I will happily pay 45% tax on my salary knowing the Gov has my back in difficult times like these. I'm fortunate enough to still have a job, but I'm happy I live in Europe.
In other countries then it may be 65% if you count gas taxes etc etc. VAT (sales tax) is 20+% in a lot of countries
Yep, and you don't get healthcare for that, or post high school education.
Yeah, but 45% would be federal income tax only in Europe. Social Security, pensions, sales tax etc pp would be on top, and are generally also considerably higher than in the US.
We pay between 0 and 100 euro per month for health insurance, which covers basically everything with a very low co-pay amount (like 150 euros per year max)
Student loans are also much much lower. We pay 1600 euros per year tuition, the rest is government paid.
So the 40% may sound very high, but if you look at what is included compared to what the middle class in the US spends on student loans and healthcare I think we're not much worse off over here.
Likely depends on the country. It's not in Germany, and 45% is the highest tax bracket which few people will reach, but 43% is very achievable and you'll find plenty of knowledge workers in that bracket as it starts at ~55k €. Add ~20% sales tax, very high taxes on power and fuel etc.
The social net has a very high price, we need to stop prancing around the facts. I still think it's largely worth it (although it does contain very strong moral hazards), but I don't believe in hiding the truth so people don't come to different conclusions.
The US has a low income tax, but then the middle class needs to pay for their own health insurance (at $ 600 a month), disability insurance and pension etc. which means they end up not far different from Europe.
The big difference is at the extremes of the scale, the very poor and the very rich. In the US the poor don't have any health insurance, disability insurance, or pension etc because they cannot afford it. And the very rich in the US are way better off than they would be in Europe, because for them a low income tax greatly outweighs the costs of insurance etc.
There is a first layer on companies having to pay 25% of salaries to taxes, then a second layer of 25%, then a third layer of income tax 0 to 30% depending on total sum and how many dependents.
So all employees are already above 44% taxes before income tax :D
I'm not sure why you bring up those companies in response to my proposal of managing your own money. But since you mention how purely evil those companies are, last time I checked they were employing real people, working on real products and services, supporting their families and contributing to the economy. I'm not a fan of big corp, bit it's not so black and white.
I used to take things for granted, now news like "I have to pay $30k for Corona virus hospital treatment" make me appreciate being born in "socialist" Europe. To each their own.
max 2500 pounds. Say for 6 months? A Year? That's 15k to 30k. This is not enough to justify "45%" taxes for life...
You (or I) would need to save for worst-case scenarios and get very few economies of scale: you can't have 0.001 of an epidemiologist on retainer.
The government can at least pool risk (and everything) over the entire country.