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The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

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Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#251

Post by alkonaut »

vidarh wrote: post #232
alkonaut wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

Yes, I'm above average income for Sweden. Roughly my employer pays 1/4 payroll and 3/4 to me as gross salary. I pay 1/3 tax on gross salary and keep. 2/3. That means the net share of the employers' expense is roughly (2/3)x(3/4) which is 1/2 or 50%.

For a median income, the calculation would roughly instead be: the employer pays 1/4 payroll and the employee 1/4 income tax on that, meaning the employees take-home earnings are (3/4)x(3/4) ~ 0.56 so about 44% taxes (Which is surprisingly close to the figure you had there of 42.7%)

The VAT in my calculation was obviously the most exaggerated one because as you point out - a lot of my expenses have lower vat, or even negative tax (I pay a boat load of interests every month, which effectively have a -30% tax since they are completely deductible, even from earned income not just cap gains).

Oh: A source of great injustice in Sweden is that renters (predominantly low income earners) don't deduct interest rate expenses of those who own property (their landlords) while those who own their property deduct a crapload of interest, especially since we have a weird housing system with lots of huge long-term loans (100y mortgages are norm). Basically anyone who owns a flat or house deducts $5-25k a year of interest rates from their income tax. Essentially it's a huge transfer of money from renters to owners. A very regressive tax if you ask me.

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#252

Post by 1_2__3 »

ice109 wrote: post #216
imgabe wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First, in capitalism, a work's remuneration is supposed to be related in a way to the perceived utility of that work for society in general. This is a misconception, I think. A work's remuneration is related to the utility perceived by the person providing the remuneration . Society in general doesn't pay people. Specific people pay other people. Find something enough people want and give it to them. It's not any m…

you're wrong. if some good is over valued for long enough market dynamics kick in and the price will go down.

That's the Econ 101 textbook statement, not reality.

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#253

Post by alkonaut »

vidarh wrote: post #247
alkonaut wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 anyt…

It's just semantics, but it confuses matters because most people don't include the payroll tax amount when talking about tax rates. I agree it plays into the tax pressure, but it makes it necessary to be very precise when describing it or you end up with confusion like the one above...

Indeed, that's why I tried to list it as clearly as possible. Obviously we could essentially make income tax 0% in Sweden over night, by just moving it to payroll tax. But no one would argue Sweden was some kind of tax haven. So income taxes are relevant when discussing salaries (because really what you take home is the key figure). But for tax pressure you can't discuss just income taxes.

I don't know what the grandparent poster was trying to say "employer pays $1k payroll tax so you make $9k"? Just shows how confusing this is (apparently)

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#254

Post by 1_2__3 »

wordpressdev wrote: post #166

While I agree to the points made in the article that workers in a gig economy have little rights and less benefits than doing a full time employment, gig economy was never supposed to be exact replacement of a permanent job. If you live in a Western country, gigs like driving an Uber, doing a task through TaskRabbit or providing service at Fiverr / Upwork can be considered a modern day equivalent of waiting tables or…

What you are calling the gig economy in this case is really a service economy, which existed long before cell phones or SF tech startup silliness. It's not some amazing new step forward for humanity.

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#255

Post by GuiA »

candiodari wrote: post #235
vidarh wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm French. My grandparents were farmers/carpenters/etc who didn't attend school past 12 years old for the most educated one because they had to work to support themselves. My maternal grandparents had only one child, and my paternal grandparents had children 10 years apart, such that they could give the best to their progeny.

My uncle became a surgeon, and my parents become engineers, through the means of a free public university, which propelled them to upper middle class.

There is still much to achieve in French social mobility, but these kind of stories are plenty. Having spent some time in the US now, and seeing the stories of people who go on to go to engineering/medical/etc schools, I can't say that I see comparable things happening. Everyone I know who went to med school comes from upper middle class family AND had to take on tons of debt.

You shouldn't be looking at the top 0.001%, but the top 10%, perhaps even 20-30%, and how they live/what kind of social protections they benefit from.

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#256

Post by scottishfiction »

J-dawg wrote: post #126
alkonaut wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Salaries for professionals are markedly lower, we live in much smaller houses etc. This is an age old debate, and it's very hard to compare one vast continent to another. Regional differences between US cities and European cities are at least as large or larger than the difference between the avereages of US and European salaries/living standards etc. The difference between central manhattan and rural Apalachia is…

> whereas in Europe it's normally free While we're correcting misconceptions, in the UK it's most definitely not free. But I believe it's still a lot cheaper than the US. The universities are capped on the fees they can charge, and your student loan is regulated by the government (you only start paying back when you're earning over a threshold).

While we're correcting misconceptions... it is most definitely 'free' in Scotland.

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#257

Post by watwut »

conanbatt wrote: post #190
alkonaut wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Salaries for professionals are markedly lower, we live in much smaller houses etc. This is an age old debate, and it's very hard to compare one vast continent to another. Regional differences between US cities and European cities are at least as large or larger than the difference between the avereages of US and European salaries/living standards etc. The difference between central manhattan and rural Apalachia is…

A software engineer in a startup in berlin earns maybe a median salary of 60k euros ayear at a 40% tax rate. Thats less of what interns make in the us at a 30% tax rate. An experienced engineer at google or facebook make 200k with a sizable signup bonus. As far as I know, theres no comparison between what a soft dev makes in the us and what he makes in europe. This is from someone that lives in south america, and is…

I can not have aging grandma nor children in google offices. I can not engage in personal hobbies that are not company sanctioned there. I dont have privacy there.

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#258

Post by nommm-nommm »

hellofunk wrote: post #104
dnel wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I visited the US for the first time while on honeymoon and a couple of friends we visited while over there asked how I was handling doing work while away, it was an eye-opening insight into American culture I'd never witnessed before but it was a good opportunity to explain work-life balance from a European pov though, I didn't hear any counter-arguments from that small sample, maybe someday it'll catch on.

In Holland, everyone takes off 4 - 6 weeks in the summer to travel the world. This is so different than Americans: 1) In the U.S. you can work for years at a company before getting more than 1 or 2 weeks paid vacation. 2) Most Americans don't travel much outside their own state or region, let alone country. Most don't even own passports. 3) Even when not on the job, either at night, on the weekends, or on vacation, A…

I find it hard to believe nobody in the Netherlands dislikes traveling.

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#259

Post by vidarh »

candiodari wrote: post #235
vidarh wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Social mobility in the US is lower than in most OECD countries [1].

Of all OECD countries, only in Slovenia, Chile, Italy and the UK are the intergenerational correlations between the earnings of fathers and sons stronger, for example.

The rest of the OECD, including most of Europe, does far better in that respect.

Representation of immigrants is something I haven't looked at, and it may very well be that the US does well there, but there are a number of confounding factors, and it in any case doesn't change the fact that social mobility is poor in the US.

[1] http://www.epi.org/publication/usa-lags-peer-countries-mobil...

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#260

Post by dagw »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #244
dagw wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're a crowded island, we have small houses. The UK has a lower population density the than both Belgium and Holland, both of which have larger average houses than the UK. So there has to be more to it than simply being 'crowded'.

Haven't run the numbers, but the impression is that the South of England is much more densely populated. The majority of people lives south of the M62 and east of the M5/M6 highways. And then there's greenbelts to prevent the endless exurbanization.

Good point. Greater London, Hertfordshire, Surrey, Essex and Kent all have a higher population density than Holland, and between them count for a significant part of the UK population.
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