4 ms·

For us, there's just too much money taken off our wages to guarantee long-term safety and stability for even a single child. And wage increases barely touch tha

For us, there's just too much money taken off our wages to guarantee long-term safety and stability for even a single child. And wage increases barely touch that: The leftover amount is almost constant over a factor of 2 in income increase.

xethos 2y ago
Your phrasing implies you blame high tax rates, but I'd first attack this from the opposite end: the market for housing has not been leaving enough in your pocket, with capital (whether morgage lenders with interest rates, or, more likely, landlords) soaking up any excess gained by your pay increase
- bun_terminator 2y ago
  Both taxes and rent take their part, but taxes several times more. So yes I blame taxes because that's almost the entire problem. Pay increases not resulting in more income is an effect of a highly complex tax structure that essentially takes of as much as possible without people going on a killing spree.
  - piva00 2y ago
    Blaming taxes while not blaming the capture of most of the value from increased productivity by companies is a bit dissonant. Taxes help to fund society as a whole, corporate profits skyrocketing is not helping society as a whole.
    - bun_terminator 2y ago
      That's fair I guess. But I never worked for any huge company with huge profits. In fact they're small enough that I know pretty well that they're not making much profit at all. But this argument might hold more weight in bigger companies, which don't really pay that much better. Regardless, most of my taxes are not used to improve society. A bug chunk is sent far away, another chunk is used to fund the system itself. It would be trivial (!) to chop off half of the tax without a net detriment to society.
      - piva00 2y ago
        > It would be trivial (!) to chop off half of the tax without a net detriment to society. If you have a good trivial plan on how to do it why do you believe it hasn't been done yet? Political complexities arise quickly, as neat and simple as you might see the solution there's whole systems behind that make it less trivial, systems with needs that have to be catered for to any change to happen. > A bug chunk is sent far away, another chunk is used to fund the system itself. Is the chunk being sent far away really useless? Or cutting it off will have outsized consequences after the fact that you aren't able to predict? How do you go about finding that out and being able to balance what's necessary if consequences would appear after 10-30 years? The system needs to work, it needs funding, what are you proposing? To just cut it all off? I think you haven't thought deeply enough about this issue if you think it's trivial to solve.
        bun_terminator 2y ago
        You write under the assumption that the people in charge have the goal to efficiently use resources to give back utility to the citizens who fund the system. That is quite naive IMO, with a mountain of evidence to the contrary. I would be suggesting obviously massive changes in policy. Which is (I kid you not) illegal for me to say because there are several pieces of legislation in Germany that protect the government from critics. In particular there are laws to punish people who want to change the status quo. The part I am allowed to say out loud is that the number of people employed by the state has to be drastically reduced. Their legendary low workload is an obvious sign that they're being employed only to ensure their vote. Also some of the wages in the public sector are ridiculous and need to be almost halved to put them back into reality. But regardless of the specifics: It would still be very straightforward and obvious to anyone who has ever taken a cursory look at the national finances.
        piva00 2y ago
        > You write under the assumption that the people in charge have the goal to efficiently use resources to give back utility to the citizens who fund the system. That is quite naive IMO, with a mountain of evidence to the contrary. Not at all, I'm writing under the assumption that to change the status quo there's a huge political issue underlying it which is the core tenet for why it's hard to change and not trivial at all. It's trivial if we ignore this reality, it's absolutely not trivial when you have to consider the political ramifications of getting rid of a huge chunk of public servants, changing stuff under a democracy is never trivial exactly because of the issue you mention: votes. If you harm a part of the population in most cases you'll lose their votes, which is a counterbalance for "trivial" changes that would cause some harm without any sort of pandering to those voters to not be left behind.
bitshiftfaced 2y ago
I have to say, I'm skeptical of this claim. But I'm not that familiar with the tax code of most countries. Mind sharing what country this is where this would be true?

xethos 2y ago

Your phrasing implies you blame high tax rates, but I'd first attack this from the opposite end: the market for housing has not been leaving enough in your pocket, with capital (whether morgage lenders with interest rates, or, more likely, landlords) soaking up any excess gained by your pay increase

bun_terminator 2y ago
Both taxes and rent take their part, but taxes several times more. So yes I blame taxes because that's almost the entire problem. Pay increases not resulting in more income is an effect of a highly complex tax structure that essentially takes of as much as possible without people going on a killing spree.
- piva00 2y ago
  Blaming taxes while not blaming the capture of most of the value from increased productivity by companies is a bit dissonant. Taxes help to fund society as a whole, corporate profits skyrocketing is not helping society as a whole.
  - bun_terminator 2y ago
    That's fair I guess. But I never worked for any huge company with huge profits. In fact they're small enough that I know pretty well that they're not making much profit at all. But this argument might hold more weight in bigger companies, which don't really pay that much better. Regardless, most of my taxes are not used to improve society. A bug chunk is sent far away, another chunk is used to fund the system itself. It would be trivial (!) to chop off half of the tax without a net detriment to society.
    - piva00 2y ago
      > It would be trivial (!) to chop off half of the tax without a net detriment to society. If you have a good trivial plan on how to do it why do you believe it hasn't been done yet? Political complexities arise quickly, as neat and simple as you might see the solution there's whole systems behind that make it less trivial, systems with needs that have to be catered for to any change to happen. > A bug chunk is sent far away, another chunk is used to fund the system itself. Is the chunk being sent far away really useless? Or cutting it off will have outsized consequences after the fact that you aren't able to predict? How do you go about finding that out and being able to balance what's necessary if consequences would appear after 10-30 years? The system needs to work, it needs funding, what are you proposing? To just cut it all off? I think you haven't thought deeply enough about this issue if you think it's trivial to solve.
      - bun_terminator 2y ago
        You write under the assumption that the people in charge have the goal to efficiently use resources to give back utility to the citizens who fund the system. That is quite naive IMO, with a mountain of evidence to the contrary. I would be suggesting obviously massive changes in policy. Which is (I kid you not) illegal for me to say because there are several pieces of legislation in Germany that protect the government from critics. In particular there are laws to punish people who want to change the status quo. The part I am allowed to say out loud is that the number of people employed by the state has to be drastically reduced. Their legendary low workload is an obvious sign that they're being employed only to ensure their vote. Also some of the wages in the public sector are ridiculous and need to be almost halved to put them back into reality. But regardless of the specifics: It would still be very straightforward and obvious to anyone who has ever taken a cursory look at the national finances.
        piva00 2y ago
        > You write under the assumption that the people in charge have the goal to efficiently use resources to give back utility to the citizens who fund the system. That is quite naive IMO, with a mountain of evidence to the contrary. Not at all, I'm writing under the assumption that to change the status quo there's a huge political issue underlying it which is the core tenet for why it's hard to change and not trivial at all. It's trivial if we ignore this reality, it's absolutely not trivial when you have to consider the political ramifications of getting rid of a huge chunk of public servants, changing stuff under a democracy is never trivial exactly because of the issue you mention: votes. If you harm a part of the population in most cases you'll lose their votes, which is a counterbalance for "trivial" changes that would cause some harm without any sort of pandering to those voters to not be left behind.

bitshiftfaced 2y ago

I have to say, I'm skeptical of this claim. But I'm not that familiar with the tax code of most countries. Mind sharing what country this is where this would be true?