#USpol #Norway #taxes #tax

@mike @davidaugust FWIW I've had Americans joke about / make fun of our taxes and social security over here plenty of times over the years...

@Mastokarl @noplasticshower @davidaugust I know plenty of old people that would be goners in Greece if it was not for the public health system, with all its issues and delays it has kept them alive.
These are poor people living with pensions 200-300 euro per month.

@mihamarkic @faliate @davidaugust Eye tests are free in Scotland and NHS advises people to have one every 2 years.
Similarly dentist check ups cost less than 10£ with an X-ray and polish and they are also scheduled at least once per year via NHS. You can of course go in at any time if there is an emergency

@davidaugust

@davidaugust

I wish for once someone would do a side by side comparison of all taxes and health costs for an average citizen of these 2 countries.

@nickapos @faliate @davidaugust Free dentists checks and care over here in Slovenia including x rays.

@davidaugust and poor people in the US often pay a higher tax rate than poor people in Norway, because of this little trick call “progressive taxation”

@davidaugust @nazokiyoubinbou Not same expense - there's plenty of evidence that you pay much more for less benefits. Which is not surprising, since that system is primarily a grift for private corporations to squeeze the population ever harder.

@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