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In total taxes paid per capita the US isn’t far off from the countries of Western Europe. But they get universal health care and mass transit that’s actually go
by bradleyjg 5y ago
In total taxes paid per capita the US isn’t far off from the countries of Western Europe. But they get universal health care and mass transit that’s actually good, we get F35s, surgeons that drive Ferraris, and tens of thousands of college administrators.
- lumost 5y agoIn fairness, the basic premise of NATO was that the US would handle military protection of Western Europe in exchange for solidarity on foreign policy, trade, and economic development. If Nato didn't exist its debatable whether western Europe could maintain their existing level of defense expenditure. The EU would also need to manage increased defense expenditure amongst member nations to avoid an arms race.
- MagnumOpus 5y agoIf Nato didn't exist, Western Europe could focus on building defending forces against Russia rather than spending their defense budget on expeditionary forces that need to tag along on American-led adventures like Iraq or Afghanistan.
- iab 5y agoHow would they effectively do that though without the cover of the US nuclear umbrella?
- bradleyjg 5y agoYou really think Germany couldn’t build all the nuclear weapons they wanted to?
- iab 5y agoI do think that - how would you go about testing them with a nuclear test-ban treaty in place? * Assuming that Germany remains responsible and doesn’t go NK route. Maybe that’s not reasonable. * also assume we are talking about modern thermonuclear weapons
- refurb 5y agoWhat? No. Not even close if you look at tax revenue versus GDP. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_revenue_to_GDP_ratio https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_rev... Western Europe is over 40% while the US is at 27%. And the US figure include all public healthcare spending which is 60% of all healthcare in the US. So even adding private spending it’s still lower.
- EliRivers 5y agoDon't forget to add employer contributions to health insurance in the US. That adds about 10% to the US rate (in as much as one can come up with a single figure for hundreds of millions of people). https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2019/04/08/us-workers-are-highly-taxed-when-you-count-health-premiums/ https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2019/04/08/us-workers-a...
- refurb 5y agoI did account for it and the tax rate is still lower. Public spending is about the same as private and public is 8% of GDP, so the US goes from 27% to 35%. Still significantly lower than Western Europe. https://www.commonwealthfund.org/international-health-policy-center/countries/united-states https://www.commonwealthfund.org/international-health-policy...
- EliRivers 5y agoI did account for it I don't believe you. I think if you originally accounted for it, you would have known that your original value of 27% was misleading and you would have expanded on it. If you did account for it, you wouldn't only now be saying 35%. The alternative is to believe that you DID know, and you deliberately misled; I think that's not the case though. I don't think you're a deliberate liar; I think you've got an ego. Got one myself and sometimes I do the same thing. You have NOW accounted for it, yes.
- unionpivo 5y agosure in percents. But US per capita makes more money, so the actual dollars to dollars are similar. EU GDP per capita is 46,888 US 68,309 68000/100*27 = 18360 47000/100*40 = 18800 Edit i took GDP from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP%29_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PP... 2021 estimates I was kind of surprised by this, when I ran the numbers.