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US Workers Are Highly Taxed If You Count Premiums

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Re: US Workers Are Highly Taxed If You Count Premiums

#151

Post by dkural »

rhacker wrote: post #87

Like to bring this up when we talk taxes: I think it's totally crazy that we give the feds 25% or more and our states soo soo sooooo much less. I think it should be the other way around: 5% for the feds, and maybe 20% to the states. The reason is that our cities are filled with bums, and have absolutely no money to either give them jobs or make new programs. The feds don't give a shit and are busy making missiles or…

who are the "wrong people" that massive social programs enrich? Can you give an example? Most of federal spending is medicare, medicaid and social security; which are immensely popular with voters of all kind.

Re: US Workers Are Highly Taxed If You Count Premiums

#152

Post by tathougies »

perfmode wrote: post #50
tathougies wrote: post #34

Individual US tax payers pay for most of the world's security. This is one tax of being the global super power, so it's not particularly surprising that when you include all things the US tax payer pays for privately that is taxed in other countries, you arrive at a number higher than other similar countries. In reality, there is no country with which we can fairly compare US tax rates.

I wouldn’t say the United States provides security when our actions and interventions tend to not be just. We are just a Mafia.

The Mafia also provides security. Since I've written the same thing to like three different comments. I'll say it again: Arguments that attack the morality of US action do not counter my claim that US action benefits many foreign countries, corporations, and individuals, who do not contribute anything to the funds that allow such action to take place. Depending on your point of view, this makes the rest of the world either calves sucking from the teats of a benevolent, but ignorant cow, or bats sucking blood from an undead vampire. But regardless of how you slice it, the non-American countries are basically sucking from someone.

Re: US Workers Are Highly Taxed If You Count Premiums

#153

Post by maxxxxx »

exodus_de wrote: post #137
maxxxxx wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who cares about the deductible? It’s still a ripoff. My girlfriend had an eye infection while we were in Germany. We went to an eye doctor and paid 25 Euro cash including an ointment. The US is just horribly expensive and very unpredictable.

> Who cares about the deductible? It’s still a ripoff. You should care about the deductible, cause you entered the contract, silly. Get private insurance in Germany, there's also a deductible, unless you want to pay more. > We went to an eye doctor and paid 25 Euro cash including an ointment. The US is just horribly expensive and very unpredictable. That's because of price fixing (GOÄ). It's all they can charge. And…

In what way is your comment about price fixing relevant? I don't care if the lower price is because of price fixing or not.

Re: US Workers Are Highly Taxed If You Count Premiums

#154

Post by preommr »

tathougies wrote: post #34

Individual US tax payers pay for most of the world's security. This is one tax of being the global super power, so it's not particularly surprising that when you include all things the US tax payer pays for privately that is taxed in other countries, you arrive at a number higher than other similar countries. In reality, there is no country with which we can fairly compare US tax rates.

Except that the the US gains tremendous advantages from having such a large military and projecting it's power globally.

And the US is definitely not getting it's money's worth it if the goal is world security.

Re: US Workers Are Highly Taxed If You Count Premiums

#155

Post by tathougies »

preommr wrote: post #154
tathougies wrote: post #34

Individual US tax payers pay for most of the world's security. This is one tax of being the global super power, so it's not particularly surprising that when you include all things the US tax payer pays for privately that is taxed in other countries, you arrive at a number higher than other similar countries. In reality, there is no country with which we can fairly compare US tax rates.

Except that the the US gains tremendous advantages from having such a large military and projecting it's power globally. And the US is definitely not getting it's money's worth it if the goal is world security.

> Except that the the US gains tremendous advantages from having such a large military and projecting it's power globally.

Correct, further supporting my claim that there is no other country that can be properly compared to the United States, since no other country has corresponding military might and it is unclear how to value such a thing fairly.

Re: US Workers Are Highly Taxed If You Count Premiums

#156

Post by AlexTWithBeard »

bilbo0s wrote: post #146
AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, a typical state college is closer to $10,000. Yes, it's not Ivy League, but it does the job.

I wonder if 10 thousand is a lot for undergraduate education to a German, or Austrian, or French person? EDIT: Doh! Just checked the cost of undergrad in some of those nations. Umm, Yeah. I guess if I were a German or French guy, I'd likely find tuition levels in the US a bit outrageous.

I know that German universities are generally free, while, for example, their UK counterparts charge around 10,000 GBP a year.

Re: US Workers Are Highly Taxed If You Count Premiums

#157

Post by bilbo0s »

dkural wrote: post #151
rhacker wrote: post #87

Like to bring this up when we talk taxes: I think it's totally crazy that we give the feds 25% or more and our states soo soo sooooo much less. I think it should be the other way around: 5% for the feds, and maybe 20% to the states. The reason is that our cities are filled with bums, and have absolutely no money to either give them jobs or make new programs. The feds don't give a shit and are busy making missiles or…

who are the "wrong people" that massive social programs enrich? Can you give an example? Most of federal spending is medicare, medicaid and social security; which are immensely popular with voters of all kind.

>Most of federal spending is medicare, medicaid and social security...

Well, there's also Defense, and then service payments on the debt. Those are the big 3 without question. So "the wrong people" must be in there somewhere?

But the real reason we give more to the feds is because if we didn't it would be AWESOME for places like New York, Minnesota, Texas, Delaware, California etc, and TERRIBLE for places like Wisconsin, Alabama, South Carolina, and Florida.

Re: US Workers Are Highly Taxed If You Count Premiums

#158

Post by kradroy »

morsma wrote: post #130
mschuetz wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and cost of health insurance in Austria is just 7,65% of your income, and it covers your children. When I've worked in the US, I've paid just as much for health insurance and still had high out-of-pockets and deductibles on top of that.

For me it's the opposite. I moved from Denmark to the US, and I pay around $400 in health insurance premiums (health, eye, and dental) for a whole family. In Denmark, only health is covered, so for eye and dental many go out-of-country to get it cheap. The US is much cheaper for all health insurances, except if your poor. Obama tried to fix that, but made it worse and more expensive for everyone (socialism).

If you're employed and your employer is generous, then your insurance premiums can be inexpensive (low double digits per month if you're single, low triple digits if you have dependents) . My wild speculation is that most employers aren't as generous as they could be.

If you're "poor", insurance is actually cheap, because that's when you get public insurance. However, if you're just middle income, health care is a non-trivial portion of your income. One major health incident will bankrupt you and you're likely to become poor. But once you're poor, hey, you can get cheap health insurance.

The critical problem is that obtaining reasonable health insurance requires you to be employed full time at a large company. This must stop. Obamacare was a first step toward cutting the employer out of the picture.

Re: US Workers Are Highly Taxed If You Count Premiums

#159

Post by awakeasleep »

ngngngng wrote: post #28

The US healthcare system is making many people extremely rich. Someone has to pay for that.

Think of what it'd do to the insurance worker economy if we switched to a medicare for all system! It's pretty fucked up that such a large chunk of our country is now essentially parasitic.

(I say this while recognizing that runaway medical costs aren't solely the result of insurers)

Re: US Workers Are Highly Taxed If You Count Premiums

#160

Post by jimmy1 »

maxxxxx wrote: post #42
munk-a wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or really any public pension. I feel like if you're <40 then you should be planning for Social Security to not exist when you get old, anything else seems overly optimistic.

" Social Security to not exist when you get old," that's totally self defeating. There are simple adjustments that can be done to make it viable long term. But there are quite few people in DC who desperately want it to fail to show that government is no good.

> . But there are quite few people in DC who desperately want it to fail to show that government is no good.

And there are quite a few others that want to expand it to cost even more, so they refuse anything beside perfection to achieve meaningful compromise.

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