Look at the high taxes in Scandinavian countries and Americans would gasp. Higher income taxes, VATs of 22% to 25% on most things your buy, payroll taxes and other assorted fees.
Then look at the other side of the coin, those folks don’t worry about high out of pocket spending on healthcare, education, childcare, more free time, etc. Less stress in daily life in exchange for taxes.
Yeah, but they depend on government.
Actually, they depend on each other. The collective taxes society pays are redistributed through government back to society. Clearly, some citizens use more benefits and different benefits than others, but that is true in any society.
The MAGA crowd sees it differently.
Essentially, lower taxes, smaller government, more empowerment for individuals to use their own money as they see fit – such as on high out of pocket spending for healthcare, education, childcare, less free time with pay, etc.
In other words, MAGA wants to minimize the collective value of society and maximize the individual’s freedom and responsibility – because we don’t want no stinking government telling us what to do and we don’t want to pay for lazy people. Liberty‼️
It’s like what they want is a society of 340 million individuals only responsible for themselves.
Mr Trump is trying his best to give people what they voted for. Lower taxes, smaller government, fewer government services and programs.
How is empowerment with their own money working for most average Americans? Are they still struggling with high health care and child care costs, college costs, etc.
Where did all their money created by empowerment go?
QUINNSCOMMENTARY 
From a blog post by Bryan Caplan – for those of you who think our current republican form of government, coupled with capitalism, is a failure. versus, say, democratic socialism as practiced in Europe.
Against the Noble Lies of Democracy
Suppose you’re crafting a Noble Lie to motivate people to defend democracy. What will you tell them? First, that actually-existing democracy is wonderful. Second, that democracy faces an existential threat.
If you convincingly and charismatically spread your Noble Lie, listeners won’t just be motivated. They’ll be hysterical: “We’re in heaven, yet hell is at our gates.” … most people who fall for your Noble Lie will live in a state of panic — and unless they’re extremely introverted, they’ll spread their panic to others.
The main problem with pushing Noble Lies is that skeptics will start asking obvious questions. Most notably: “How wonderful is actually-existing democracy, really?” It’s possible, of course, that actually-existing democracy really is wonderful and really does face an existential threat. How can we tell the difference between the real McCoy and the Noble Lie?
First, democracy plainly isn’t wonderful. Not just according to me, but according to a simple observation that almost everyone shares. Namely: Even if you love one of the two main political sides, your beloved side is only in power about half the time. …
Second, while democracy has definitely faced existential threats, it has faced vastly more false alarms of existential threats.
Suppose, for example, you claim that democracy faces an existential threat because of Trump …
…
many people, including quite a few of my friends, are routinely spreading what look to me like Noble Lies about democracy and its imminent demise. While I freely admit that there is a non-zero probability that they’re correct, I think the probability is quite low. Yes, you could denounce me for being oblivious. But frankly, the more you denounce me, the lower my probability gets. People who see the future speak calmly and bet with alacrity.
Am I not horrified by many of Trump’s actions? Of course, especially on immigration and trade. But insofar as I pay attention to current events, I’ve been horrified by all of his predecessors as well. Am I not currently more horrified than normal? Only marginally. In my lifetime, American democracy has embraced more monstrous policies than Trump has so far. Starting with conscription. All things considered, my best bet is that we’ll muddle through once again, as we have for centuries. …
If you think the modern welfare state is wonderful, if “getting to Denmark” is your idea of utopia, … my recently-finished Unbeatable argues otherwise, but if that’s where you stand, I doubt I’ll change your mind.”
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Socialism is state ownership of production, etc. I certainly don’t favor that, nor do I oppose profit legally and ethically earned, any amount of profit.
However, we need a touch of reality when it comes to human beings and their ability to handle their finances and to some extent their lives. The choice seems simple, at least so says Project 2025.
Lower taxes, empower individuals let them take care of themselves and they will be more efficient doing it than government and you don’t need many government programs.
Nice theory I wish it were true, but it isn’t, never has been and never will be. Many, perhaps most, people can’t or don’t even set their own financial priorities or make prudent financial choices. Live on credit, can’t plan for the future.
You can say, tough, let them suffer the consequences and that sounds appealing just like to some people undocumented immigrants should be left to die on the street rather than receive taxpayer healthcare.
In a society of 340 million it seems to me some things are better handled on a collective uniform basis. We do that with education, we run our towns that way with taxes used to provide all needed services.
We should do the same for healthcare, not socialized, but universal and uniform insurance coverage for every person, one system, one risk pool.
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insurance is not every one into the same pool. Insurance is like risks in one pool and different risks in a different pool. So, unless you socialize healthcare, where all eligible fund the cost by paying the same premium, no exceptions, your pool will fail, sooner or later, because Americans want someone else to pay, they want the best coverage YOUR money will buy.
once we have health care socializes, what’s next, food, transportation, higher education, etc.
simply, your solutions are worse than present day.
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Seriously, a form of M4A is worse than what non-system we have? How many different schemes have been tried over the years? How many assured universal coverage or fair uniform fee schedules as opposed to different fees based on the coverage a person has?
Perhaps two pools, 65 plus and everyone else in the other. As you know, the smaller the pool, the greater potential fluctuation in spending.
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However, no need to move to Scandanavia. Just move to NYC next year once Mr. Mandami is in charge.
One of my favorite movies of all time is Robin Williams in Moscow on the Hudson. It is the story of a saxophone player with the Soviet Circus who defects when he is in russia. The movie opens showing the difficulties of life in socialist/communist Moscow, families jammed together in small government sponsored apartments, bread (and all other consumer) lines at stores, etc. A great scene occurs when Williams returns from shopping with his Soviet prize – toilet paper:
A favorite scene is after he has defected, when he is sent to the grocery store with the name of his goods written on a little slip of paper. He enters the store and looks at the manager and says “coffee?” the manager replies, aisle 2. he responds “coffee line”, manager says “isle 2 no line”. He then heads over to aisle four and starts to look at all the different brands of coffee, ending up in a puddle on the floor saying “coffee, coffee, coffee!!!!”
Capitalism has raised more humans out of poverty than any other system, especially the American form of capitalism. Is it exempt from mistakes, fraud and stupidity? No, see Solyndra, Exxon, Blockbuster, PanAm, etc. And, there is plenty of corporate welfare going on – where our federal government/beltway idiots choose industries to subsidize, instead of letting individuals, through the operation of the invisible hand make consumer decisions.
Encourage all who prefer socialism to move to New York in 2026 – I am sure there will be room as others leave… https://www.wsj.com/opinion/walmart-still-beats-mamdani-mart-93bcde4e
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Defects when he is in New York City, sorry for typo.
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I think more people would pay higher taxes if the money were well-spent. 22-25% VAT in Norther Europe countries pays for lots of things there that are not free in the USA. College and health care are two obvious items.
The problem is, too much of the money is not well spent. Everybody has their own complaint. Mine is transportation, and waaaay too much money is spent on crappy road construction and maintenance. The alternative is street cars and commuter rail but the cost of construction of those is also obscene.
Where I live the total sales tax is 7.75%, and this year’s election has a ballot initiative to add another 1% on top of that for a light rail commuter line extension. They already spent $3.5 Billion on a 19-mile stretch (originally it was going to be 800 million) and now want to spend another 3.3 billion to extend the system. 27,000 people a day supposedly ride the train, but there’s nothing that counts riders, checks tickets, or keeps out free riders so they’re just guessing at the number.
I’m surprised at how low the tax burden in the USA compares to other countries. This link has a nice bar chart making it easy to see.
How do US taxes compare internationally? | Tax Policy Center
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Thanks for sharing the charts!
It may not actually confirm that our taxes are low, just low as a percentage of GDP. That is, the size of our denominator (our GDP compared to others GDP) is more likely the reason why our percentage of taxes as a percentage of GDP is as low as it is.
And, when you look at the source charts, it confirms most of our revenue is raised (compared to others) via income and capital gains taxes, as well as property taxes. Those also reflect a significant difference in accumulated wealth (capital, housing, commercial real estate).
It really confirms just how strong, comparatively, our economy is and has been … perhaps in part because of the tax structure.
Raises a different question, that GDP itself would likely be lower if we changed the incidence of revenue raising to apply more to consumption – since consumption is 70% of GDP.
Ordinarily, I would chime in and comment that our GDP is also a little higher because of all of the government deficit spending, but, unfortunately, the impact of deficit spending varies based on whether the underlying economy is above or below its potential, whether we are at full employment, etc. (in terms of the multiplier effect).
Again, thanks.
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Al Lindquist
Jack has a great point–folks prefer coming here rather than other countries for many reasons one of which the freedom we have–we don’t work for the state and those individual states with high taxes and great benefits (??) seem to be losing population. Folks want to keep what they work for–it doesn’t belong to the government.
so life would be so much better if we just paid even more in taxes and had 6 weeks vacation–“free” healthcare–less stress and just a great life ? Problem is so many of these European countries are running out of money to pay for this “good life”.
On line Wash. Post did a long story of the problems France is facing 10-days ago–basically running out of money for all the social welfare programs–Germany is having a similar problem and the vaunted rail system, as an example, is now haunted by trains not running on time and experiencing other major issues.
As Margaret Thatcher supposedly said: “at some point you run out of other people’s money” when describing the welfare state.
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Dick, why not give equal time to implementation of greater social/government structures in places with more extensive social structures like Venzuela and Cuba. Michael Moore did a whole film about Cuban medicine and its superiority.
Or, simply, why not compare the immigration numbers into the US (legal immigration averaging 1+MM for the past 100 years, after 2024 limits were implemented), with immigration from the US into Scandanavia https://www.norden.org/en/statistics/origins-immigrants
or to Canada https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2025/statcan/36-28-0001/CS36-28-0001-2025-3-4-eng.pdf
or to Mexico https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_immigration_to_Mexico
Don’t see a lot of illegal border jumping from the
US to Canada or from the US to Mexico in order to gain access to their social governance structures (including VATs, socialized medicine, etc.)
And, obviously, tens of thousands (versus the millions who have come here) emigrated from America to those countries (many of them returned to countries of their heritage), so, what’s stopping Americans who would prefer such governance?
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1924 limits, not 2024 limits – sorry about typo
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