Czech Republic has been a socialist state. Do you want to tell me they are not welfare enough yet?
The European social welfare state was created by conservative governments as a bulwark against socialism, initially by Bismarck. The Nordic countries and Germany are typical social welfare states. The Czech Republic is not, given its history of socialism and its fairly recent transition to democracy.
why cannot California do what EU does?
You mean cut public per capita social welfare spending in half, down to European levels, and massively raise taxes on the middle class? Because voters don't want to, simple as that. And American voters get what they want.
The tax burden on average workers in the Czech Republic is 42.6%, in the US, it's 31.5%. Sales tax in the Czech Republic is around 20%, in the US it is somewhere between 0% and 10%. Your claims don't even make sense for the Czech Republic, let alone for a regular European welfare state.
2) 3 out of the 10 best high schools in US are in my area. I don't think I picked specifically a place with the lousy education system. Who should I have picked? Kansas?
Yes, you live in a luxury enclave. California as a whole, however, ranks near the bottom of school performance among US states. And all Californians pay the same tax rates that you do.
3) I mean they are lacking electricity, running water, hospital within 4 hour driving distance,... basics even rural places in EU have.
I used to be living in a place "lacking electricity and runing water". There are multi-million dollar rural American homes have generators, wells, and septic systems. What you don't seem to understand is that people in the US choose rural living, for the high quality of life it provides. You project your Bohemian prejudices and preferences onto how other people live.
All correct. And while I typed it I reflected on that you likely meant in US dollars considering the higher GDP / capita of the US vs most nations.
I do all comparisons in $PPP. That is, the higher GDP/capita of the US already takes into account purchasing power.
Personally as I see it for an open country going the route of Sweden is complete madness because strong welfare as long as the country haven't become poor yet will just attract free-loaders
The US has already gone the way of Sweden in terms of welfare spending, the question is whether to curtail it, to tax accordingly, or live with the liability on the books.
But the US could simply say: Fuck off - and forget about any payments! too. Lending to the US would become less popular though =P
No, the US can't simply say "fuck off" because 2/3 of US national debt is held by Americans for their retirement. That's the way retirement works in the US.
The rich has gotten a larger and larger share of the US economy too which mean that the middle-class and lower-class doesn't necessarily have had the gains the economy at large have had and things have improved less there and that's one reason to be pissed.
You talk about incomes groups as if they were composed of immutable groups. In fact, about 40% of Americans households be in the top 10% of US incomes for at least two consecutive years during their lifetime, about 60% will be in the top 20%.
Think about that: nearly half of Americans have the opportunity to make very large amounts of money for at least a few working years. The US has democratized becoming rich, very different from the predictable drudgery and stagnation European households commonly experience.
That's nice. But you do realise there are 700 million odd other people also from Europe who might have a different opinion than you?
It's not a question of "opinion", it's a question of observation of other people.
So instead we should just take your word for it? That's your counter argument?
No, you should use your head and not uncritically cite something as a measure of "happiness" that clearly is not when you look at the methodology. See, science and reasoning are based on thinking, instead of "taking someone's word."
Now, if you want to try to make a convincing argument why my ecological footprint is a measure of my happiness, be my guest.
It could be that the use of triclosan in soap has a different risk-vs-reward profile than its use in toothpaste:
Yes, and my point is that the FDA shouldn't be making such risk-vs-reward tradeoffs. Whether triclosan is the right risk-vs-reward tradeoff is an individual decision. The FDA makes rules as if the world were divided into healthy people and sick people, and it is banning everything that "healthy people" don't need and assuming that "sick people" go see a doctor and get a prescription.
That's a lousy model. I occasionally get eczema, and antibacterial soaps are a good option; going to see a doctor about that every time is utterly foolish.
He is also overstating the case when he says that there are "real risks"; the risks from triclosan to human health are hypothetical at this point.
The Czech Republic is not an example of a European welfare state yet, and California is not representative of the US. We are talking about Finland vs the US here, at the national level. The fact remains: "the way European countries finance their social welfare states is through massively higher tax rates on the middle class, often nearly twice as high as in the US."
I specifically choose California because it is closest to EU in living standard
True, in the sense that California has high taxes, a lousy educational system, and that even high income earners like yourself have trouble making ends meet.
Some parts of the other parts of US I visited are often more like Ukraine, Uzbekistan or Romania from what I could see.
You mean they are rural? Those parts of the US that you visited and raise your nose at as "being like Ukraine" probably enjoy a much higher standard of living than you do, despite your exceptionally high income.
So you posted a link to one guy complaining something bad *could* happen.
No, he is talking about stuff that has already happened, namely that insurance companies are leaving the exchanges and that rates are massively increasing.
And the guy has worked at insurance companies his whole career. Brilliant. You sure showed him!
Given that Obamacare's premise is that it is a regulated free market solution to health care that relies on private insurance companies, when those companies are pulling out of the system, Obamacare has failed.
given that most of the stuff that you get for free in my country is something you have to pay for in your country
You get nothing for free in your country; you pay for it through taxes, and if you are above average (which you are as a software developer with a Master), you are paying a lot more than you would in a free market.
(I get it you're a happy American. Good for you. Happy European here.)
I used to be a happy European, until I became a pissed off European when I discovered what a lousy deal Europeans get, and then I chose to stop being a European.
This number is _SPENDING_ though, not _TAXATION_. So even if the US spend 41% of the GDP it doesn't _TAX_ that much.
Correct. You suggested that there was something wrong with the idea that the US spends more per capita on social welfare than other countries, and then provided to cite numbers on tax burden. I gave you the actually relevant numbers, namely government spending. (Note that governments can have other revenue sources besides taxation.)
and as we know the US budget is running at a huge national deficit.
Correct. Which is why I and others keep saying that voters need to make a choice: if the US wants a Swedish-style social welfare system, it needs to raise taxes massively to Swedish levels, which means slightly lowering taxes on the rich and massively increasing taxes on the middle class. Right now, the US middle class is getting a really sweet deal: low taxes compared to Europe and massive amounts of social welfare spending (US social welfare spending is much more directed towards the middle class than towards the poor), and that handout to the US middle class is financed by debt. That can't go on. And it can't be financed by taxing the rich either because they don't have enough money, and they are good at avoiding taxes anyway.
USA may have at-least some of it back with their strong and growing economy now though.
While the US is doing better than Europe, the economy is anemic and stagnant by US standards. That's why voters are so pissed.
So let me get you straight. Because you've lived in Europe we should accept that you speak for all Europeans
Are you speaking in the royal "we"?
And I didn't just "live" there, I grew up in Europe and spent half my life there. I'm sharing my observation as an emigrant from Europe.
yet for some strange reason the independent data disagrees with you
The HPI concocts a measure out of a poll about happiness, life expectancy, inequality of outcomes and ecological footprint and then calls that "happiness". The index is weighted to give progressively higher scores to nations with lower ecological footprints. Citing such an obviously politically motivated measure that has little to do with happiness as an objective measure of "happiness" means that you're either a gullible fool or are trying to manipulate people.
You can't really measure happiness by asking people whether they are happy; the responses are highly culturally dependent. You can measure happiness indirectly through whether people are optimistic about their personal future, and where they choose to migrate to and from. On such measures, Americans generally score better than Europeans.
Still that does not put the EU countries in "massively higher taxes" category.
My statement stands: "the way European countries finance their social welfare states is through massively higher tax rates on the middle class". The middle class of a country in economics is defined by people/families near the median income for a country, that is $51k in the US. If your marginal federal tax rate is 28%, you're somewhere in the top 4% of income earners in the US; you're not in the economic middle class. The fact that you choose to live in a place where you can barely afford a place to live and hold middle-class social values doesn't change that fact. That is, your experience is highly atypical for the US and irrelevant to US tax or public policy.
The point here is that we have places in US with rates similar to those of the EU countries but we don't have nearly close to the advantages the citizens of those countries are getting for those taxes.
I used to be a citizen of one of those countries, and I have to tell you: you are an ignorant fool if you think that Americans are getting less in terms of public services than Europeans.
Why, were you fronting excuses in case they worked? What a waste of effort.
Huh? Anybody with an ounce of economic reason predicted they would fail. Economic illiterates like you predicted we would be embarrassed if they didn't fail. They failed.
The fact that you choose to live in a luxury, high-tax enclave and have trouble making ends meet doesn't change the relative amount of taxation and social spending in the US compared to other countries. After all, other countries have their luxury enclaves as well.
The fact remains, the US middle class, i.e., people near the US median income, are taxed much less on average, than the middle classes of many other countries.
As for you and your situation in California, take it as an illustration of how many Europeans experience cost of living. Unlike they, however, you have the choice of moving away.
Yep, gotta get a jump on the excuses now so it won't be so embarrassing when it works
Kind of like people like me were supposed to be embarrassed when Obama's stimulus program, or the Iraq war, or Obamacare, or all those other grand promises "worked"?
Baloney, I live in California, effective tax rate is over 50% on middle class. (28% federal, 10% state, 10% sales, 15% medi/ss me&employer + $10k property tax - deductions). That is higher than many EU countries.
And your ignorance about taxes is quite staggering. If you actually paid 28% in federal income tax, you make upward of $300k/year, not exactly middle class. Ditto for 10% state tax. Sales (actually VAT) taxes in Europe are 20-25%. And many Europeans pay for medicare, retirement, etc. separately from their income taxes as well.
1. They're counting our entire healthcare system ("The private sector finances a much greater share of social spending in America, particularly healthcare")
No, "they" are not. We're talking about public social welfare spending.
2. The numbers are being calculated off our per capita GDP. In other words, they're not taking into account the effects of our insane levels income inequality.
Income inequality doesn't affect the amount of per capita public social welfare spending. Furthermore, in countries with higher income inequality, higher per capita social welfare spending should generally be more effective in helping people.
In any case, your premise is wrong anyway. Pre-tax US income inequality is less than in many European countries. The difference between the US and Europe is that Europe taxes its middle class much more, which reduces both income inequality and deficits.
Sorry, but If this were one of those fact checker sites you'd get 4 Pinocchios.
Well, people as ignorant as you shouldn't work as fact checkers.
If you discount the things we get "for free" out in society which is also paid for by taxes or how do you make that happen? 2014: 26.0% of the GDP of US went into taxes. 43.9% of the GDP of Finland went into taxes. 50.9% of the GDP of Denmark went into taxes.
Your number for the US is wrong since you only count federal spending. Total US government spending as percentage of GDP is about 41%, and in addition, US per capita GDP is about 35% higher than Finland's.
There are plenty ofarticles on this. Note that the US is a high spender even relative to GDP, but given that the US has one of the highest per-capita GDPs in the world ($PPP), that translates into even higher absolute spending, and social welfare spending ought to be compared in terms of absolute per capita spending in $PPP.
Two things people also need to keep in mind when talking about what "Finland" does. First, the US is already spending considerably more per capita than any other country on social welfare (as well as education and healthcare). So, the problem is that the programs we have don't yield results commensurate to what we spend. Second, the way European countries finance their social welfare states is through massively higher tax rates on the middle class, often nearly twice as high as in the US.
So, a basic income to replace the current welfare and social safety net, and giving individuals to spend their government welfare as they see fit, would be great. But that's just not in the cards. Do you seriously think that a Congress that doesn't believe individuals are qualified to make decisions about mortgages, payday loans, health insurance coverage, or which school to attend is going to give welfare recipients a couple of thousand dollars per month and tell them to spend it as they see fit? And do you seriously believe that the millions of people who currently work on delivering and supervising welfare-related benefits are going to just quietly give up their jobs?
Interest rates on Wells undergraduate loans for four-year colleges range from 5.94 percent to nearly 11 percent on a fixed-rate loan and 3.39 percent to 9.03 percent on a variable-rate loan. Rates on the bank’s loans for community and for-profit colleges can climb to nearly 14 percent. That’s a far cry from the pricing the government offers. The government charges undergraduates 3.76 percent interest and graduate students 5.31 percent interest on new loans for the 2016-2017 academic year. Federal loans are only offered at fixed rates, and students don’t need co-signers with stellar credit to qualify for the lowest rate.
Instead of getting all upset, people should then simply take the federal loan instead of the Wells loans. If they can't get the federal loans for some reason, then it seems unreasonable to demand that private banks match federal rates.
Pauline Abernathy (TICAS): "Students should consider other schools if a school requires them to take out a private loan."
So, if you want to take out a 7% loan to get a $2400 Nanodegree on Udacity, Pauline wants to stop you; she wants you to put that on your credit card at 20% or, "better" yet, spend tens of thousands of dollars and waste several years of your life at the kind of institutions she is in bed with. And she probably thinks that she is doing you some good by forcing you to do this.
This is a textbook example of why costs in the US educational system are spiraling out of control:
Slashdot Mirror
The European social welfare state was created by conservative governments as a bulwark against socialism, initially by Bismarck. The Nordic countries and Germany are typical social welfare states. The Czech Republic is not, given its history of socialism and its fairly recent transition to democracy.
You mean cut public per capita social welfare spending in half, down to European levels, and massively raise taxes on the middle class? Because voters don't want to, simple as that. And American voters get what they want.
No, it doesn't. How many links and explanations do you need?
http://taxfoundation.org/artic...
The tax burden on average workers in the Czech Republic is 42.6%, in the US, it's 31.5%. Sales tax in the Czech Republic is around 20%, in the US it is somewhere between 0% and 10%. Your claims don't even make sense for the Czech Republic, let alone for a regular European welfare state.
Yes, you live in a luxury enclave. California as a whole, however, ranks near the bottom of school performance among US states. And all Californians pay the same tax rates that you do.
I used to be living in a place "lacking electricity and runing water". There are multi-million dollar rural American homes have generators, wells, and septic systems. What you don't seem to understand is that people in the US choose rural living, for the high quality of life it provides. You project your Bohemian prejudices and preferences onto how other people live.
I do all comparisons in $PPP. That is, the higher GDP/capita of the US already takes into account purchasing power.
The US has already gone the way of Sweden in terms of welfare spending, the question is whether to curtail it, to tax accordingly, or live with the liability on the books.
No, the US can't simply say "fuck off" because 2/3 of US national debt is held by Americans for their retirement. That's the way retirement works in the US.
You talk about incomes groups as if they were composed of immutable groups. In fact, about 40% of Americans households be in the top 10% of US incomes for at least two consecutive years during their lifetime, about 60% will be in the top 20%.
Think about that: nearly half of Americans have the opportunity to make very large amounts of money for at least a few working years. The US has democratized becoming rich, very different from the predictable drudgery and stagnation European households commonly experience.
It's not a question of "opinion", it's a question of observation of other people.
No, you should use your head and not uncritically cite something as a measure of "happiness" that clearly is not when you look at the methodology. See, science and reasoning are based on thinking, instead of "taking someone's word."
Now, if you want to try to make a convincing argument why my ecological footprint is a measure of my happiness, be my guest.
Yes, and my point is that the FDA shouldn't be making such risk-vs-reward tradeoffs. Whether triclosan is the right risk-vs-reward tradeoff is an individual decision. The FDA makes rules as if the world were divided into healthy people and sick people, and it is banning everything that "healthy people" don't need and assuming that "sick people" go see a doctor and get a prescription.
That's a lousy model. I occasionally get eczema, and antibacterial soaps are a good option; going to see a doctor about that every time is utterly foolish.
He is also overstating the case when he says that there are "real risks"; the risks from triclosan to human health are hypothetical at this point.
The Czech Republic is not an example of a European welfare state yet, and California is not representative of the US. We are talking about Finland vs the US here, at the national level. The fact remains: "the way European countries finance their social welfare states is through massively higher tax rates on the middle class, often nearly twice as high as in the US."
CItation? None. Because you are making stuff up now.
http://www.institutmolinari.or...
True, in the sense that California has high taxes, a lousy educational system, and that even high income earners like yourself have trouble making ends meet.
You mean they are rural? Those parts of the US that you visited and raise your nose at as "being like Ukraine" probably enjoy a much higher standard of living than you do, despite your exceptionally high income.
No, he is talking about stuff that has already happened, namely that insurance companies are leaving the exchanges and that rates are massively increasing.
Given that Obamacare's premise is that it is a regulated free market solution to health care that relies on private insurance companies, when those companies are pulling out of the system, Obamacare has failed.
Because the "Finland" that American progressives like to idolize and talk about has little to do with the actual country of Finland.
You can Google it yourself, but a good reference is: http://www.nber.org/papers/w15...
You get nothing for free in your country; you pay for it through taxes, and if you are above average (which you are as a software developer with a Master), you are paying a lot more than you would in a free market.
I used to be a happy European, until I became a pissed off European when I discovered what a lousy deal Europeans get, and then I chose to stop being a European.
Correct. You suggested that there was something wrong with the idea that the US spends more per capita on social welfare than other countries, and then provided to cite numbers on tax burden. I gave you the actually relevant numbers, namely government spending. (Note that governments can have other revenue sources besides taxation.)
Correct. Which is why I and others keep saying that voters need to make a choice: if the US wants a Swedish-style social welfare system, it needs to raise taxes massively to Swedish levels, which means slightly lowering taxes on the rich and massively increasing taxes on the middle class. Right now, the US middle class is getting a really sweet deal: low taxes compared to Europe and massive amounts of social welfare spending (US social welfare spending is much more directed towards the middle class than towards the poor), and that handout to the US middle class is financed by debt. That can't go on. And it can't be financed by taxing the rich either because they don't have enough money, and they are good at avoiding taxes anyway.
While the US is doing better than Europe, the economy is anemic and stagnant by US standards. That's why voters are so pissed.
Are you speaking in the royal "we"?
And I didn't just "live" there, I grew up in Europe and spent half my life there. I'm sharing my observation as an emigrant from Europe.
The HPI concocts a measure out of a poll about happiness, life expectancy, inequality of outcomes and ecological footprint and then calls that "happiness". The index is weighted to give progressively higher scores to nations with lower ecological footprints. Citing such an obviously politically motivated measure that has little to do with happiness as an objective measure of "happiness" means that you're either a gullible fool or are trying to manipulate people.
You can't really measure happiness by asking people whether they are happy; the responses are highly culturally dependent. You can measure happiness indirectly through whether people are optimistic about their personal future, and where they choose to migrate to and from. On such measures, Americans generally score better than Europeans.
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/17...
It's easy to cover millions of people with massive additional government spending. That's not sustainable.
My statement stands: "the way European countries finance their social welfare states is through massively higher tax rates on the middle class". The middle class of a country in economics is defined by people/families near the median income for a country, that is $51k in the US. If your marginal federal tax rate is 28%, you're somewhere in the top 4% of income earners in the US; you're not in the economic middle class. The fact that you choose to live in a place where you can barely afford a place to live and hold middle-class social values doesn't change that fact. That is, your experience is highly atypical for the US and irrelevant to US tax or public policy.
I used to be a citizen of one of those countries, and I have to tell you: you are an ignorant fool if you think that Americans are getting less in terms of public services than Europeans.
Huh? Anybody with an ounce of economic reason predicted they would fail. Economic illiterates like you predicted we would be embarrassed if they didn't fail. They failed.
The fact that you choose to live in a luxury, high-tax enclave and have trouble making ends meet doesn't change the relative amount of taxation and social spending in the US compared to other countries. After all, other countries have their luxury enclaves as well.
The fact remains, the US middle class, i.e., people near the US median income, are taxed much less on average, than the middle classes of many other countries.
As for you and your situation in California, take it as an illustration of how many Europeans experience cost of living. Unlike they, however, you have the choice of moving away.
Kind of like people like me were supposed to be embarrassed when Obama's stimulus program, or the Iraq war, or Obamacare, or all those other grand promises "worked"?
Yes they did.
Do not want.
Take it from someone with first hand experience: they are not.
Take it from Pew research: you are wrong.
And your ignorance about taxes is quite staggering. If you actually paid 28% in federal income tax, you make upward of $300k/year, not exactly middle class. Ditto for 10% state tax. Sales (actually VAT) taxes in Europe are 20-25%. And many Europeans pay for medicare, retirement, etc. separately from their income taxes as well.
No, "they" are not. We're talking about public social welfare spending.
Income inequality doesn't affect the amount of per capita public social welfare spending. Furthermore, in countries with higher income inequality, higher per capita social welfare spending should generally be more effective in helping people.
In any case, your premise is wrong anyway. Pre-tax US income inequality is less than in many European countries. The difference between the US and Europe is that Europe taxes its middle class much more, which reduces both income inequality and deficits.
Well, people as ignorant as you shouldn't work as fact checkers.
Your number for the US is wrong since you only count federal spending. Total US government spending as percentage of GDP is about 41%, and in addition, US per capita GDP is about 35% higher than Finland's.
There are plenty of articles on this. Note that the US is a high spender even relative to GDP, but given that the US has one of the highest per-capita GDPs in the world ($PPP), that translates into even higher absolute spending, and social welfare spending ought to be compared in terms of absolute per capita spending in $PPP.
Two things people also need to keep in mind when talking about what "Finland" does. First, the US is already spending considerably more per capita than any other country on social welfare (as well as education and healthcare). So, the problem is that the programs we have don't yield results commensurate to what we spend. Second, the way European countries finance their social welfare states is through massively higher tax rates on the middle class, often nearly twice as high as in the US.
So, a basic income to replace the current welfare and social safety net, and giving individuals to spend their government welfare as they see fit, would be great. But that's just not in the cards. Do you seriously think that a Congress that doesn't believe individuals are qualified to make decisions about mortgages, payday loans, health insurance coverage, or which school to attend is going to give welfare recipients a couple of thousand dollars per month and tell them to spend it as they see fit? And do you seriously believe that the millions of people who currently work on delivering and supervising welfare-related benefits are going to just quietly give up their jobs?
Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be obvious to the voters who keep voting for the crony capitalists that support such laws.
Instead of getting all upset, people should then simply take the federal loan instead of the Wells loans. If they can't get the federal loans for some reason, then it seems unreasonable to demand that private banks match federal rates.
So, if you want to take out a 7% loan to get a $2400 Nanodegree on Udacity, Pauline wants to stop you; she wants you to put that on your credit card at 20% or, "better" yet, spend tens of thousands of dollars and waste several years of your life at the kind of institutions she is in bed with. And she probably thinks that she is doing you some good by forcing you to do this.
This is a textbook example of why costs in the US educational system are spiraling out of control: