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Comment by rester324 | Hacker News Reader

The same thing happens in other countries too BTW. Prime example is Japan, where prime minister Abe promoted this nice lie for many long years

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Curiously in the Netherlands poverty has gone down. But that's because the government has a pretty solid Robin Hood system going on: take from the rich give to the poor.

The amount of wealth that is redistributed is frankly insane.

I'm generally in favor. My taxes provide an amazing experience here. I have never seen the abject poverty that I've seen in other places (such as the US) here in NL. Great infrastructure, labor laws, culture and arts, etc. I worry less about break-ins and theft. All-in-all, the least worst place to live, by far.

If we in the USA got our money's worth from taxes, we feel rich. But we truly don't.

You got it, that huge army is not free, that militarized police is not free, the CIA is not free, FBI, NSA, and all that huge security related organizations that nobody else in the world has except maybe Israel and not at the same scale.

That too. We need our security organizations, there are lots of unpatriotic profiteers in there, we could get a lot more value for our moeny on those. (Littoral battleships? F-35s? Let's just get actual spent-uranium-tipped unicorns.) The way we do infrastructure and social services leaves a lot of room for improvement. I'd pay 50% tax gladly if I got half my income in value back.

Hell looking at the state of international conflict today I can't even be that upset about defense spending on principle, it's just that what we spend on is stupid and immoral. Instead of domestic oppression and foreign genocide we could be helping Europe and Taiwan fend off threats from rival great powers.

  > The amount of wealth that is redistributed is frankly insane.

I would change that to: the amount of income tax quickly reaches idiotic heights. Capital taxes are generally low, and income taxes are for the 95% losers.

There is no plan to make the pie larger. The problem is the same as everywhere: a public brainwashed by neo-liberal nonsense voting against their own interests. Private gains and public losses.

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