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Comment by kakacik | Hacker News Reader

> If my wages are 90k in Germany, they do their calculations as if I earned ~105k just so they can immediately subtract the entire 15k again and call it a burden (for expenses my employer pays on my behalf).

Aren't you talking about social contributions that your employer is forced by law to pay on your behalf? You realize that if this was not in place, those money would go directly to you since your salary is whole sum your employer is paying towards your employment? Doesn't seem you grok it fully from your words.

I am not claiming if its good or bad (dramatic global financial changes will test viability of all these systems rather well in upcoming years, I'd expect many people will be unhappy when their naive views hit reality of numbers). I am outside of such system, in mostly private social system in Switzerland (aka I save for myself, mostly) and wouldn't want it any other way.

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If that's the real wage, it should be used when comparing wages internationally. It's however not used as such, because trying to figure out what should and shouldn't be included in that number for each country will result in an even bigger headache. Do we add the average cost of employer-provided health insurance to US wages to keep the number comparable? What about those who self-insure?

In any case, the resulting individual "burden" is meaningless if you don't also quantify individual benefit. As an extreme example, imagine a country in which your income taxes pay for things such as transportation credits usable on gas, public transport and roads, while the neighboring country has mostly private toll roads and low taxes. Another example is health insurance. In Germany it is pretty nearly mandatory with most having some form of insurance, and total spending per citizen is around $9,000. In the US more than 90% are insured and spending is higher, but within the same ballpark.

What does the raw tax/burden tell you here in an international comparison? Fuck all. It's at best usable as a prompt for a philosophical discussion about autonomy, but often merely used for masturbation or making dishonest arguments designed to go over well in establishments specializing in alcoholic beverages - like those of a certain interest group.

> Do we add the average cost of employer-provided health insurance to US wages to keep the number comparable? What about those who self-insure?

Obviously yes, and obviously no. Just as we don't add the price of groceries or rent to wages unless the employer subsidizes those in which case obviously yes we must.

> What does the raw tax/burden tell you here in an international comparison?

It tells you how expensive it is to live there, relatively speaking. Obviously (as you note) that's only half of the discussion just as an expensive appliance might or might not be worth the premium to any particular individual. But you're wrong to dismiss it out of hand as you do. Just as it's disingenuous to dismiss the benefits of (for example) universal healthcare it is also disingenuous to attempt to derail discussion that focuses directly on total cost or effective tax burden or what have you.

What you are dismissing as a "nonsense number" of an "interest group" I would consider one of the most accurate and easily understood quantifications of total cost.

Imho, parent's point about attempting to quantify costs without balancing them against benefits is valid.

It's meaningless to say "Germans pay X, Americans pay Y" if the two receive completely different benefits in exchange for those rates.

Furthermore, the point that the German system would be paying to individuals if not to the government is somewhat disingenuous. There are a few options.

   1. The government doesn't do it, so private options do at some cost
   2. There's some government-private hybrid
   3. It's not done at all

An example would be parental leave. In the US, it largely doesn't exist to the European extent. Employers don't offer it. You can't buy insurance for it. It just doesn't exist. That's something Germans are getting for existing in the German system.

Yes, as I acknowledged it is only half of the story. Certainly you need more information to make an informed decision about anything. But that doesn't make it meaningless. And generally where people level such dismissals there is conversational context being conveniently ignored (such as happened earlier in this thread).

I'm not sure what point you were trying to make with parental leave as an example. I completely agree with what you wrote but don't see it being at odds with anything said previously.

I think we all know that Germans enjoy substantially more free at point of service public services than those in the US let alone those living in a developing country. Obviously that costs something. Yet when someone brings up the price tag you get a bunch of partisan screeching about how prices are meaningless.

Prices _aren't_ meaningless. The US military (for example) is absurdly expensive. There are lots of things received as a result of that expenditure. Regardless, the relative cost is high and that's not meaningless to point out given that everyone involved in the discussion has at least some conception that there are important differences in the downstream impact.

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