When I moved to America, I was surprised by the amount of fees. Fees to pick up garbage, visit a doctor, and drive on most highways.
The country I lived in had higher taxes, but almost no fees.
Americans seem dumb when it comes to taxes and fees.
It’s the illusion of freedom that Americans are obsessed with. The idea is that we are free to choose our insurance provider, doctor, utility provider, etc.
The reality is we are stuck with the insurance plan our employer provides or that we get on the healthcare marketplace and we go to the doctor that our insurance company partners with. Utility providers are restricted to whoever provides service at our address.
Add to that, Americans as a whole are extremely selfish. My Uber-conservative parents and in-laws would give us their last dollar but thumb their nose at the idea of helping someone they don’t know.
None of us have the actual numbers, but I would bet a hefty amount that if we just socialized everything that we already pay for, the bill each month would not be much different.
My Uber-conservative parents and in-laws would give us their last dollar but thumb their nose at the idea of helping someone they don’t know.
You see that a lot with people on the right (it drives a lot of their opinions that put them on that side of things.) Fundamentally it is an inability to meaningfully experience people outside of their bubble as real people like the ones inside of it and rather than work to rationally overcome that limitation they simply treat everyone outside of that bubble like an object. Almost nothing the right does to others is an unreasonable or unacceptable way to treat an object and is usually something they would never do to someone they actually intuitively perceive as a real person.
While we can (and should) hold people responsible for working to rationally overcome those limitations, the reality is that we all have them to a greater or lesser degree and there will always be people who aren’t able to do better than they do now.
Not only is it unfair to them to maintain an environment wherein they are expected to have empathic abilities well beyond what they are able to manage (and to have them, fairly, be treated as though they are cruel and heartless for it, when if they only had to deal with situations within their grasp they’d actually be very kind and caring people) but pragmatically we just cannot expect to overcome the issues caused by that without making changes. Sociatally we cannot keep setting people up for failure and then being mad at them for the issues that failure causes.
NB it’s also important to acknowledge that none of us are able to perfectly experience strangers as exactly the same thing as people we know and love and that while people can suck more or less at this, all of us are being asked to be better at it than we reasonably can be.
Americans have a cultural dislike of taxes (for a wide array of reasons, including selection bias on who actually moved to America).
Thus, Americans (painting with a broad brush) tend to favor policies that charge people who do/consume a thing, rather than the tax base as a whole.
I find this immensely frustrating, but it is unfortunately true.
The premise is solid though. Charge the people that use the thing more than those that don’t. It all breaks down though because the people that use them the most are corporations and receive the largest tax incentives.
Sounds great until you need an ambulance or firefighters to come save your ass.
Also, many Americans dislike taxes because they don’t want “their” money being spent on people with whom they feel no affinity. It’s always going to be a problem in large countries with diverse populations.
And if it seems like I’m beating around the bush and phrasing this comment in charitable terms, it’s because I am. Deliberately.
There are some communities in the USA that consistently vote down funding any sort of public fire department through taxes. Obviously they still need a fire department, so their “solution” is “private fire companies” with a subscription model.
These private firefighters will show up to any fire and they’ll save lives … but after they pull you out they’ll let your house burn to the ground if you didn’t buy a fire protection plan from them.
Yeah no matter how much you weaken that I am not going to believe it until you produce a detailed study proving it. Especially the bit about immigrants.
I mean, I’m not going to sit here and try to change your mind.
However, if you wanted to look into it, the field of study is called behavioral genetics and it’s incredibly controversial… But the research suggests that upwards of 50% of our behaviors are inherited genetically.
So the group of people that left Europe in search of the new world, and the group of people that sided with America and against England in the war, etc… Those are the people who reproduced and created American culture. Pioneering, willing to die in search of opportunity, oppositional, etc.
If you think about it it makes perfect sense.
Don’t take offense to them calling Americans dumb. It’s a generalization of our culture. Not you as a person.
Americans are dumb with how we deal with taxes and money and socialization of services.
Well it wouldn’t be the issue that it is if we had a system that was designed to at least be somewhat responsive to popular opinion. It’s not like anyone can just wave a magic wand and reform our antiquated system. It was very deliberately designed to be very difficult to change and there are powerful interests doing everything they can to make sure it that it doesn’t.
What zero regulation on utilities and property tax does to a mfer.
I’m from California and in the income tax bracket that would definitely pay fewer taxes in Texas, but I’m happy to pay more because I feel like we get a lot for our taxes here. There’s still waste, but we have so many social safety nets in comparison to other states it is well worth it. Not to mention the government has been running a budget surplus which is given directly back to Californians rather than pocketed by the government.
So I’m hearing you don’t want your tax money spent on giving people tanks to arrest children for having abortions? Then where do your taxes go?
Probably to some hippie stuff, like libraries, or roads, or a power grid that doesn’t shit the bed every year.
Idk y’all’s power grid is as bad or worse than Ohio’s. Also get trains so us Midwesterners can demand them
Texas had a budget surplus too. They decided to give it to people who own real estate.
“Im happy to pay more” lol stay there, we are happy you are paying more as well
It’s less “paying more” and more about reallocating funds. If taxes pay for Healthcare, they don’t have to pay for Healthcare so they would be happy to pay more taxes, for example. If the roads are maintained they end up paying less for vehicle maintenance. If public transportation becomes more available they pay less in car maintenance and gas (and possibly able to get rid of their car entirely, a HUGE difference financially, which would come from a likely unnoticeable increase in taxes).
If the money goes to weapons or corporate benefits or legal costs fighting to defend unconstitutional laws in court for political theater (or, as a Florida resident, paying taxes to have migrants in Texas shipped to New York, which helps literally nobody except the person paid to move them), that doesn’t chip anything away from what taxpayers already pay for, so it’s just additional cost.
I’m an American who has been living in Turkey for many years.
In Turkey, the political leaders in both sides of the aisle tell you not to pay income tax or property tax or payroll tax or any of the normal things Americans complain about. What is the result? An iPhone costs more than $3k. A ford focus that costs about $20k new in the US is over $50k in Turkey. EVERY package you receive is opened by the post office and inspected to see how much they can tax you. If you leave Turkey and want to bring the things you bought with you, you are taxed an exit fee… You can potentially be charged three or four times for the same item.
Whenever I hear Americans bitching about taxes it drives me insane. They have no idea what they’re asking for. The government needs money to function and they are going to get it one way or another…
Not only does the government needs money, services centralized in the hands of the government end up costing less because they have a monopoly and they don’t run them for a profit! Over here road insurance is private only for the vehicle, our insurance as today users (you know, the stuff that costs a fortune to insure because breaking both legs costs more to the system than whatever car you’re driving) costs peanuts in comparison to places where it’s the private sector that controls it (if I lived across the border from where I am my registration + insurance cost would be double what it is now).
Trains aren’t important because they make a lot of money. Trains are important because they make the land around them worth a lot of money. Businesses near train stations get more customers. People pay more for houses near train stations. Cities with strong transit systems have a higher GDP.
Despite this, England privatised its rail system and expects the rail companies to make a profit. Instead, English people are poorer and the government has less money.
England privatised its rail system
I have a dear friend from Docklands in London, who ran trains. We argue constantly about privatisation vs a government-run consolidated service like healthcare. He’s adamant that a mass transit system has to be run as a separate capitalist company, that it must be cash-positive, and that’s the only way to do it.
He also believes the Tube is overpriced, cramped, sweaty, and a really low value for money that is propped up by people who can’t afford to drive into London nor park once they arrive, and have no other choice.
services centralized in the hands of the government end up costing less because they have a monopoly
Where I live privately owned utility companies provide much cheaper services than govt. Also govt is very bad at providing them consistently (if people outside of big city lose electricity for example, they have to go and block nearest highway, otherwise govt just ignores their complaints)
I guess monopoly might be beneficial for some period of time but ultimately it’s bad, both in private and public sector.
Where I live privately owned utility companies provide much cheaper services than govt
where is that?
I understand that the government needs money to function, I just want them to stop taking 30%+ of my income in order to buy billion dollar boats that shoot million dollar bullets.
I’m okay with the 30% so long as they stop using it to buy more and more expensive toys to murder brown children with. We’re not getting what we pay for as a society, but the idea that we can make that right by privatizing everything is ridiculous and just continuously doesn’t work.
Sidenote: part of the reason those things cost SO much more is because they’re also no longer domestic products. They’re now imports, such as Americans paying more for Mercedes Benz than you would in Germany.
One of my favorite examples of this is Starbucks. The already psychotic 6 dollar drink in the US is 9 dollars in Thailand 😳
What you said about Turkey is mostly true. Your causality is wrong. The reason Turkey is absurdly expensive and full of taxes is extreme amount of corruption caused by radical islamist government going full nepotism. Our head of economy was literally the groom of Erdogan for so many years.
Disclaimer: I am a Turkish dude who haplens to be an economics PhD student.
Almost like their regressive taxation is working exactly as planned
Been trying to point this shit out to people for at least a decade. Texas property taxes are insane. Every road they build or redo is full toll or has “express” toll lanes. My water bill has over $100 a month that are taxes no one talks about tacked onto it, which seem to go up every few months.
Everyone used to point out the low cost of living as why you wanted to live in Texas, but that hasn’t been true for a while. Been to New York, California and Colorado multiple times in recent years. Everything cost about the same. These are places the right wingers used to scream about how much more expensive they are. Decent neighborhoods around Austin or DFW cost just as much for housing as most “expensive” cities now and exise taxes are insane here. Anyone not making like a quarter mill+ a year is paying a way higher tax percentage in Texas than most states with income taxes.
Exactly, I moved from TX to OR and the money saved is pretty crazy. Sure, income taxes are higher and other things cost a little more but it was overall a huge net positive in spending/saving.
