poiop

I am not really comparing tax system, or at least that isn't the intention. The Swedish tax system is easy as long as you stick to those accounted for benefits.

Say if you make a $100k a year and you pay social security for public pension among other things but public pension only gives you credit up to $50k a year. Now if you have a big house you can deduct renovations so your income is for tax purposes is, say, $75k.

If you don't have a big house and your income is a $100k you still get the same public pension but are taxed on the full amount. Now if you started a company and hired yourself through that you could lower your personal income and instead take out dividend so you are also taxed on $75k. But to do that you now have to file much more complicated taxes, with actual accounts and often accountants.

In reality it is even worse because many do the first thing but then also have a company. So they pay themselves $50k a year and then use deductions on that to lower the effective amount even more. So I am out here paying on a $100k so they can have a nice life. (The numbers are made up, salaries and individual benefits are usually less than that and the example might not be entirely accurate but the overall point stands).

None of this really relates to the US tax system, but it is a similar problem in that if I want the best financial situation (by a decent margin) I need to file complicated taxes and a lot of people do exactly that mainly for tax purposes. Swedish sentiments just haven't caught up yet.

Taxes in Sweden are generally effortless. Deductions, investments and benefits are often generous and easy to file. Unfortunately if you are more modest the story is a bit different.

It is great if you are established. You might have a big house, high maintenance costs, use cleaning services, invest a lot in the stock market and other things that comes with all that. Because not only is it easy but you get a lot of public benefits as well like health care, affordable student loans and mortgages, cost-free education and kindergarten, sick leave and affordable private additions to many of those. You can even use the ease of that to do things like start a company on the side.

For us that are more modest and don't have a lot of assets but mostly want work, get health care and do something else once in a while, it is still a good system. I once checked and approved my taxes in the middle of the night, from a bar, in China. But overall there isn't as much benefit. If I don't want to pay a higher tax rate than those who use all those deductions and want some flexibility in how I use my income (which I honestly rather wouldn't) I need to start a company. But then I would have to file much more complicated taxes and therefor get much less enjoyment from taxes being easy for personal income. Still by not doing so I am giving up tens of thousands of dollars a year.

So while I am in no way suggesting that the US system is better or even comparable, the Swedish tax system today have many of the same overall problems. And that is unfortunately more and more true of other systems as well.

Unfortunately arguments like that don't make much political sense since those capabilities already exists. It isn't technical measures that protect rights but laws. A government could be draconian without surveillance technology. This sort of argument mainly appeals to technologist trying to deal with that they are making bank off private information.

Snowden's "turnkey tyranny"-argument is okay but requires specific knowledge and imagines things that haven't happened which therefor is open to interpretation.

I think the only real way to prevent something like this is to provide an alternative but that is also unlikely since it implies responsibility which the tech industry doesn't like.

The reality is that the Internet is often useless for this sort of thing. I, like many others, got back problems during the pandemic. In my case science will mostly tell you to do nothing, health care will give you physical therapy, the Internet is full of instant relief stretches, short workout programs and psychological solutions ("don't care" which plays into "do nothing" like science suggests).

I managed to rehabilitate myself mostly by walking for hundreds of hours. That isn't really some trick or secret. That is what health care would eventually tell you to do. It just isn't reflected as much as the easy and the qualified solutions. Now I got tinnitus a few weeks back and it's the same landscape on the Internet. But getting the information isn't really the problem, it is making use of it. It's easy to find a high level of engagement and it's easy to find a high level of knowledge. The challenge is finding both.

I have always been somewhat sensitive to noise, but a lot of people aren't. They have whining fridges, squeaking doors or noise pollution all over the place. They don't really care. You are dismissing symptom reduction a bit. But as far I can tell that is the solution for most. A combination of stress reduction, lifestyle reform and behavioural therapy, potentially with a hearing aid or noise masking. And then it gets manageable enough that they don't care. Maybe you can do that yourself, but possibly you can't and will conclude that it doesn't work.

Of course like I said you shouldn't trust me. I'm going to go find whatever specialist health care can give me without paying too much extra.