Taxes shouldn't be a problem if you have basic things taken care of: education, health, security, infrastructures. That's something you have to take into accoun

Taxes shouldn't be a problem if you have basic things taken care of: education, health, security, infrastructures. That's something you have to take into account when you work in most of the EU countries and that's taken for granted. While both employer and employee are paying 50% taxes, you're doing so within a mostly public service framework. You might argue it's not good, or doesn't work properly, or has margin for improvement, and you're right, but it's overall pretty good. Also being taxed at 50% bracket, unless you want to be in the most hyped cities, you can live a great life in the EU. Like, it doesn't even make sense for "rockstar programmer" to strive for a SV paycheck anywhere in Europe, the reality is so different (cultural, costs of living, cost of entertainment, etc). That's why I commented on your previous post that you seem to want Europe to be something different, that's on a completely different direction the EU is going. About sales taxes, it seems that in July 2021 every business that want's to sell to EU customers they must collect and deliver sales taxes to the country of the buyer, periodically. So that will level-out a bit more the playing field, where people would gamble stuff wouldn't be checked by customs. Now the EU should pressure to end the subsidized exports from China. I agree with you about set the Standard to English, and reform grants based on bureaucracy, and GDPR should be indeed simplified at least for small businesses that aren't hoarding data. >Increase border security This is a complex problem, where border security won't simply fix it.