Netherlands must ban cryptocurrencies immediately: CPB head

However we can talk a little bit both about overall Dutch TOTAL income burden plus spent on medical care:

Concerning your comment on taxation, I claimed the overall tax burden, is massive not that the income tax for example is the highest in the world. But if you want to talk just income taxation we can start here, and note this is just income tax:

"According to the OECD, the country with the highest national income tax rate is the Netherlands at 52 percent, more than 12 percentage points higher than the U.S. top federal individual income rate of 39.6 percent." https://www.crfb.org/blogs/us-highest-taxed-nation-world

I am sure we can turn this into a smarter discussion than those statistics based discussions. You know, those ones that try to make us believe, living in some Nordic town where it rains most of the time, its cold and you rarely see the Sun has the "happiest" citizens in the world. Or that Zurich or Luxembourg are the best places to live :-))

Concerning your comment around health I presume you are talking overall spent on citizen care. If the Netherlands spends half of what the US does per person on healthcare that, frankly, is an endorsement of the US system and a confirmation of my point. I am amazed the Netherlands spends that much.

Let me explain with some examples: The US habit of suing everybody, forces medical professionals/hospitals to spend a lot of money on very high liability insurance. This is something that almost does not come as a concern in the Netherlands. You can make a claim for medical errors but historically judges are inclined to protect the institutions as they do not have or cannot have high liability insurance: https://www.houthoff.com/insights/News/Doctor-and-hospital-n...

Also, you might know or not, in the Netherlands, the medical system and medical professional will regularly refuse or make it incredibly difficult to get access to standard procedures. I mean procedures that most industrialized nations consider standard levels of care.

This frequently comes as a shock for medical professional from other countries or making the post-graduation at Dutch medical universities.

Massive core effect ? By using these implied quotas, the insurance companies get massive amounts of money but have to spend very little. Some of these privatized health insurance companies make more money than some banks ! "Profits skyrocket at 85 Dutch healthcare firms" https://nltimes.nl/2019/09/25/profits-skyrocket-85-dutch-hea...

This is the reason why Dutch healthcare always comes up in regularly in the news as "Best in the World". It is sometimes used in the US as an example to follow by proponents of socialized medical care. I wish they would look a little bit at the details.

The citizens pay a massive amount mandated by law, but private health insurance companies save a massive amount of money. So again, I am surprised, if it is as you stated the costs are half of the US. As any Dutch residents present in this forum will confirm, here are some examples of expensive medical procedures. Expensive procedures the health insurance companies are likely to avoid due to Dutch medical culture.

- Dutch women will typically have birth at home or are strongly pressed to have babies at home. It is common to hear from Dutch doctors and I am not making this up: "You are pregnant not sick". I am not dismissing the benefits of child birth as they have positive aspects, but try to suggest a child birth to a German, French or British doctor an see as their eyebrows raise ....Again massive saving for the Insurance company. Side comment: guess where that family who does not pay taxes had all their babies ? At the hospital of course :-)

- The amount of pre-natal controls and checks are maybe one or two before a birth. Hospital births are only for exceptional cases or after you strongly insists with their GP. There goes another massive saving for the insurance company and a massive increase in risk for the insured citizen.

- Contrarily to most countries in Europe, unless you have a serious conditions very few women regularly are encouraged to see, or allowed by their GP to regularly see a Gynecologist. As these are very expensive specialist again massive savings for the insurance companies.

I could go on all day, but it was more about the central bank driving motives than the Dutch medical system.:-) I offer you here, a small data point from somebody used to a different, and cheaper, level of care: https://www.findingdutchland.com/magic-talking-dutch-doctors...

But on the side of taxes here is the Dutch position... "Which countries tax their citizens the most?" https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/11/income-tax-around-the...

Factor the famous Dutch fuel and road taxes ( not included), factor you do not have, as I stated, the levels of benefits compared to a Sweden or Denmark and tell me if its a great position to be in...

Your own link indicates that Netherlands taxes are only slightly above average for OECD countries given their GDP. This would indicate that your original claims were false.

The reason why health care costs are lower is a different topic. Your original claim about relative healthcare costs was clearly false.

You're going to kill a pedestrian one of these days.