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The huge disincentive to work is the amount of tax you have to pay. In my country, if you are successful, you can easily get to a point to pay over 50% tax on w

The huge disincentive to work is the amount of tax you have to pay. In my country, if you are successful, you can easily get to a point to pay over 50% tax on what you make, which effectively means you work most of the year for the tax man and not yourself. It may sound selfish, but if you look at the poor quality of public services and if you need to see a doctor you still have to go private, because NHS is crap, you'll feel miserable. People simply don't want to be cheated by the state, so they rather choose odd cash in hand jobs.

aSanchezStern 4y ago
> which effectively means you work most of the year for the tax man and not yourself That would be true, if we lived in a world where your gross salary corresponded linearly to the amount of work you did. In that world, the hardest-working CEO would make 3x (maybe in some extreme cases 5x) what the laziest server made. But instead we live in a world where the "successful" make 100x-1000x, because that money isn't coming from their effort, it's coming from a combination of government subsidies (you may not be using the NHS, but the poor people who make your job possible certaintly are) and extreme power imbalances in market conditions that allow them to pay the people on the ground creating the value very little.
- varispeed 4y ago
  Not sure how your point makes any sense. Worker is contracted to work 9 to 5. Regardless if they WFH and put their feet up for the entire year doing nothing, or they work their bottom off, the majority of time they are required to commit is paid to the tax man.