Sure, but the benefit to freedom by disconnecting social support services such as healthcare from employment is massive. It’s a tradeoff many seem pleased with.
I see you haven't used the Icelandic health care system - which receives over half of the high income tax rate.
It's trauma care, not health care. Anything preventative is deprioritized and the country beats the United States in Obesity rate. Get hurt, they patch you up, but have a chronic condition, like say a thyroid problem? See you in 6 months.
As somebody that grew up in Iceland but live in the US now, the Icelandic health care system might be bad, and is definitely getting worse, and the main reason for that being that it is severely underfunded (and the main reason for that is the Independence Party [See your post above]), but compared to the US system it is still heaven.
One needs to factor in extra taxes - 25% vat, vehicle reg taxes (in denmark) of around 85% to 150% of the car’s value, and so on. These countries are cool but still not justifying extreme taxation.
It's not extreme. It's used to provide services for us. Denmarks taxes on cars are high even compared to other nordic countries, so I'm not sure why you're bringing that up. Most people don't even need a car there.
And free geothermal bathhouses to enjoy and socialize after work like the Romans did.
The Blue and or Sky Lagoons (disney world of spas) for me werent that great when compared to meeting/conversing with locals at the local and free bathhouses (not free for tourist though; $10).
In Sweden, if you invest in / trade stocks and choose an “ISK” type of account, you pay almost zero tax on your gains (you pay a very low flat tax on the total value of your stocks, and this is quite unsubstantial for most average people who invest/trade)
At least compared to most other European countries, where every profit from stocks is heavily taxed, this is quite wild.
The downside of this ofc is that losses aren’t tax deductible either, and that you still pay the tax even if your stocks lost in value during the year. But still: Your capital gains earned through this scheme are close to be tax-free. If you bought a lot of Nvidia in January and sold it now, you could even withdraw the profit to buy a house or a car - and thereby avoid most of the tax that would come as a consequence of a bigger value of your stock holdings.
Just writing this to point out that there’s more nuance to this “taxes are high in the Nordics” narrative.
NL works similarly but without the opt in, i.e. all your assets above a threshold are taxed at a fictitious income level, like it or not. Means they have no capital gain taxes at all.
Makes for great countries to be rich in, but if you’re a high earning low wealth individual like many early-mid career programmers you’ll be taxed to death.
Not on capital gains, with schemes available to cap salaries and shift compensation to equity, especially for executives.
So despite the public perception on progressive taxes, in practice the Nordics can be quite attractive compared to European countries which have lower income tax rates but income through equity/stocks are progressively taxed together with income taxes. So they can eat their cake and have it too in a sense, by being more accomodating for the wealthy tax-wise than most of the population realize.
Empirically I haven’t heard of anyone paying lethal doses of taxes, and I’m from Sweden so I should know. But I have heard of people dying from a lack of health insurance, or other preventable causes, but that’s in a different country..
So you are saying the waiting times in the Swedish hospital system have no effect whatsoever?
Right…
Nordics love to pick on US when their own healthcare have up to a decade of waiting times for inportant procedures. Up to two years for even an interview with a specialist.
Every single hospital sydtem in the Nordic countries is broken beyone hell.
Both Sweden and Denmark offer private insurance so you can bypass lines and cut down costs.
Iceland does not.
No idea about Finland and Norway.
In the nordics you pay socialist taxes for what is turning in to a kapitalist system.
I wish my fellow Nordics would grow up and face our crippled internal system of throwing immature comments on the US about our “free” healthcare.
Its neither free nor is it working.
I pay 43% of my salary to taxes.
I also pay private health insurance as do half of the population here.
I also pay road tolls, school fees, taxes because I have a mobile ohone from work due to on call. Taxes because work offers food on premis.
The dentist costs 100 euro just for a basic examination and some xrays.
Food cost is at an all time high, so is heating and electricity.
Nordics celebrating nordic superiority is more like the frog being boiled so slowly he doesnt realize until its too late.
> So you are saying the waiting times in the Swedish hospital system have no effect whatsoever?
I wasn’t saying anything even remotely similar to that.
> Nordics love to pick on US when their own healthcare have up to a decade of waiting times for inportant procedures.
It’s not a competition. There are serious problems within Swedish (and probably Nordic overall) healthcare, in particular non-urgent procedures like hip replacement surgery. We should criticize them both.
However, I’ve been living in both systems. In the US the total cost (both taxes and private) is >2x, and the outcome is significantly worse, in aggregate. Getting what’s considered “excellent” health insurance can still land you in a hell hole of legal disputes and unimaginable medical debt. I absolutely don’t blame you for your disappointment, but the US system is much, much more broken, in aggregate, and not just for “the poor”, but for everyone except perhaps multi-millionaires.
> Its neither free nor is it working.
It’s never free. However “working” is not a boolean, it’s floating point. It can get much, much worse.
> I also pay private health insurance as do half of the population here.
Out of curiosity, where? I’m not saying you’re wrong, but it’s news to me. I thought it was way less common.
> Nordics celebrating nordic superiority is[..]
Beyond stupid, indeed. The mindset “at least we’re better than X” leads to complacency and is a huge flaw in many people’s thinking. Everywhere. I don’t endorse any of that.
But I get a lot of value from those taxes. To name a few:
- Education.
- Daycare/kindergarten.
- Healthcare.
- Public transportation.
- Libraries and museums.
Low taxes is how you get everyone on a single street to drive a 100k SUV because the city has no money to fix potholes. Adam Smith wrote a book about the topic, I hear it’s quite good.
"Taxed to death" - where does that come from? How? I'm relatively high taxed, compared to many, I pay a bit more than 40%. But what I'm left with is disposable money, except for car and house insurance (reasonably priced). Plenty left for my wife and myself, for doing everything we want, to travel, and still add to our savings. The only economic burden I can think of is unexpected visits to the dentist - that can cost you.
I'll take this system before absolutely any alternative.
I'd say California comes quite close. People in the US pay taxes too. And depending on which state you are in it can actually add up to a lot.
The advantage of the Nordic system is that it is brutally simple. You pay your taxes and there isn't a whole lot of room to change anything about that.
I lived in Sweden and Finland for a while. It's nice. Everything is taken care off. There is no drama around anything. You get sick you go the doctor. You get old, you are taken care off. Etc. When I moved from Finland to Germany as part of an international transfer in the same company, the company chose to raise my salary to compensate me for the raised tax burden ... in Germany.
Reason: the Finnish tax system is actually pretty alright. After you pay your insurances and taxes, which is pretty much just kept from your salary, that's pretty much it. The VAT is high as well. But there's very little else to take care off beyond things like your rent.
The German tax system on the other hand is death by a thousand cuts. A little tax here, a little insurance there, etc. None of it optional. Once you add it all up, it's quite a lot. So they compensated me. Of course cost of living is a lot lower so it was a quite nice raise for me. California is more like Germany than like Finland. But once you add it all up, you are paying a lot to a lot of different things.
It can also be an advantage. You are only taxed on profits so it's only a disadvantage for those who are in a business for the money. I would assume that this leads to better business relations with better opportunities because greedy people will leave.
