Hacker News Reader

Comment by inglor | Hacker News Reader

Nice! (To be clear, the 18 days are paid sick leave - after 18 days you get social security meaning the government pays for your sick leave and not Microsoft - you still get paid but it's capped at ±100K USD a year which is significantly less).

240 days of parental leave sounds amazing and very generous!

View on HN

When I look at my tax statement nothing about what's mentioned by parent(gp) looks generous anymore. 50% of what my employer pays for me is conveniently put into the governments pockets rather than mine. Add 25% VAT, petrol that costs 2$ per litre, alcohol that's taxed through the roof, another 20% tax if you make more than 44KSEK/mo.

I don't like the deal, to me it feels like a ripoff. But the government has conveniently put half our income tax on the employer as an "employer tax" that many people don't even know exists, so people think our tax is 30-ish percent since they don't see it on their payslip.

What country do you live in? In Sweden the Social Insurance is paid by the employer and that tax is in 2022 31,42%, of the gross 2.6% is for the Parental part.

Sweden, maybe I wasn't clear enough. I'm sorry about that.

Income tax: 30% (of income)

Employer tax: 31% (on top of income)

VAT: 25% (When i spend money)

Petrol, Alcohol: Ω%

I don't think anyone expects the Nordic model to be free. Higher taxes in exchange for the associated benefits is what has been decided by the government, elected by the people. Of course there will be people against it, as well as people for it.

The problem is the disassociation that keeps happening where "everyone" (literally everyone I talk to) thinks that the government is spending money on things that we don't want them to spend on.

Back in the days there was a system called "Tjänstemannaansvar" which held our politicians accountable if they grossly mismanaged our money. It's sadly been taken out, since the politicians don't want any responsibility.

I like the nordic model, I just don't like that our politicians can spend money as they like without any repercussions, and since our government is big/fat it's worse than if it was a small/slim government.

If "decided by government" had a clearer, more transparent, less corrupt path from "elected by the people" that'd be great. But here we are buying "medical socks" for 100$ a pair rather than the identical 10$ one that is always out of stock.

We used to have great roads, great healthcare, great social security and all other things you'd expect to get for paying 50% of your income to it. We don't have either of these anymore, taxes haven't gone down significantly during this time, things have just become worse :(

Reply on news.ycombinator.com