Taxes

[barrett]

Hi, Welcome to the United States of America. You're free here, but you'll need some money. Go get a job. ...Two weeks go by. Here's your pay, but you only get half of it because you gotta do your part.

We live in a society that pays for tons of shit on our behalf that we like to forget about when it's inconvenient.

So maybe this whole "we pay half of our money to the government!" meme is a bunch of baloney pushed by people trying to make you mad and turn off your brain so you'll make bad decisions that just so happen to serve their purposes.

I've edited out most of what Pointedstick wrote and just quoted the two points above. Was talking to a Lebanese-American friend last night and he said that in comparison to where he came from, he's happy to pay taxes because living in the US is like being a member of a country club. You pay your dues and you get services that are for the most part very good. It's not perfect, of course, but having traveled to many parts of the world, for me it's the best horse in the glue factory.

[Pointedstick]

Exactly.

All in all I think we complainy Americans get a pretty good deal. The taxes we pay are significantly lower than what many of our peers pay in other 1st world countries, but we get domestic services that are as nice or almost as nice. Could they be better? Sure. Are we willing to pay more taxes to make that happen? Mostly no. Hence, the pretty-good-but-not-amazing status quo.

As an aside, did you know that Obamacare is very similar to the healthcare system they have in Germany? Sure it's a run a bit better there, but in principle it functions in largely the same way.

IMO only Canada offers a better deal when it comes to the "tax burden to services provided" ratio. Perks of being a neighboring global empire's protectorate, I think.

[boglerdude]

Dunno if thats still true, they've been quite whiny ever since the truckers tried to "overthrow their government"

https://old.reddit.com/r/canada/top/?sort=top&t=month

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vq3hWmZTvaw

[glennds]

IMO only Canada offers a better deal when it comes to the "tax burden to services provided" ratio. Perks of being a neighboring global empire's protectorate, I think.

Japan says "hold my Sapporo"