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Is there any evidence for that assertion ? I mean you take any European country such as Norway, Denmark, Netherlands, Switzerland, UK, and even France. Where ta
by dmode 6y ago
Is there any evidence for that assertion ? I mean you take any European country such as Norway, Denmark, Netherlands, Switzerland, UK, and even France. Where taxes are remarkably high, and definitely far fewer billionaires per capita. Europe has better health outcomes, better income equality, and extremely low poverty rate compared to the US. [1]
[1] https://data.oecd.org/netherlands.htm https://data.oecd.org/netherlands.htm
- alentist 6y agoNote: Income inequality [0] and poverty rate [1] are in-distribution relative measures, not absolute measures. You could “improve” these measures by making everyone worse off (i.e. a Pareto worsening). [0] https://data.oecd.org/inequality/income-inequality.htm https://data.oecd.org/inequality/income-inequality.htm [1] https://data.oecd.org/inequality/poverty-rate.htm https://data.oecd.org/inequality/poverty-rate.htm
- gok 6y agoNorway, Sweden, Switzerland, and Iceland all have more billionaires per capita than the US.
- inflagranti 6y agoAnd both Switzerland and Norway have a wealth tax.
- gok 6y agoTrue, though in the case of Switzerland there is no capital gains tax
- onlyrealcuzzo 6y agoEurope is not the egalitarian utopia most Americans seem to think it is. Germany's wealth gini coefficient is 79.1. The US is 85.9 (100% is complete inequality, higher is worse). Sweden and Norway are both in the 80s also -- two countries people in the US constantly point to as places where things are "fair". But in terms of wealth (and income) inequality, it's not that much different. https://www.gfmag.com/global-data/economic-data/wealth-distribution-income-inequality https://www.gfmag.com/global-data/economic-data/wealth-distr...
- apexalpha 6y agoWell in defense of the European countries, the wealth might be unequally distributed here as well, but you also don't need wealth/money for education, health care, child care and/or pension.
- R0b0t1 6y agoIf you don't need money you need luck, especially for education. There are limited seats. And in Germany, you are on track for university or not when you are very young.