacks, as well as political and national (or whatever this) flamewar, will get you banned here. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't post like this to HN.

by pgz 8y ago

21 8y ago

> On the other hand I have always lived in Northern Italy, and around half of my taxes go to the poorer regions of Italy Everybody says that, Catalonia that it pays more to Spain that it receives back, California and New York to the rest of US... But it's the only way to have nation states, otherwise we'd have to go back to city states (which some people like Taleb actually advice).

jessaustin 8y ago
It's inevitable given the political structure. Since votes are distributed by area and population rather than by wealth, wealthier political divisions will necessarily bribe poorer ones into political compromises that are closer to the wealthier divisions' preferences than they would have been without bribery. The only way to prevent that would be for the overall polity to have much lower taxes and thus much less money to divert to interdivisional bribery. (In many polities, this would be very much against the preferences of the wealthier divisions, so this "solution" is never seriously contemplated.) Of course, TFA describes a different way to come to substantially the same result. Tokyo still makes the important decisions.
- overdrivetg 8y ago
  Wait - are you claiming that New Jersey is somehow bribing New Mexico for policy concessions? https://www.moneytips.com/is-your-state-a-net-payer-or-a-net-taker/356 https://www.moneytips.com/is-your-state-a-net-payer-or-a-net...
  - innocentfelon 8y ago
    Seems plausible. 1000mi of mostly rural interstate highways (how NJ gets its goods from points west), plus nuclear weapons development, testing, and disposal are popular enough with the NM locals, as are anti-poverty programs, but yank the federal funding, and the locals would be far less friendly to NJ telling NM to supply or pay for these things on its own.
  - jessaustin 8y ago
    New Mexico may be a bit of an outlier since they aren't deep red like some other western states? I would certainly say that New Jersey is bribing e.g. Montana, North Dakota, etc. If the residents of those states had their way, the Department of Interior would be run differently, entitlements would be lower, Israel wouldn't get so much support, etc.
    - kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
      > entitlements would be lower That's just the political rhetoric. Red-staters love their entitlements just so long as they go to the "right" people.
      - jessaustin 8y ago
        The red states are not a monolith. You might get a majority of support for some entitlements in Georgia or West Virginia. You won't get that in Wyoming or the Dakotas. Maybe those aren't the entitlements you're talking about, though. This "right people" entitlement: which one is that? Which entitlement goes to white males but not minority females? If you mean some boondoggle for rich people, I already mentioned the military and Drug War spending upthread. Besmirching all entitlements by association with that crap would be dishonest.
- simias 8y ago
  "Bribe" is way too loaded, you could also call it social justice and redistribution, a way to give poorer areas better chances to improve their life. Saying that redistribution is bribery is about the same level of discourse as saying that taxes are theft and prison kidnapping.
  - jessaustin 8y ago
    Those who pay attention to our "justice" system might go along with part of that... Besides lots of these transfers have nothing to do with "social justice"; they're military spending or Drug War stupidity or similar. The point is, if Kansas were run the way that actual Kansans would democratically choose to run it, it would be even more awful than it already is. (It would also be better, in some ways, but we don't need to argue about that.) Those sweet federal dollars convince them to make different political decisions than they would have made otherwise.
  - gknoy 8y ago
    > Saying that redistribution is bribery is about the same level of discourse as saying that taxes are theft and prison kidnapping I have friends who say literally that (taxes are theft). How does one argue against that? I have a hard time finding a way that it's technically wrong. I mean, taxation is literally the state taking your money (whether you want it or not, voted against it or not, etc). I can't help but feel that there's some difference, but I can't find what it is. Do you have suggestions on readings that would inform me better on the issue?
    - jlawson 8y ago
      Thieves usually don't give you something in return. It's more like "a deal you can't refuse". You get something back, but it's probably not just what you wanted. But it's something. Taxation is much more like "protection money" than theft.
blattimwind 8y ago
Tax redistribution inside nations or in nation unions (like the EU) is pretty much an investment. It generally generates more money than spent on it. E.g. Germany is the largest net contributor to the EU, but guess what would happen if Germany decided to stop putting out those few billions a year. Yeah, not so good for the economy (not just of Germany, pretty much everyone). Turns out, those few billions spurred trade much greater than that. It's literally "one stick, alone, weak — many sticks, together, stronk". Just that the bundle is stronger than its constituents. (I've heard the UK is working earnestly on an experiment confirming this.)
- thaumasiotes 8y ago
  > It's literally "one stick, alone, weak — many sticks, together, stronk". I can't wait for tax redistribution to be renamed "fascism". :D
  - barrow-rider 8y ago
    For the uninitiated: Italian Fascism was so named as a reference to classical Roman Fasces, which was a bundle of sticks or rods wrapped around an axe that symbolized authority.
    - jlawson 8y ago
      It symbolized solidarity, not so much authority. The small sticks work together and act as one.
      - int_19h 8y ago
        Fasces very much symbolized authority initially. It is no coincidence that the rods in fasces were birch. And, of course, there's that ax in the middle...
- labster 8y ago
  > It's literally "one stick, alone, weak — many sticks, together, stronk". So that's why they say those people are living in the sticks.
dsfyu404ed 8y ago
California and New York are the size of countries. Why couldn't they function on their own as countries? I think a lot of states would be better served if they operated more autonomously and the federal government managed less of their business. I get that in certain cases that's not the optimal situation for resource allocation but freedom has a price.
- pantonia 8y ago
  They are the size of countries like Italy. Read above, they too are annoyed at the freeloaders they have to support. Why should the Bay Area have to subsidize Bakersfield?? Make them city-states and Manhattan will resent the Bronx (not that they don't now).
- dmurray 8y ago
  They could function as independent countries, for better or worse. But it generally looks like states don't want more autonomy: over 240 years the US federal government has taken on more and more power at the expense of the states, facing minimal resistance apart from a single bloody civil war where the heroes are universally agreed to be the side fighting for more powers for the federal government.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > civil war where the heroes are universally agreed to be the side fighting for more powers for the federal government. The Union wasn't fighting for more powers for the federal government, just for the integrity of the existing federal government and it's powers. The war resulted in some expansion of federal power, but that wasn't what motivated the Union.
    - dmurray 8y ago
      Sure, that's a reasonable way to look at it, and the only way consistent with having the victors write the history books. In the same way that the Commerce Clause always allowed the federal government to regulate growing wheat for personal consumption, the Constitution already allowed the federal government to forbid slavery - it just took a civil war or a supreme court hearing to make sure everyone agreed on that. Under that view, the 13th Amendment was legally redundant, but was passed just to leave absolutely no room for doubt.
DrJokepu 8y ago
Economic inequalities exist on every level. In a sovereign city state, the wealthier neighborhoods would subsidize the less wealthy neighborhoods.

SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago

> On the other hand I have always lived in Northern Italy, and around half of my taxes go to the poorer regions of Italy, mostly to be squandered by corruption, clientelism, and organized crime. Heh, funny that richer parts of the EU say this about Italy itself.

HarryHirsch 8y ago
That's just because their unwashed masses are only familiar with economic migrants from Southern Italy. If you paid any of them a holiday to Turin or Milan they wouldn't know what befell them, they couldn't even identify the country!
- coldtea 8y ago
  Thanks for the subtle racism towards southern italians...
  - delinka 8y ago
    Are Souther Italians their own race?
    - narag 8y ago
      I thought that the current consensus was that races don't really exist. "Modern" racism can be more subtle than that, more about xenophobia or just classism.
      - ensignro2340 8y ago
        > I thought that the current consensus was that races don't really exist. Races do not exist biologically[0][1], but they do 'exist' as a social construct[2][3][4]. And I second your second sentence :) [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrKrGkgeww4&index=4&list=PLyVghncmfCibQ1kgPyQEuRfb2V8qQHP_B&t=0s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrKrGkgeww4&index=4&list=PLy... [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/race-is-a-social-construct-scientists-argue/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/race-is-a-social-... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_constructionism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_constructionism [3] https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/05/what-we-mean-when-we-say-race-is-a-social-construct/275872/ https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/05/what-we... [4] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/without-prejudice/201612/race-social-construction https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/without-prejudice/20...

asmithmd1 8y ago

For US income taxes the only amount of your taxes that you can direct is $3 for the presidential election fund. Why not expand this and let you pick from a dozen or so categories?

kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
Then people would be gravely offended by who was and wasn't on the list of choices.
- Brockenstein 8y ago
  Well they're already greatly offended by taxes and the idea that civilization requires money to run... I think outside of being offended, you'd just have a hard to getting any agreements on what would qualify.
  - asah 8y ago
    I'd love to see a large scale survey where people allocate their taxes, and see what the allocation actually comes to! The HN crowd might over-allocate $1000s per person to NSF, NIH and NASA and short Social Security while 100+M people contribute $0 to science, but depend on SS to survive. We might end up with the same budget but people feeling more in control. We'd also see large scale advertising which is actually a good thing: ads are pretty cheap/efficient, make people feel better about their government and society, and employ an army of creative people. I imagine you wouldn't see branches of government running negative ads against each other - it would be more like the feel-good military recruiting ads today. Sorry if this sounds utopian, I've had a rough week (in addition to everybody's rough week) and need something to feel good about.
    - jfim 8y ago
      That would end up in a popularity contest between agencies, which I doubt is desirable, especially considering some of those disliked agencies [1] are actually useful (like the FDA and the department of education). And hang in there, the weekend is almost there. :-) [1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonexaminer.com/which-federal-agencies-do-americans-hate-most%3f_amp=true https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonexaminer.com/whic...

narag 8y ago

...around half of my taxes go to the poorer regions... And then the cause of the problem is presented as if it were the solution.

walterstucco 8y ago

I live in northern Italy, but I am from Rome, "Roma Roma" as we say in Italy This is simply not true Half of your taxes pay for Formigoni that takes bribes from healthcare in Lombardy Pointing out what's wrong in our country is good, blindly believing in black propaganda is not.

ai_ia 8y ago

On a side note, is there any system that exists where citizen can decide to a greater autonomy how there tax money is spent?

gph 8y ago
Libertarianism. I hear they are testing it out in Oregon. /s
- mmirate 8y ago
  Replace "Oregon" by "New Hampshire", and you can say the words with pride instead of sarcasm.
  - int_19h 8y ago
    Still going to be sarcasm, sorry. How many of those who pledged to move have actually moved?
    - mmirate 8y ago
      Sorry, I don't have those numbers on-hand. What I do have on-hand is that NH has a higher median income than any other nation in the world (incl Luxembourg), despite being a net-payer of federal taxes. (Source: https://mises.org/wire/if-sweden-and-germany-became-us-states-they-would-be-among-poorest-states https://mises.org/wire/if-sweden-and-germany-became-us-state...)
      - int_19h 8y ago
        I seriously doubt it has anything to do with the FSP. Of course, the median income metric is not the end-all be-all, either. For example, it ignores all the state-provided benefits that those high taxes pay for.
      - danso 8y ago
        It's true that NH has traditionally been in the top-tier of states when it comes to median household income. In the 2016 ACS, it appears to have reached the top: https://www.pressherald.com/2017/09/13/the-state-with-highest-median-income-is-new-hampshire/ https://www.pressherald.com/2017/09/13/the-state-with-highes... But its lead is not an overwhelming one. Connecticut's 2016 median hh income was just ~$350 less. According to the the previous ACS in 2015, NH was number 8. And 6 of the top 7 were traditionally blue states. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ... - 1. Maryland - 2. DC - 3. Hawaii - 4. Alaska - 5. New Jersey - 6. Connecticut - 7. Massachusetts

mann1x 8y ago

Amazingly you keep living under your dome of ignorance, blind to the obvious, spreading lies around. Your half taxes are stolen by criminals all around Italy, most of them are your neighbors in the North. Going around on a Ferrari, wearing Rolex and spending hundreds of Euro for an aperitivo. Your money too. That money it's routed to the South and mostly goes back to "hard working" companies from the North. In inflated or just fake invoices, overpriced goods. Most of the successful companies in the South are just plain mafia or subdued by them. Who doesn't get burned to the ground. Honest people in the South they have to either work for them for half your salary or just spread around the world. That's why most of Italian ex-pats are form the South: they work twice hard as you, earn less and are forced to a very uneasy self-imposed exile. You should take conscience how lucky you are. There's the same amount of good & bad people all around Italy: those in the North are just lucky because the South is more beautiful and rich, perfect prey to ransack. Thanks to the populist far-right extremists of the Lega nothing will change anytime soon. They profited on this kind of ignorance to take power, accusing "Romans" to steal your money. While spreading hate, racism, xenophobia and homophobia they took advantage of the system they promised were fighting and stole hundreds of millions. That's their chunk of your half taxes.

dang 8y ago
This post breaks the HN guidelines. Personal attacks, as well as political and national (or whatever this) flamewar, will get you banned here. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't post like this to HN.