Comment by tyfon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tyfon | Hacker News Reader

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So let's compare tax rates in the US vs Norway where I live, arguably a "socialist bastion" according to the rest of the world!

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_rates

Corporate tax Norway: 25%

Corporate tax US: 35%

Individual (Min/Max) Norway: 0%/46.9%

Individual (Min/Max) US: 0%-3%/52.9%

Payroll tax Norway: 0%-14.1%

Payroll tax US: 20.2%

VAT Norway: 10%-25%

VAT US: 0%-11.725%

The tax systems are different though, for Norway, the max tax bracket is from 950.000 NOK (a bit over 100k USD). You do not pay tax until you make around 80k and the rates are progressive. You do have loads of deductibles though like paid interest, children, transportation etc.

So I wouldn't say we pay vastly more in tax here, but we still get social services.

The salaries here are not on EU level, but a bit higher. As an analyst I make about 1.1 million NOK/year. From that I pay around 350k in tax and that is not too bad compared to what we get in exchange. I actually have no objections to paying the tax.

Edit: BTW, I work 37.5 hours a week and two of the days are from home. And I have 27 paid vacation days a year + the public holidays :)

Edit2: the tax stuff was mangled, reformatting

I'm not sure how researched on US taxation you are, however the posted numbers mean absolutely nothing.

The effective tax rates are incredibly low for the upper class. Miniscule.

The middle class pays on average around 25% in income tax.

The good news is this means there's an incredibly simple answer for why the US is underinsured and undereducated: the average american is not willing to pay the amount of money it costs to insure and educate the lower class.

There aren't many non-european Americans willing to live in Scandinavia or europe over the US barring extraordinary circumstances. A significant amount of foreign, non 'white', skill prefers the US over say Norway. Considering that, "socialism" in the context of Scandinavia,europe, etc isn't an attractive option by a long shot in a more global, and highly diverse 'market'. The benefits of a selective style of socialism like Norway may be attractive to say similar mindsets and cultural effects comfortable with a homogenous idealism of utopia, but having the benefits of a highly diverse and varying mindsets and cultures has its own positive effects even with the negatives.

Sadly in the US, the idealisms of socialism often also comes with certain european-centric identities, or commonly bastardized into race ideologies where their proponents emphasize a socialist "utopia" like Scandinavia. These people emphasize this socialism on the basis of certain similar attributes where they can afford such promises to a small percentage, through the removal or exclusion of those they decide are not like them.

Breaking down the US economic system, one would be quick to notice that there does indeed exist a kind of socialist utopia much inline with euro-centric ideologies. One that even dwarfs the so called socialist bastion of Scandinavia and europe.

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