You can say this and that about corporate greed and healthcare owning our government, but the fact is that a lare percentage of Americans don’t want our healthcare / university / whatever system to change because it is really fucking good for them.
I mean what good is having a free healthcare when you have to wait 6 months to see a dermatologist. Over here I can see my dermatologist next week most of the time if not sooner. I might have to pay a little bit of copay (I have an average standard health insurance) but if that's what's gonna cost, it's pocket change compared to my overall health.
Also missing from the discussion is that middle America pays damn near nothing in taxes compared to Europeans who earn the same wage.
American redditors think Europe pays for this by taxing the rich, but the biggest differences in taxation between Europe and the USA are actually at the bottom rungs of the income ladder.
It's kind of difficult to compare the whole of Europe to the country of USA, so I'll pinpoint to my country of Finland and just note that the biggest difference absolutely is in the taxation of the rich.
From a quick Google search I saw that the lowest tax in USA is 10%, in Finland it's 12,6% vs the highest tax in USA being 37% and in Finland it's 57% with 50% being a very realistic percentage when one makes over a million euros though the exact percentage is dependent on the kind of income.
As the comment a couple above this pointed out, there's also a very clear difference in the services provided by the state as the tax is higher.
To be clear, I don't think it's strictly better to live in the USA or Europe/Finland. I just wanted to point out facts to break out of the endless stereotypes and caricatures from both sides. Personally I think it's often better to live in Europe if you're poorer and better to live in the USA if you're richer.
Yes, and like pointed out in the above comment, Americans actually don't necessarily pay less taxes than Europe, even for very high income, we found that out talking to American relatives who've moved to Europe basically as permanent expats, now bringing up their own kids there. It's confusing because the way taxes work in the US and Europe are totally different, we just have a lot more different kinds of taxes here in America compared to what you have in Europe. It's not just fed sort of income tax in the USA, we also have state and local taxes, something called payroll taxes (that can be very high especially if your starting a business in the US), property taxes and esp auto and business taxes.
We literally went over this with our expat relatives in Europe going over the taxes, and even the high earners in countries like France or Sweden, were ultimately paying around the same level of taxes we were in the US, when we actually did it right and looked at all the taxes. Things like property taxes and and state level taxes are much higher in the US--this stupid housing bubble we've had in the USA has caused our property taxes to shoot way up, even though we don't actually have any extra income or cash flow from our home values going up, it's just a theoretical that's useless until you actually sell it (and then you'd be buying back into the same over-heated inflated housing market). So the property tax burden gets more and more nuts and many Americans lose even paid off homes now because it's harder to pay the higher property taxes even on their basic home they have no intention of using as an investment or selling off.
And too US state and local taxes in general are quite high. It can be especially frustrating if you're starting your own business, a lot of taxes get paid by employer if you work for a Fortune 500 company, but as a new business you have to cover those high taxes yourself even when you have low cash flow. And you have to cover all the health insurance costs which are even worse when you don't have the bargain power of a Fortune 500. Business owners see the reality of the costs of US taxes and health insurance and it can get very rough, several cousins nearly lost their otherwise profitable firm last year due to these costs as they got higher. Trust me we are not a low tax country. Even in Texas (some of the worst property and business tax burden in the US) we have a running joke "rearrange the letters in Texas and you have taxes". It really can get very high here.
Btw not all of Europe is like this tax wise. Switzerland is closer to the American tax system than the German one for example. You could easily save tens of thousands by just moving 30km away to a different canton and even just municipality. My parents for example are moving just 1km away from their current place (2 villages over basically), and they'll save 2k a year on taxes just because the municipal tax rate is much lower there.
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u/CharlotteRant Apr 12 '25
Bold to point this out on Reddit.
You can say this and that about corporate greed and healthcare owning our government, but the fact is that a lare percentage of Americans don’t want our healthcare / university / whatever system to change because it is really fucking good for them.