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The overwhelming majority of a person's expenditures (Housing, education, medical, most of the food you buy at the grocery, many forms of transportation) are no
by vkou 3y ago
The overwhelming majority of a person's expenditures (Housing, education, medical, most of the food you buy at the grocery, many forms of transportation) are not covered by VAT. Many forms of energy (residential electricity, gas) are covered at a vastly reduced VAT.
And, again, the giant bugbear that is health insurance rears its ugly head on the US side. See the overall 'Taxes as a % of GDP' comparisons.
Edit: I stand corrected about taxes as % of GDP. You are right, that the UK is at 33.5%. [1] Unfortunately, again, that doesn't include the percentage of US spending on healthcare - which is 17.8% of its GDP, with much of it coming out of after-tax dollars, instead of pre-tax ones. (Medicaid and Medicare make up about a third of that - and are, obviously, financed by taxes.)
[1] https://www.oecd.org/tax/revenue-statistics-united-kingdom.pdf https://www.oecd.org/tax/revenue-statistics-united-kingdom.p...
- dragonwriter 3y ago> And, again, the giant bugbear that is health insurance rears its ugly head on the US side Sure, yes, that's a bigger non-tax expense for individuals in the US. The US having by far the least efficient healthcare system in the world is a huge problem. > See the overall ‘Taxes as a % of GDP’ comparisons. Yes, I’ve updated my post to address your wildly inaccurate “Taxes as a % of GDP” comparison, using the most recently published OECD data which shows that you were close for the US, and way low for the UK.
- vkou 3y agoAnd I've updated my post to point out the mountain of US post-tax healthcare spending, that in the UK, largely comes out of pre-tax pounds. At the end of the day, Americans still pay, and pay more. 26% in taxes, and then another ~11% in non-government-covered (non-Medicare/Medicaid) healthcare spending.
- dragonwriter 3y ago> At the end of the day, Americans still pay, and pay more They pay less in taxes, by a wide margin. They also get less for them, by a wide margin, particularly (but not exclusively) in healthcare.
- vkou 3y agoI've been corrected (my initial data was wrong, I've updated my post), and I agree on both points. I do, however, posit that when it comes to determining whether an economy/society/??? is healthy (which is the conversation in this sub-thread), we need to look at all of these 'costs of life/business'. So, yes, the sticker price on the UK looks rough, but add it all up... And it comes out to be pretty similar. As it turns out, providing similar forms of services costs... About the same, across the developed world.
- armitron 3y agoReally? I have top of the line healthcare through my employer in the US, which also covers my wife and teenage daughters, which costs me essentially nothing. NHS in the UK is collapsing, but even if it didn't, qualitatively it's orders of magnitude worse than what one would receive in the US through one's employer: Months to years for an appointment, incompetent doctors and a bureaucracy that puts Kafka to shame. https://www.economist.com/britain/2022/04/30/the-nhs-is-in-seriously-poor-shape https://www.economist.com/britain/2022/04/30/the-nhs-is-in-s... https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/01/02/collapse-nhs-tragically-predictable/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/01/02/collapse-nhs-tra... Yes US healthcare has issues but it's nowhere near as bad as UK.
- ohgodplsno 3y agoSo you have an employer paying tens of thousands a year to get you health insurance, leading to a situation where only the most well off can have access to healthcare. The NHS is struggling because there's a shit load of people to treat with very little means. The US healthcare system is doing well because it leeches money off of the most well off and lets the poorest die.
- scott_w 3y agoThe NHS is struggling because the Tory government is deliberately running it down. You didn’t see the many crises it faces under Labour.