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Comment by jokethrowaway | Hacker News Reader

I completely agree.

I think it's hard for people living in countries that allow for social mobility like the USA to appreciate how good they have it. In the country I was born, if you start working by yourself you'll have to pay 50-60% in various taxes, making it really hard to become rich. People who care more about career than friends and family just leave.

I also think it's amazing how access to information was democratised by internet.

Your last phrase in the last year can be summed up to "I can just give you a computer, the rest is up to you" which is pretty much what my parents did before I started working online.

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I love software especially because of this. You don't need credentials, just a willingness to study hard and Leetcode and you will get high paying jobs. Amazing, no gatekeeping at all like other professsion.

Software Engineering changed my life, and the life of my family. Me and my mom only had savings about $12k back then in 2015 and I lived in NYC, didn't know that it would change my life when I started studying programming using that money.

Hate all you want about SWE and Leetcode and JavaScript (lol), but they paid my bills, and my family's bills, and my old single mom's bills.

Please stop conflating taxes to something that is forcibly taken away from you. It is purely just money that is used for things around you. I am not sure where this obsession to be come "rich" truly comes from - what are you really searching for in life?

Sure, it pays for services around me but it's taken against my will. If I stop paying taxes I will end up in jail like Peter Schiff's dad.

I could move to Dubai or locations which don't charge taxes, but it's not a tradeoff I'm happy to do.

Incidentally, I'm about to buy a property in a country with lower taxes than my current one and invest in their economy instead.

The reason I want more money is so I can stop selling my time in order to put food on the table and a roof over my family's heads and start building things I want to build which I doubt they will be profitable.

Please forgive me if I misunderstand but you are unwilling to let go of the kind of system/society you are in: "it's not a tradeoff I'm happy to do."

However, that very society/system has made a tradeoff that they will maintain a certain level of taxation which would allow them to maintain a certain level of services.

This does not seem realistic.

No worries at all, I appreciate the conversation!

I think I expressed myself unclearly, the tradeoff I'm unwilling to make is not because I miss services paid with taxes but because there are many dimensions to evaluate a country.

From my point of view, I already pay a private health insurance on top of my public one because the public one is just unreliable - and that's the main benefit my taxes afford me. Someone who can't afford it, will probably grade countries differently.

And there are so many factors to consider: culture, english speaking schools availability, weather, detached houses availability, real estate prices, if your spouse likes the country, anything that could be important for you.

I lived in Dubai and I'm not a fan of how they deal with personal freedom (eg. LGBT rights, alcohol / drug consumption, sex outside of marriage) even if I like how they deal with economic freedom. Also racism towards American / European expats from natives is pretty vicious (albeit not as bad as towards expats from poorer countries).

Some people are indeed happy to live in Dubai - personally I found that there are several countries which offer a better tradeoff for me, low taxes and a good quality of life (whatever your definition is).

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