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Comment by charlesdm | Hacker News Reader

Just checked: a Porsche GT4 (€88k in Belgium) costs €180k in Norway. So might be both Norway and Denmark.

I have an honest question (and don't downvote me for this), but how do you enjoy life in Scandinavian countries?

Everything seems to be taxed to hell: income, wealth, cars, alcohol, etc. Does that actually leave any room for fun that involves spending money?

People don't need to be living in massive luxury and you don't always need to spend money to enjoy yourself, but aren't these countries pushing it?

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> People don't need to be living in massive luxury and you don't always need to spend money to enjoy yourself, but aren't these countries pushing it?

I think a lot of it comes down to material vs non material quality of life.

First of all, very little of taxes evaporate in e.g wars. That helps. Most of it seems to fund things that make me happy or at least not worried. I'm not worried about getting sick, old, whether my kids can go to university etc. At least I don't worry about the economics of it. In the US I'd live in a house twice as big and I could likely drive a fun car on the weekends. On the other hand I wouldn't be doing 8w of time off every summer and 2 years off with the kids. I honestly don't mind 30% income tax and a large chunk of payroll tax, just so I don't have to pay health insurance companies, do pension saving or save for college.

All the money I have at the end of the month is basically for spending. There is no need to save it other than in case the car breaks down or similar. I keep a months salary or two on hand for that. I don't need a pile of money for growing old or being sued or sending the kids to college.

When it comes to "taxes on fun" I'm inclined to agree a bit more - some things feels like gov't parenting, but it has some nice side effects such as making people drink nicer wine (a $2 bottle of wine would be $8 in Sweden while a $10 bottle might be $10 in Sweden. So understandably the $2 bottle isn't even imported).

What you described is a life of a house cat, happy that the food's always there and that there's lots of time to sleep. A bleak life devoid of any ambition and goals.

I can't imagine the brainwashing required to make people accept that.

I see the opposite - I don't have to worry about the food being there so I can choose to take risks such taking a year off with kids, or starting my own company. I think that the separation of my health insurance from my employment for example, is very important in that respect.

What I described is basically the reality in any oecd country (there is one outlier and it's not Sweden). If it's a brainwashing scheme it's a pretty large one.

Life in the US must be that of a stray cat, then; running in fear every night, not sure where your next meal is coming from, survival the only thing on your mind, fighting over scraps. That life is reality for many unemployed and under-employed in the US, so that a select few may be very rich and powerful, mostly due to inheritance and favorable conditions / opportunities during childhood.

I can't speak for everyone in Sweden, but I'd rather pay high taxes and enjoy the benefits of free healthcare, education and providing everyone with equal opportunities than end up like the situation in the US.

How do you enjoy life having to worry about health insurance and saving your whole life to pay for your children's education? Have a look at the World Happiness Report [0]. Of course we are perfectly capable of enjoying life.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report

You do realize that taxes don't just disappear, right? Tax revenue pays for things like child care, health care, universities etc. That means the average consumer can spend more on frivolous things even if they are more expensive. So yeah us Scandinavians are living a pretty sweet life :)

You pay for child care, health care and universities, whether through taxes or your pocketbook. Paying through your pocket book just means you have freedom of choice.

True, but e.g. the tax difference between an average salary in Norway and the US is far too small to even make up the private healthcare costs and other additional costs, and Norway has a far flatter salary structure - far more more peope are close to the average salary.

The effect is that very large proportions of the population end up with a better standard of living.

In America we have low taxes but not choice. You can choose to drive in America but you cannot choose to ride the high speed rail instead. Our choices are limited by our regime.

I would say that you have "choice", but not "freedom". Choice, in that dichotomy, refers to being able to draw from a set of pre-determined options (e.g. the choice of cereal brands in the supermarket), whereas freedom refers to the ability to follow one's desires, ambitions and morals.

Just the other day, I watched a documentary about the protests that led to the opening of the Inner German border and the demise of the GDR. It was kind of sad to see people protesting for various kinds of freedom, knowing that most of them will only get choice (e.g. the choice of which country they cannot afford to travel to because their jobs were not competitive anymore).

By the way, I don't think that Europe has systematically more freedom (by the above definition) than the US. There are some life plans that you can only carry out in the US, and some that can only be realized in Europe.

I don't think many people in Europe envy the US healthcare system.

Choice of what? I don't really care what brand my antibiotics are. Whether the government pays for it via taxes or me out of pocket, I only care if they work.

Same with universities, vacation, labour laws etc...

Consider if one is unable to afford health insurance premiums and has a pre-existing condition which is expensive to treat. This person is not likely to have credit to be able to afford more than a few months of treatment. What choice do they have left other than to die (which is also not typically legal to accelerate)?

I don't get your point. I also think choice is overrated when it comes to treatment. Having a treatment is more important.

Unless you don't have enough money to pay for those things, of course. And that is the whole point of the system.

As for sweet life, speak for yourself, please.

You don't seem to agree. From your side do you believe taxes are too high for what you're getting back? Is it hurting the country?

Let's presume that 40% taxes are optimal for Sweden / Norway, and that the U.S. tax rate is 30% [A]. That does not mean that increasing the U.S. tax rate to 40% is optimal for the U.S. - do you think the current U.S. government, Donald Trump, military industrial complex, etc. should get more money to work with?

A. These numbers are made up

Yes I totally agree that there can be problems with high taxes (the Laffer curve, corruption, tax avoidance, etc). I was mainly refuting the idea that high tax rates must lead to "poorer" citizens. In many cases the money is just passed around, and if so it's a zero sum game.

It’s not just a zero-sum game. Extra costs include the salaries of civil servants who administer the funds, including the many people whose job is to print out a report and put it in a drawer where nobody will see it, and the blatant cronyism in public contract awards.

Extra benefits include the infrastructure, technologies, and knowledge that we develop, that would not have existed because no businessman would have considered them to be profitable.

The government of the USA is filled with lots of pointless but well-paid jobs, and there is a noticeable small-government-conservative faction that is constantly harassing the government with their counterproductive regulations.

http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/02/17/feds-delay-caltrain-el...

https://educationrealist.wordpress.com/2012/09/07/the-fallac...

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2016/09/22/california_s_...

I think his point is that instead of giving the government less money you should work on making sure that the government actually does the right thing with the money it gets.

I have a suspicion the US is way too far gone to try that - the adversarial model (the societal idea of "people vs the Government", rather than the Government being a representative of the people) is not going away any time soon.

It's easy to see government as representative of the people when you live in a small country, or if you're thinking about your local government.

When a government has 300 million+ people to represent, it needs to have very limited responsibilities and powers, because the common interests of so many people are very limited.

That is (cargo culting political attitudes aside) largely why the American relationship with the federal government is "adversarial"- the larger it grows, the easier it is for special, non-representative interests to take advantage of.

There's a similar story played out among union participation here; the larger the union, the less individuals feel that it is working exclusively in their best interests. Likewise: approval for individual congressional representatives is typically high, but Congress itself invariably has very low approval ratings.

When a government has 300 million+ people to represent, it needs to have very limited responsibilities and powers, because the common interests of so many people are very limited.

I'm not sure I agree with that. The common interests of people are basically the same - education, health, housing ...

There are over 80 million people in Germany. Not in the same league as the US, but still a huge country. And I don't think (obviously this is not data) that people here feel the government don't work for their interests. In a very small country like Ireland (where I'm actually from) the government seem to me to be much less 'representative' of the people, due to cronyism and corruption (see current Irish gov scandal expected to bring down the government within weeks - http://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-the-maurice...)

I’m not sure that the total size of the population is what matters here. It’s the lack of representation. Back when the USA started, we had 33,000 person-units per Representative. Now we have over 700,000 people per Representative in all but the tiniest states, and those Representatives are only going to listen to the biggest and most obnoxious voices out of those 700,000.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/09/opinion/flynn-expand-congress/

Alternatively, shift the center of power that has become entirely too federal (IMO) back to the states, whereby it's easier to actually listen to your constituents on matters that could be done just as well (in some cases better) at a more local level.

I don't think we can really communicate how different things are to f.ex. the US. I enjoy paying lots of taxes and still have lot's of money after doing so. For me the stability and predictability of society is worth contributing to.

I live in Belgium, which is also a high tax country (but not as much as Scandinavian countries). The way it seems to me in Belgium is that the average person is barely getting by, which in part has to do with the high tax rate. As a resident, you do get back a lot, but I'm unsure whether it compensates for the lack of additional net income.

Belgium is the highest taxed OECD country by a substantial margin when looking at total tax wedge. Far higher than the Scandinavian countries for an overall tax wedge of 55.3% of labour costs (2015) [1]. For comparison the next two are Austria at 49.5% and Germany at 49.4%. Sweden 42.7%. Norway is at 36.6%, Denmark 36.4%.

The thing is you obscure it with an unusually high employer social security contribution.

But even looking at "just" income tax and employee contributions on an average salary, Belgium ends up at 32.4% of total employee costs (so these numbers are lower than the percentages paid of gross salary) vs. Norway with 25.2%, Sweden with 18.8% and Denmark at 35.8%.

If you instead of looking at total labour costs, you look at gross wages, Belgium is at 42%, vs Denmark 36%, Norway 28.4%, Sweden 24.7% (for comparison: US: 25.6%). This also places Belgium as the highest taxed OECD country,

Denmark is the extreme opposite of Belgium, in that Denmark has extremely low employer social security contribution and no employee social security contributions (it's baked into the income tax).

[1] http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/taxatio...

Belgium is high tax for people who earn money through labour, but relatively low tax for people with capital / significant wealth.

If you are worth €5m, you can honestly get away with paying almost no tax. If you earn a salary however, you pay ~55%. There is no capital gains tax, which does attract wealthy people to move and spend here, so that's a definite positive.

I would argue we’re a high tax country, that is also a tax haven for some. I think that for most people, the high overall tax rate + employer cost is hurting.

It's not really comparable. The political cultures in the two countries are very different. Belgium is a high-tax country only for those who pay their taxes in full, which many are able to avoid. The Norwegian real tax base is broader, so the load is more evenly distributed which gives the government more money which gives you more stuff back.

This is correct. Employees generally can't avoid taxes, whereas (self employed, or wealthy) people who understand the tax code are able to pay very little.

At the same time, most of the things the government is giving back tend to go to employees, so the people that pay most generally receive the most back from the system, which is good.

You know how Denmark is one of the best countries to cycle in? How so many danes commute to work on a bike? Sure some it has to do with nice lanes and beating traffic, but a lot of it comes from 170ish % tax on cars. I own a car, but it is tiny one that I paid more for than most US cars.

Mostly you have fun by doing things that are cheaper - you might play a table top game rather than go to the cinema, or watch the movie at home; eating out happens of course, but it is typically much rarer than in the US.

The upside to happiness is that the downside is somewhat limited - if I end up with no money at all I can go to the city and get Kontanthjælp (cash assistance, though that is transferred to the persons bank account), which will be paid out so long as I don't have a job and participates in certain required things that is supposedly going to get me a job. Unemployment insurance is paid out for two years, and would be about 60% of my income. Of course we also have tax paid health care, but while that is okay for immediate crisis (I can get a heart attack right now, have somebody call an ambulance, spend two weeks in hospital, and paid them nothing) it sucks for chronic issues because you will end up being placed on a waiting list, which means you could end up getting your treatment six months from now.

Norway here. The taxes are higher, but to a fair comparison you gotta add all the expenses you have living in the US that you don't have in Scandinavian countries. Stuff like health insurance, medical bills, saving up for college, etc.

It's better than that.

Tax on average Norwegian salary: 28.4% on an average USD PPP adjusted salary of $60233 [1], for a net PPP adjusted salary of $43127

US: 25.6% of an average USD PPP adjusted salary of 50964 for a net PPP adjusted salary of $37917

Norway is not a particularly high tax country even in percent tax paid for an average earner, but even less so when considering the high salary levels. And despite having one of the most expensive socialised healthcare systems in the world (to a large extent due to high average salaries).

The salary curve is also far flatter in Norway - for good or bad far more people earn near the average salary.

[1] http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/taxatio...

No one mentioned the U.S.

Incomes tend to be better as well. Most people I've met from the Nordics seemed to be pretty happy with how things are. The attitude towards work/ money seems generally more relaxed and people tend to value time outside work a lot higher. Due to the lower inequality and very high standards of life there seems to be very little people would be missing (not everyone needs a Porsche to be happy)

Much of the taxes are there, at least in concept, to cover expenses society has when dealing with the "externalities" of said fun.

Some of it though is a remnant of a more "puritan" time.

What are the externalities resulting from purchasing a Porsche besides the usual culprits such emissions etc etc?

I'm genuinely curious.

The same as for any other car: road accidents, road maintenance and so on.

Most countries, in practice, actually subsidize car ownership by taking back in road tax less of what is actually spent on caring for externalities.

Add to that that, in most of Europe, population density is such that lots of people are actually able to live without a car. Buying a car if you live in a medieval city centre is 100% "for fun" and makes life awkward for everyone (parking and so on).

There is also an argument that many "luxury" goods are "positional", as in you get value from a big house or an expensive car, not just directly from providing shelter or transportation, but by signalling that you are better off than the people with the smaller, cheaper items.

Some economists argue that by taxing these goods, society as a whole spends less on them, but people still get the positional benefits, because the person with the biggest house still can look down on the person with the smaller house, even if the house is only 50% larger, rather than 100% larger. If those goods also have other externalities, like cars do and sprawling suburbs full of mcmansions, then you get a double benefit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positional_good

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