#USpol #Norway #taxes #tax

@davidaugust “I like to pay taxes. With them, I buy civilization.”

— Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

@grb090423 @davidaugust people nowadays dont care for "we", they only care for "I"

@KanaMauna @davidaugust We (well I'm in Denmark, not in Norway, but same/same) also don't pay an arm and a leg for childcare...

@twallutis @davidaugust

Yes, there's a lot of that thinking but I'm hopeful that gradual growth of Green Party membership worldwide proves otherwise.

@ArtHarg @noplasticshower @davidaugust Add to that just over 6 million people in Denmark.
I definitely take home a bigger part of what I have earned here in Denmark when I calculate in health care, childcare and education for myself and my family.
/Edit: My point was, I used to live in Brooklyn, so it is not a theoretical comparison.

@jwcph @davidaugust I think you're probably right. For one thing, they inflate everything they can. The classic example being that a trip to the hospital means you'll see ambulance fees and stuff like "optimized nutritional supplementation" which is like $50 for a $0.25 cube of jello. (I forget exact terms they use, but it's utterly ridiculous...)

@davidaugust @nazokiyoubinbou

Don't use that term for the RIGHTS Europeans have fought for, and which are only possible because we have democracies where the common good is not an empty phrase. That's the difference between having parliamentary representation of citizens and an oligarchy where people are hoping for "benefits" from their master, err..., employer.

@WiseWoman As much as I love having free healthcare, parental leave etc, people in EU countries fall for fascism every other week.
@davidaugust

@davidaugust I liked Tim Wu's point the other day that private corporation in America are basically creating a "private tax", where they are being extractive and taking the profits while provide no value to consumers. His example of this was Amazon's pay-for-boosting merchants pay into, and that gets translated into higher consumer prices.

I wonder if you could analyze this "private tax", maybe the tax rate wouldn't be that different?

@davidaugust
"We pay more to the state" = "we pay more to ourselves". The Norwegians *are* the state; it's a democracy.

@jwcph @davidaugust @nazokiyoubinbou
Many of our European sovereign wealth or pension funds are probably invested in the US system and extracting 'value' too. We have outsourced labour exploitation to China and financial exploitation to the US.

@davidaugust if anyone is thinking the US system is better, look at maternal death rates

@davidaugust

Worth adding also that European state-funded healthcare produces better health outcomes for less money than the US privatised system.

Plus - not all Norwegians pay more than Americans anyway. What tax you pay in Europe generally depends on what you can afford.

@WiseWoman @davidaugust sadly there are plenty of European countries on the brink of falling for fascists lies and hollow promises.

@Pionir @WiseWoman @davidaugust Very true but with the USA in thrall of Orange Mussolini I'm not sure how that observation has any bearing on the pros and cons of one tax system compared to the other?

@davidaugust

From Germany, I absolutely agree. And it's interesting to note that healthcare is not tax financed here.

There are so many different implementations of this all over the industrialized world, and all of them work. Single payer tax-financed, multipayer tax-financed or completely private, or a mix like here in Germany.

But hey, dumb maga-american geniuses hear "50% taxes" on Faux Knews and fall for out-of-context misinformation or even outright lies, because they have no idea how a progressive tax system in an advanced country works. An average earner here pays probably lower taxes than in the US, but we have mandatory dues for social security including healthcare. They conflate this with taxes because that's what their tax-evading oligarchs tell them. What they don't tell them is that we don't have to pay for everything out of pocket. No extra premiums, and above all, no absurd copays, no surprise bills, no need to walk to the ER because you can't afford the ambulance. And most definitely no out-of-network nonsense.

Also, no PTO but real sick leave and real vacation days. Fresh mothers who don't have to return to their slave jobs the other day. No people dying because they can't pay for insuline. And we don't have one-person death panels in insurance offices who decide whether you get therapy.

@mike @davidaugust still the people need to vote for them.

Also you can still get anyone elected in the primaries if you show up with your buddies and organize the show.

How do you think the republican party got so tea partied/magafied that the classical business republican from the 90s and 00s doesn't really hold any sway there anymore?

@davidaugust Warum übernehmen wir nichts davon und lassen uns stattdessen anpöbeln, wir würden zu wenig für die Wirtschaft tun?

#merzKANNesNICHT #taxtherich

@GeofCox @davidaugust

It's important to know that it's not even state-funded in most of Europe. There are tax-finaced single payer systems like in Britain or Denmark, and there are fully private systems like in Switzerland or the Netherlands. And there are mixed-systems like in Germany, where there is private insurance and public (NOT tax-financed) insurance. All of them have in common that health insurance is mandatory and that the health sector is heavily regulated. Patients are patients, not customers to be ripped off like in the states.

@davidaugust

There are many other benefit to Norwegian taxes.

Lots of people have really good govt jobs here. Good conditions with good pay. This places pressure on corporations to offer good conditions as well. Everyone benefits even if they don't work for the govt.

They also have a wealth tax, which has the net effect of keeping housing affordable. Instead of investors buying lots of houses to rent out and driving up the cost of home ownership, people have a real shot at buying a home to live in.

The third benefit I should mention is everyone in Norway gets to bitch and moan about how much tax they pay, because they have so much time off work to gather and talk to one another!