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Comment by alchemist1e9 | Hacker News Reader

> I'm busy disengaging from US based services.

Can you explain why? From privacy and free speech perspectives aren’t US services now better?

Kagi now probably has the best search privacy features in the world after recent upgrades with Privacy Pass and even a ToR endpoint.

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Because the recent trade war has started a trend of "buy European' across the continent

buy-european-made.eu

Before these trade war escalations the US imposed an average tariff rate of about 3.5% on EU goods, notably lower than the EU’s 5.2% on US goods, and lacked the high, sector-specific tariffs seen in the EU. While the US maintained a relatively uniform rate, 2.5% on cars and slightly higher on food and chemicals—the EU targeted certain US sectors with very steep tariffs, like 32.3% on dairy.

We should also mention VAT. The EU’s 21% VAT jacks up prices, a €100 item hitting €121 will slash demand. This provided around €1 trillion revenue for EU governments in 2024. While the US’s typical 7% sales tax keeps a $100 item at $107, hurting demand less, total about $457 billion in 2024. This gap makes US goods pricier in the EU (27.7% markup with tariffs) versus EU goods in the US (10.8% markup), acting like an extra trade wall for American exports, while the EU’s VAT refund on exports gives their firms a edge.

Notice we haven’t even mentioned defense spending yet …

Do you understand that stuff made in Europe and sold in Europe is also subject to the VAT?

it seems he also overlooked, in his tirade against EU VAT, that almost the whole world has VAT.

It's just an handful of countries like USA and Malaysia that are the weird ones, and don't implement a VAT tax

VAT is a reductive tax that taxes the poor instead of the rich. Coincidentally, Trump supports adding VAT to the US.

Please call me out if I'm just being delusional but I think VAT is a great way to tax rich people.

They already have a lot of ways to avoid taxes, but at least with VAT they pay the same as everybody else. They are going to buy expensive food or drinks at restaurants and 8% (in my country) of that is going to be taxed. Someone more modest is going to eat at a less expensive place and is going to pay 8% on something less expensive.

I'm aware of the luxury tax but I don't think it's better than the VAT tax.

For people in poverty, 8% is the difference between getting that extra carton of eggs or not getting it. For rich people, it doesn't matter. It's not that VAT doesn't tax rich people it's that it taxes poor people a lot harder.

I completely get your point. What would you suggest, then?

A wealth tax, an estate tax, a tax on stock trades are all better options that hit the wealthy and not the poor.

> A wealth tax, an estate tax

Do you mean having a higher wealth and estate tax? They both exist where I live, although they tend to hit the poor much more than the rich.

> tax on stock trades

I agree on this one but I think it's not a good idea to penalize people that invest for the long term. Perhaps tax only trades that happened over less than 10 years or something.

I don't know where you live but the US doesn't have a wealth tax. You'll have to explain to me how a wealth tax hit the poor because the poor do not have wealth. A progressive wealth tax will tax someone based on net worth. By estate tax, I mean an inheritance tax which again, the poor typically don't leave massive inheritances so I'm not seeing how this hits the poor hard.

> You'll have to explain to me how a wealth tax hit the poor because the poor do not have wealth

I'm sorry, perhaps "poor" wasn't the best word. But let me explain what I was thinking: I live in Switzerland where wealth tax is very much more annoying to the middle-class than the rich. This is because it starts at around CHF80'000--a lot of people qualify--and isn't taxed progressively above CHF2 million. While the rich will pay the highest tier, the middle-class is going to suffer from it much more because they don't invest their wealth. Basically, they are losing wealth, especially after taking inflation into account.

Don't get me wrong, Switzerland is a very good country tax-wise. But your argument against VAT also works very much for other types of taxation.

> By estate tax, I mean an inheritance tax which again, the poor typically don't leave massive inheritances so I'm not seeing how this hits the poor hard

Yes, good point. In Switzerland there are actually only a few cantons that still have the inheritance tax. But I still think that most families would qualify for the estate tax. A middle class family is going to be hurt much more being taxed CHF10k than a rich one taxed CHF100k.

I hope I made myself understandable.

You've made yourself very understandable, thank you for explaining further. Doing a Francs to Dollars conversion, 80,000 francs is around 90,000 USD. This is much lower than it should be in my opinion. For comparison, Biden's proposed wealth tax would only affect people with $1 billion in assets or people $100 million in income for three consecutive years[1]. This is not only less than 1% of the country, it's less than .01% of the country. I think the asset numbers are a bit high but as proposed, only the Musks and the Zuckerbergs would be affected.

So the only issue I see with the Switzerland tax situation is that the numbers are too low and should be higher. The incentive should be to get people investing in the economy but not to a point of hoarding.

[1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/whats-the-so-called-weal...

Yep, indeed this kind of wealth tax would seem much more popular. I wonder how well it would do in a federal vote in Switzerland.

I am very much in favor of increasing taxes for the very wealthy ($100 million in net worth seems like a good start).

I just don't want that kind of tax to do collateral damage to middle-class people. For example, Switzerland doesn't have capital gains tax (!!!) except if trading is your profession. If we introduce capital gains tax, sure it will tax the rich but they will be able to wave it off while middle-class investors will get hit too. That's why I said in my initial comment that it could be wise to only tax those that invested for less than 10 years. We could also imagine a system where your capital gains are taxed based on your net worth after the trade.

I'm not sure what your point is. Are you saying that the EU isn't being "fair" to the US?

I'm not sure how that would change the incentive for European citizens to rely more on European products in the face of possible future tariffs.

Clown in charge is more than enough reason to divest from US.

Not that I disagree, but I think it's more than that: the US have started a trend of "boycott the US" across those who used to consider them as allies after... you know the US government not only embraced fascism but also started threatening to invade said ex allies and destabilising Europe.

Pretty sure that there is a similar trend in Canada or Mexico, for instance.

I'm considering cutting out American services as well. The US is starting trade wars left, right, and center, and the current government has barely gotten started. With the white house siding with the Russians, threatening war against Canada and Denmark, and the whole NATO situation, I think it'll be foolish of me to depend on American services. For all I know, our countries may well be at war by the end of the year.

As for privacy: American privacy laws are even more of a joke than the GDPR. The lack of privacy rights for non-American citizens is the main reason the GDPR bans storing PII in the US.

As for free speech: the kind of free speech American tech companies are offering right now is not something I'm very interested in. America ranking lower than my country in every freedom index I can find also doesn't help.

Furthermore, paying a browser that actively does business with Yandex doesn't sit well with me, even if it won't affect me directly. The comments the CEO made about not caring about "geopolitics" doesn't reassure me much, either.

I can understand their position. USA appears to be leaving NATO and promoting Russia's interests (through both pulling back from treaties and allies, and embracing Russian style diplomacy and oligarchical government), it's pretty easy to see why Europeans would get squirmy about American companies.

America under Trump is the least free that America has ever been. Your freedom argument is outdated, The USA has a fascism problem right now and we are trying to fight it.

Are you from the US?

> Can you explain why? From privacy and free speech perspectives aren’t US services now better?

In regards to privacy, the country is increasingly trying to pass age verification bills as a way to backdoor more surveillance into law while a billionaire is running around slurping up everyone's private data.

In regards to free speech, the President sues journalist he doesn't agree with, passed an executive order to target lawyers he doesn't like, and is trying to get a law passed that will allow him to further target people who try to hold him accountable.

To say the US is better on both privacy and free speech is either uninformed or delusional.

I wonder if companies will try to move away from services like Google Suite or Microsoft Teams or Slack. Because it essentially means that the US can read all the internal communications. That's a big security problem, especially now that the US have become... unstable.

Absolutely. While I haven't heard of it happening yet, I have seen talks about doing so.

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