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Comment by aktenlage | Hacker News Reader

> Are you counting in VAT on everything OP spends that money on? ...

No, I just assumed he spends all his money on rent, which is VAT-free ;-). I also didn't account for his Kindergeld and Elterngeld, Rente, Invalidenrente, Witwenrente, Pension and whatever else that person could have. He didn't share all that information.

> Are you counting the taxes paid by the employer for his role (which defacto come out of his pay, just before he gets it)?

You may have to decide whether the payer or the payee pays the taxes, otherwise you are double-counting it.

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I hire people remotely throughout Europe. When we budget for a hire we look at the all-in labor expense, not the persons salary. If the German government didn’t charge us before we even pay the employee, we would just pay it all to the employee.

So it’s a tax he pays whether you want to “brand” it that way or not. Who gets the money changes nothing about our budget for the role.

Imagine you want to buy a house. You have a budget for the house. The government takes taxes on the price, which you need to consider in your budget. Does the seller pay the taxes, or do you?

The seller does, because if the government removed that specific tax, it changes nothing about the market value of the home (competing buyers would also not have to pay that tax, buyer capacity to pay doesn't change either way).

Absent the tax, the seller would simply recoup more of the value of their property.

I think the confusion here is that there exists an economic truth, and then a separate and conflicting language/branding around this economic truth to make it more palatable to people having their money taken from them at gunpoint by the state.

I'm bringing up economic reality, you're rebutting this with the government marketing language.

Yes, I know 'employer contributions' is a clever trick to make people believe they aren't paying as much to government as they are, but in economic reality they are paying for this.

It is in general the same though for wages, as usually companies are not hiring remotely all over Europe and can choose where the tax is paid, so it is the same for every employee.

I feel like "having their money taken from them at gunpoint" is rage bait language.

Have you ever considered that you benefit from public spending? Infrastructure, etc.

This is not intended as rage bait, I am again just distilling marketing language to reality.

If you don't pay the money your government decides you owe them, they will arrest you and put you in prison if you do not comply in virtually all countries. This is fact, not emotional language.

And yes, I fully acknowledge that authoritarian centralization can achieve the most efficient outcomes in certain areas (like infrastructure, military, utilities, etc).

But let's not lie to ourselves and pretend the government is not a giant monopoly that forces you to buy its products at gunpoint whether they are good or not. Allowing too much % of the GDP be captured by this monopoly, always ends in declining living standards, runaway debts, exit controls and ultimately collapse...every single time it has been tried.

HN doesn't need more pro-government voices, as it is already a a left-leaning audience. It needs the opposite, which I'm happy to calmly provide even if constantly being downvoted.

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