[extropy-chat] Europe vs America (was Depressing thought....)

[Eugen Leitl]

> My research indicates that people in the same income brackets (lower
> 60%) in western europe (excluding portugal and spain) pay perhaps 35-
> 55% or thereabouts in taxation. But they get so much more! Do you
> agree?  

I seem to be paying 56%, and Germany isn't supposed to be at the top of the
EU taxation rate. Allright, I didn't have to pay tuition. The quality of the
uni sucked, though. Very soon we'll be seeing free tuition gone gone gone. 
I don't expect that the pension fund I'm currently
paying into will pay for more than 5% of my costs when I'll be needing it.
The health insurance is okay, but what I'm actually getting for the price
tag is becoming less and less.

So, yeah, we're currently still getting something for our taxes, but that
situation is unsustainable, given globalisation, lousy demographics and a low
competitiveness of a stratified culture.

So, all in all I think we're more or less in the same boat. There's a
structural crisis coming, and I just don't see a good easy solution for it. 

-- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a>
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ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org
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