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Comment by Aachen | Hacker News Reader

That's actually a good point that it's before taxes, I hadn't factored that in.

If you live in a low tax country, you would ordinarily have a lot to spend and be rich, and also have enough money to live off of in Iceland potentially, but might not meet that requirement by even half, whereas someone from a high tax country loses roughly half their income on them and would meet the requirement. Not the fairest method but, as you say, this clearly isn't geared toward charitableness in the first place.

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> whereas someone from a high tax country loses roughly half their income on them

Please, typically those taxes go (not completely) to stuff you’d otherwise be paying for from your after tax cash.

One obvious one is health care (which Americans pay much more for than Europeans, just not via their taxes). Less spent on roads: more car maintenance/shorter car lifespan.

One can have a reasonable argument over which should be bundled and which should be unbundled, but to say broadly that one “loses” on taxes is either lazy or ideology.

Ok but if you're from a high-tax country and work temporarily in Iceland you're paying those higher taxes without most of the benefits. You can't access the better healthcare, education, and safer streets of your home country.

You’re getting those benefits in general, though not at that instant, but is the tax you pay on march 28th making every street you drive on that day better? No, it’s smeared around spatially and temporally.

If you’re in Iceland for six months you might not even owe taxes in your home country for that period.

Americans owe taxes at home forever no matter what*, which tilts the calculus somewhat.

> One obvious one is health care (which Americans pay much more for than Europeans, just not via their taxes).

Interesting ignored fact: the US government spends as much per capita on health care as socialized systems. We also have to match that amount out of pocket, but that's because healthcare in the US costs twice as much, not because less tax money goes to it.

It's actually more than that. Last I checked the US government spends much more per capita on health care than any other country on earth. And by a large margin, not quite twice the 2nd country spending the most but almost.

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