Sure, but the benefit to freedom by disconnecting social support services such as healthcare from employment is massive. It’s a tradeoff many seem pleased with.

My understanding is that unlike the US they actually have get social benefits like healthcare and university for their tax dollars.

https://taxsummaries.pwc.com/iceland/individual/taxes-on-per...

And according to Wikipedia Iceland has a lower marginal tax rate than the US.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_rat...

In Sweden, if you invest in / trade stocks and choose an “ISK” type of account, you pay almost zero tax on your gains (you pay a very low flat tax on the total value of your stocks, and this is quite unsubstantial for most average people who invest/trade)

At least compared to most other European countries, where every profit from stocks is heavily taxed, this is quite wild.

The downside of this ofc is that losses aren’t tax deductible either, and that you still pay the tax even if your stocks lost in value during the year. But still: Your capital gains earned through this scheme are close to be tax-free. If you bought a lot of Nvidia in January and sold it now, you could even withdraw the profit to buy a house or a car - and thereby avoid most of the tax that would come as a consequence of a bigger value of your stock holdings.

Just writing this to point out that there’s more nuance to this “taxes are high in the Nordics” narrative.

Not on capital gains, with schemes available to cap salaries and shift compensation to equity, especially for executives.

So despite the public perception on progressive taxes, in practice the Nordics can be quite attractive compared to European countries which have lower income tax rates but income through equity/stocks are progressively taxed together with income taxes. So they can eat their cake and have it too in a sense, by being more accomodating for the wealthy tax-wise than most of the population realize.

Empirically I haven’t heard of anyone paying lethal doses of taxes, and I’m from Sweden so I should know. But I have heard of people dying from a lack of health insurance, or other preventable causes, but that’s in a different country..

But I get a lot of value from those taxes. To name a few: - Education. - Daycare/kindergarten. - Healthcare. - Public transportation. - Libraries and museums.

Those taxes aren't wasted usually, one does get some value out of paying such high taxes.

This is true. The fix is to start your own company and do consulting instead of being employed. Some companies are cool with this, some aren't.

This allows you to even out high income periods with low income periods, thus avoiding the high margin tax on income.

"Taxed to death" - where does that come from? How? I'm relatively high taxed, compared to many, I pay a bit more than 40%. But what I'm left with is disposable money, except for car and house insurance (reasonably priced). Plenty left for my wife and myself, for doing everything we want, to travel, and still add to our savings. The only economic burden I can think of is unexpected visits to the dentist - that can cost you. I'll take this system before absolutely any alternative.

Do you have any numbers for how many die from taxes there annually? It looks like they have a pretty high QoL: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/standard-...

It's not that much more than living in New York City or SF. Also you actually get the benefit of your tax dollars.

I'd say California comes quite close. People in the US pay taxes too. And depending on which state you are in it can actually add up to a lot.

The advantage of the Nordic system is that it is brutally simple. You pay your taxes and there isn't a whole lot of room to change anything about that.

I lived in Sweden and Finland for a while. It's nice. Everything is taken care off. There is no drama around anything. You get sick you go the doctor. You get old, you are taken care off. Etc. When I moved from Finland to Germany as part of an international transfer in the same company, the company chose to raise my salary to compensate me for the raised tax burden ... in Germany.

Reason: the Finnish tax system is actually pretty alright. After you pay your insurances and taxes, which is pretty much just kept from your salary, that's pretty much it. The VAT is high as well. But there's very little else to take care off beyond things like your rent.

The German tax system on the other hand is death by a thousand cuts. A little tax here, a little insurance there, etc. None of it optional. Once you add it all up, it's quite a lot. So they compensated me. Of course cost of living is a lot lower so it was a quite nice raise for me. California is more like Germany than like Finland. But once you add it all up, you are paying a lot to a lot of different things.

It can also be an advantage. You are only taxed on profits so it's only a disadvantage for those who are in a business for the money. I would assume that this leads to better business relations with better opportunities because greedy people will leave.