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The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

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Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#231

Post by nommm-nommm »

cmdrfred wrote: post #139
jacquesm wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now let's hope nobody gets ill.

We both have health insurance, we make too much for Obamacare but we costed it out and we can afford for one of us to stop working if we had to.

You've never been sick with health insurance, have you? I have, it's stressful as fuck worrying about paying copays, deductibles, coinsurance, etc. And I could afford it! And I had short term disability insurance, so I kept my job and my pay during treatment. I couldn't imagine working a job that didn't have short term disability. I don't know how a lower income people could do it.

This was before the ACA though, I don't know how it works now.

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#232

Post by vidarh »

alkonaut wrote: post #159
collyw wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't Europeans pay similar levels of tax to Americans?

Depends on which europeans you mean. The higher taxed countries like the nordics pay mad taxes. I don't mind though because I feel it's well spent (i.e. my attitude towards public spending is that it is usually pretty efficient ). That's probably a big difference to the US where the attitude seems to be that taxes are pretty much a black hole. Tax calc for me: Employer pays $8k Payroll taxes deducted: $2k My gross sa…

None of the Nordic countries have taxes as high as the ones you outline above for average earners, though it is possible in some instances if you're earning substantially above average.

For average earners, the tax levels you outline are possible in Belgium, Austria, Germany, France, Hungary or Italy, based on OECD numbers. All of which outdistance the Nordics when it comes to taxation.

Again when looking at averages, of the Nordics, Sweden is highest with ~42.7% of total labour cost going to taxes for an average earner (of which 23.7% is employer payroll taxes). Norway has 36.6%, with 11.5% employer payroll taxes. Denmark 36.4% with 0.8% employer payroll taxes. Finland 43.9% with 18.7% payroll taxes.

Your VAT calculation is vastly exaggerated in any case, as from your net salary you also have to deduct housing costs, food and other essentials, many of which are tax exempt in most European countries. Last time I calculcated how much of my gross salary (excluding payroll taxes) went on VAT, while I lived in Norway, it was closer to 4% (of gross wages, so lower as percentag of total labour costs to make it comparable with the numbers above) despite earning way above average and having a higher disposable income after housing costs etc. than average. For lower earners it will typically be lower, as a lower earner tends to have less disposable income to spend on products that are rated at the full VAT rate.

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#233

Post by alkonaut »

vidarh wrote: post #221
sheeshkebab wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US way: You make $8k a month: You pay $2k in taxes (Employer pays an additional $1k in tax), so your income is 9k. You pay $500 in health and other benefits (employer pays another $500) If you spend remaining $5.5k, you'll usually pay $250-$500 In sales taxes. In other words, you have $5k remaining to spend on shit that you probably don't need.

That comparison doesn't make sense. He states $6k gross salary, which means you need to start with $6k, not $8k, before adding on the employer contribution/payroll tax.

Yeah - whether the "payroll tax" is seen as ever earned by me or not is just semantics. The employers expense is $8k in my case. I get that $8k minus payroll tax minus income tax to my bank account. The net is $4k. In this context if I'm asked how much I earn, the answer is $6k (i.e. before income tax but after payroll taxes). The fact that it's deducted first as $2k payroll then as $2k income tax doesn't change anything in terms of tax pressure however, and to include the total tax pressure obviously requires also including the VAT and other taxes (property, energy, ...)

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#234

Post by donw »

alkonaut wrote: post #132
trome wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You badly need a multi party system. Your current system is too polarized. Definitely we need to get rid of First Past the Post, but while our parties are polarized, they are both far to the right of the vast majority of voters. > What if I like guns but I want universal healthcare? That is actually fairly common. Gun control can be done in a nuanced way, and we can have more guns with few instances of gun violence…

> we can have more guns with few instances of gun violence esque Switzerland if we train our populace to properly secure and disarm their guns when not being actively used. Would a law requiring guns to be safely stored (i.e. in a safe ) be acceptable? I assume the gun lobby would scream at the thought, but what would the majority think? Likewise, would a national register and limits (i.e. every serial number is boun…

Right now, provided a serial number, American police can trace a gun used in a crime to its last legal owner. It takes a number of phone calls -- first to the manufacturer, then to the gun store, then to the first owner, and down the chain -- but it generally works.

And, although it's not mandated by law, gun owners do tend to keep records on private party sales. Nobody wants to be in the situation of "we found this Glock at a crime scene, and it appears to be yours?" and not be able to provide evidence to the contrary.

So a registry doesn't really offer any real utility... except to confiscate those weapons down the road.

If you want to promote safe storage, the best solution would be a tax benefit for buying safe-storage equipment. Gun safes are expensive, at least if you want something that can't be crowbarred open in a few minutes.

Something else that I would love to see, and stealing a page from the Swiss, is universal gun education.

There are more guns than cars in the United States, and I find it negligent that not every American learn not just gun safety, but also how to safely store, handle, and yes, fire a gun -- even if they never plan on owning one.

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#235

Post by candiodari »

vidarh wrote: post #199
Pyxl101 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recommend reading: http://paulgraham.com/ineq.html Inequality is the result of people earning different amounts, such being compensated in proportion to the value they generate - rather than everyone earning the same irrespective of that. Inequality is the result of reaping the rewards of your own work: someone is more effective, so they earn more. Why is it bad? How can any market economy even function without it?…

This idea is based on the fantasy that people are compensated purely for what they do, and not also for their starting point, who they are, who they know, and so on. The reality is that if you were born somewhere poor, odds are overwhelmingly that you would earn a tiny fraction of what someone born somewhere where they are provided proper education and an environment where better alternatives are available. So maybe…

> The reality is that if you were born somewhere poor, odds are overwhelmingly that you would earn a tiny fraction of what someone born somewhere where they are provided proper education and an environment where better alternatives are available.

This is one of those things that is worse in Europe than in the US. Inequality is perhaps less in absolute value, but it's more sticky. The upper class of the US has plenty of immigrants and people who were born poor. Yes, being born rich still provides advantage, but it's clearly not impossible.

In the EU, the upper class has

zero immigrants

very few people born poor (upper middle class minimum) (out of the top10 riches Frenchmen, one was born to a family with less than 100 million francs at the time they were born. One. And he wasn't poor by a reasonable definition at all)

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#236

Post by gerbilly »

refurb wrote: post #37
rimliu wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I saw a report somewhere stating thad Danes are most happy to pay taxes—because they are happy what they gain in return. Also, there was a report recently, that happiest people are in Norway. Maybe it is not fair to call all socially responsible arrangements "welfare society"?

Or maybe they don't know any different? How many people have actually had the opportunity to live a decade or more of their adult lives in different countries? A very small minority. Canadians love their single payer healthcare. They have no problem waiting a year or more for surgery. They don't think paying a 15% VAT is a burden. They don't know any different. Americans would shit themselves if they had to deal with…

>Canadians love their single payer healthcare.

Generally, yes we do. And here's a single datapoint: I paid lower taxes in Ontario than in CT, on the exact same salary.[1]

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#238

Post by 72deluxe »

zelos wrote: post #154
TulliusCicero wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Average home size in the UK is less than half that of the US: http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/how-big-is-a-house US @ 77 sq meters per capita vs UK @ 33 sq meters per capita.

Yet in the equally crowded Netherlands, the average house size is much larger. Is it just the house building industry is really poor here in the UK?

Yes, the new houses they build are effectively shoe-boxes. Where you see them clearing land and think "ah they'll put a house there", instead they build two.

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#239

Post by Aaargh20318 »

dukeluke wrote: post #217
Aaargh20318 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In Holland, everyone takes off 4 - 6 weeks in the summer to travel the world. This is so different than Americans No we don't. I have 5 weeks of holiday a year, total. I take 2 weeks around christmas. Maybe a week somewhere in Spring, that leaves 2 weeks summer holidays. Plus, you want to keep a few spare days in case you need an incidental day off for whatever reason.

I'm sad to say that your experience with PTO is not the norm in the US. The lower and most of the middle classes have it much worse: http://theweek.com/articles/463897/americas-war-vacation-by-...

To clarify: I live in the Netherlands and I was disagreeing with the fact that everyone takes off 4-6 weeks to travel around the world each summer.

Most people only get 5 weeks of holiday a year total (4 weeks is the legal minimum) and they usually spread out those days over the year. If you can travel the world for 6 weeks every summer then you have an above-average number of free days and probably an above-average income to be able to afford that much travel.

We do get vacation money (8% of your gross salary, usually paid in may) but that's not nearly enough for 6 weeks of travel unless you saved up a lot.

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#240

Post by vidarh »

gjjrfcbugxbhf wrote: post #223
vidarh wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends greatly by country. In the US, the total tax wedge (which includes employer tax contributions, such as payroll taxes) is 31.7% of total labour costs[1]. In the UK it is 30.8%, while e.g. in Denmark it is 36.4%. The OECD average is 35.9% Belgium is the extreme - at 55.3% it's the highest in the OECD. Three European countries (UK, Ireland, Switzerland) come in below the US on this metric. The numbers are basica…

Are you sure the numbers for the UK include national insurance contributions? Between employee contributions (which are basically an income tax with a weird regressive structure) and employer contributions (similar to US payroll tax) i would expect that figure to be higher. Nb income based taxes are only the start anyway property tax aka Council tax is quite a burden on lower income households in the UK.

Yes, they do. (EDIT: In addition to the breakdown, look through the report I linked above, it splits out the employee and employer social security contributions in several of the tables and diagrams, which for the UK are the employee and employer national insurance contributions)

The median salary in the UK in 2015 was roughly 27,500 GBP.

Let's do the numbers as percent of wages first. This won't match perfectly with the OECD numbers as I haven't matched up the personal allowance rates etc. by tax year.

But currently, 27,500 means your taxable income is 16,500 (after subtracting the personal allowance). On this you'd pay 20% income tax, or 3,300 and 8.5% employee national insurance for roughly 2,332. Your total tax would be 28.5% of your taxable income, but only 20.5% of income once you factor your personal allowance back in.

If w're looking at employer contributions, I don't know exactly what they stand at this moment, but it used to be 12.5% of gross salary. If we adjust the numbers above, that means 3437.5 in employer contributions for a total tax wedge of ~29.3%. Note that I have not taken into account the lower earnings threshold etc. for employer national insurance contributions, which I believe you should, so I think the total would actually be lower, but even so even when applying it to the full amount you actually still end up below the OECD figure.

Both of the above excludes council tax. Council tax is of course tricky because it depends on the property you live in and your council, and whether or not you live in the property alone.

Now in my property that adds 1600/year for a family. Though you wouldn't live here if you were a single earner family on an 27.5k salary, that'd drive the total tax wedge up to 34.5%. As a single, you'd get half off, and end up with a total tax wedge of 31.9%. Looking at the gross wage percentages, it'd bring taxes to 26.3% (couple) or 23.4% (single) respectively.

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