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What's not often discussed in the same conversation is how high your effective tax rate is. Most Americans think the idea of, for example, a 58-61% effective ta

What's not often discussed in the same conversation is how high your effective tax rate is. Most Americans think the idea of, for example, a 58-61% effective tax rate in Sweden is simply ridiculous.

on_and_off 7y ago
Funny you would mention Sweden, it is on the top of the list of countries I plan to move to after spending some time in the USA :)
yakz 7y ago
But don't you need to add in the employer+employee health insurance premium on top of the taxes for most Americans?
- throwaway156503 7y ago
  Yes, but compared to an effective tax rate of 2X.XX%, most Americans do not pay 40% of their gross income to health care, and they like it that way. Everyone wants affordable healthcare in America, the question is a matter of where Americans spend on line items, but the debates in America revolve mostly around ideological concepts and not budget concerns directly.
  - AstralStorm 7y ago
    The remaining question is: if you spent the extra 10%, would you get Canadian levels of healthcare or not, for everyone? Also why compare to Sweden, cherrypicking? Could pick any other EU country. Or Canada. And it's not 40% towards healthcare. It's at most 27% of total tax (less because it's bracketed alongside education) - most of tax is other social spending, a lot of that being retired people. So healthcare is 7-10% of Sweden's GDP, or so. And falling. This being one of the most expensive healthcare systems in the EU, if not the most expensive. I guess you're trying to hide that your argument is invalid. Trying to justify US mismanagement or lack of health policies. For your information, USA spend almost 18% of GDP on government funded healthcare. And still rising. And USA is 28% richer than Sweden per capita, PPP normalized. This ignores additional private costs, which are probably significant. And getting very uneven access. Some in insurance and medical industry are striking it rich, who cares about social costs. A) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Sweden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Sweden B) https://www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and-systems/statistics-trends-and-reports/nationalhealthexpenddata/nationalhealthaccountshistorical.html https://www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and-systems/sta... C) https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Sweden/United-States/Economy https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Sweden/Uni... Who cares about reality when there's a narrative waiting to be pushed.
    - throwaway156503 7y ago
      > Who cares about reality when there's a narrative waiting to be pushed. What narrative? These are hard numbers. There's no debate. If you took my income and compared it against American tax law and Swedish tax law, I'd be paying literally over double, nearly triple in taxes if I was Swedish versus if I was American. There's no "extra 10%," your math is just plain wrong. What a perverse argument; I don't even try to justify anything in my original statements.

What's not often discussed in the same conversation is how high your effective tax rate is. Most Americans think the idea of, for example, a 58-61% effective tax rate in Sweden is simply ridiculous.

on_and_off 7y ago

Funny you would mention Sweden, it is on the top of the list of countries I plan to move to after spending some time in the USA :)

yakz 7y ago

But don't you need to add in the employer+employee health insurance premium on top of the taxes for most Americans?

throwaway156503 7y ago
Yes, but compared to an effective tax rate of 2X.XX%, most Americans do not pay 40% of their gross income to health care, and they like it that way. Everyone wants affordable healthcare in America, the question is a matter of where Americans spend on line items, but the debates in America revolve mostly around ideological concepts and not budget concerns directly.
- AstralStorm 7y ago
  The remaining question is: if you spent the extra 10%, would you get Canadian levels of healthcare or not, for everyone? Also why compare to Sweden, cherrypicking? Could pick any other EU country. Or Canada. And it's not 40% towards healthcare. It's at most 27% of total tax (less because it's bracketed alongside education) - most of tax is other social spending, a lot of that being retired people. So healthcare is 7-10% of Sweden's GDP, or so. And falling. This being one of the most expensive healthcare systems in the EU, if not the most expensive. I guess you're trying to hide that your argument is invalid. Trying to justify US mismanagement or lack of health policies. For your information, USA spend almost 18% of GDP on government funded healthcare. And still rising. And USA is 28% richer than Sweden per capita, PPP normalized. This ignores additional private costs, which are probably significant. And getting very uneven access. Some in insurance and medical industry are striking it rich, who cares about social costs. A) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Sweden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Sweden B) https://www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and-systems/statistics-trends-and-reports/nationalhealthexpenddata/nationalhealthaccountshistorical.html https://www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and-systems/sta... C) https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Sweden/United-States/Economy https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Sweden/Uni... Who cares about reality when there's a narrative waiting to be pushed.
  - throwaway156503 7y ago
    > Who cares about reality when there's a narrative waiting to be pushed. What narrative? These are hard numbers. There's no debate. If you took my income and compared it against American tax law and Swedish tax law, I'd be paying literally over double, nearly triple in taxes if I was Swedish versus if I was American. There's no "extra 10%," your math is just plain wrong. What a perverse argument; I don't even try to justify anything in my original statements.