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Comment by ajuc | Hacker News Reader

Taxes aren't the problem.

How do I know? Because my parents earning ~1000 USD per month each living in Poland have higher standard of living than most Americans. Despite paying ~30% taxes.

You have to add up what the taxes pay for in the calculation. Free healthcare, free university education, good public transport, low inequality (= low crime). All of that adds up to higher standard of living achievable with pretty shitty earnings.

Oh and before you blame it on military spending - we spend higher% of GDP on military than USA. Russia is a shitty neighbor, we have to.

American problems are exactly the opposite of what Americans think they are. You are in dire need of some social democracy.

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Lack of civic pride and a lack of belief in even the possibility of effective government means that the US -- and many countries like it have a) ineffective civil service and b) ineffective government.

Going at it with a chainsaw isn't going to help.

> Free healthcare, free university education, good public transport, low inequality

And I think these are all difficult things to do well and make money, as in doing a good job in healthcare, education, etc. is not really profitable. So, they are areas for government involvement.

That's an interesting perspective, that could be used as an argument by both camps. You say more social democracy, someone else might say, more social cohesion due to shared cultural background and low immigration.

Social democracy is orthogonal to immigration policy.

You can have welfare state with close or open borders and anything in between, and you can have libertarian state with close or open borders.

For the last few years most EU countries have been going towards pretty strict immigration policy but not towards libertarianism.

Also Poland is not a good example (it's been accepting A LOT of immigration since ~2014 - more than average in EU). But that argument gets pretty detailed very quickly so unless you want to go into it - I'll leave that alone).

Comparing a mostly homogenous 312km^2 country to an extremely diverse 9 million km^2 USA doesn't seem like a strong point to me. Regarding healthcare though, I would love to see it subsidized for the working person who neither qualifies for Medicaid or their employer's health insurance.

Is Canada or Sweden a better comparison then? Poland was just the easiest example for me (cause I live here). It's not unique nor the best at these things.

The idea that USA's got it right when most of the world does it differently (and with better results adjusting for cost/effect) always amazes me.

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