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The bigotry of environmental pessimism?

#11
confused2 Offline
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countri...s-of-taxes

Quote:Why Danes Happily Pay High Rates of Taxes
People in the European country see taxes as an investment in their quality of life.
By Meik Wiking ContributorJan. 20, 2016, at 8:00 a.m.


Quote:COPENHAGEN, Denmark — As chief executive officer of the Happiness Research Institute, I talk to a handful of journalists every week from around the world. As Denmark consistently ranks among the happiest countries in the world, many of the journalists will look at me with disbelief and ask, "Danes pay some of the highest taxes in the world, so why are they so happy?"

Denmark has one of the highest tax rates in the world, which is often mentioned as one of the biggest objections against the Danish welfare model. The average annual income in Denmark is ..
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#12
Syne Offline
Denmark to American leftists: We’re not socialist

In fact, taxes are much higher in Denmark – especially on the poor and middle class[b]. The government confiscates more than half of virtually all incomes. Low-income Danes pay an effective marginal tax rate of 56 percent; the middle class pay 57 percent.

The message from Denmark is clear: Adopting even a soft version of democratic socialism, as proposed by Bernie Sanders and AOC, would make Americans poorer and inhibit their flourishing.

Extremely poor Danes have more money than poor Americans – but the difference cannot be financed exclusive by the rich. “[b]The average American has 27 per cent higher income than the average Dane
,” CEPOS reports, “reflecting both lower GDP per capita and higher taxes in Denmark.”

The biggest difference is Denmark’s high consumption taxes. Its VAT imposes a 25 percent tax on the sale of every item – and additional taxes apply on coffee, beer, and chocolate.

The section on the tax imposed on vehicle owners makes fascinating reading. How many Americans know that “in Denmark you pay 1,200 USD yearly in car-ownership tax for a pickup truck”? (Jim Gilmore, now the president of the American Opportunity Foundation, got elected governor of Virginia by campaigning against the state’s car tax, which was roughly half that amount.)

These taxes disproportionately hurt the poor, who struggle to pay for their needs as it is. “High consumption taxes mean that you can buy fewer goods for one extra working hour. Therefore, consumption taxes distort the labor decision” – that is, they discourage work, investment, and progress.


Subjective, self-reported happiness doesn't mean anything unless those Danes have lived in the US long enough to make a personal comparison. Otherwise, their happiness is largely an affect of an ethnically and culturally homogeneous society, which cannot be directly compared to the US. But naive leftists foolishly think that a country 3 times smaller than New York state can be compared to the whole US. After all, people in places like Baltimore and Detroit are pretty miserable, bringing down the US average.

Finland is the happiest country in the world and Hawaii the happiest state.

But Finland's life expectancy is lower than Hawaii's and the same as Minnesota's. New Hampshire's infant mortality rate is lower than Denmark's, Canada's, the U.K.'s, Australia's, and other alleged health care nirvanas. Vermont's infant mortality rate is the lowest in the world.

Of course, one of the best ways to measure the best places to live is to look at where people are migrating to. And on that score, it's hard to beat the U.S., which attracts a million immigrants each year. Finland? A grand total of 34,905 people moved there in 2016.
- https://www.investors.com/politics/edito...ming-here/


Only a moron would compare a country the size of a small state with a country the size of Europe.
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#13
billvon Offline
(Aug 18, 2019 03:23 AM)Syne Wrote: Extremely poor Danes have more money than poor Americans – but the difference cannot be financed exclusive by the rich. “The average American has 27 per cent higher income than the average Dane,” CEPOS reports . . .
Exactly. Poor Danes are better off than poor Americans. The top 1% is vastly better off in the US. The "average" American has 27 percent higher income than the average Dane because they are including the ultra rich. The top 400 income earners in the US make over $300 million, something that is VERY rare in most other countries.

Take away those top 400 income earners and the average drops precipitously. MOST people do not see higher incomes here.
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#14
Syne Offline
(Aug 18, 2019 03:43 AM)billvon Wrote:
(Aug 18, 2019 03:23 AM)Syne Wrote: Extremely poor Danes have more money than poor Americans – but the difference cannot be financed exclusive by the rich. “The average American has 27 per cent higher income than the average Dane,” CEPOS reports . . .
Exactly.  Poor Danes are better off than poor Americans.  The top 1% is vastly better off in the US.  The "average" American has 27 percent higher income than the average Dane because they are including the ultra rich.  The top 400 income earners in the US make over $300 million, something that is VERY rare in most other countries.

Take away those top 400 income earners and the average drops precipitously.  MOST people do not see higher incomes here.

Number of poor people in Denmark 'doubled' since 2002: report

The total number of Danes considered to be living in poverty has more than doubled from 18,650 in 2002 to 44,141 in 2015, according to the analysis by thinktank Economic Council of the Labour Movement (Arbejderbevægelsens Erhvervsråd, ECLM).

A ten percent increase was recorded alone from 2014 to 2015, according to the report, which is based on figures from Statistics Denmark.

Head of analysis at ECLM Jonas Schytz Juul told newspaper Information that the increase was primarily due to reductions in social welfare (kontanthjælp) payments and support for immigrants implemented in the early 2000s.

These cuts were abolished by the Social Democrat-led government of the early 2010s, but poverty levels continue to increase, reports Information.


Income and Poverty in the United States: 2017

The official poverty rate in 2017 was 12.3 percent, down 0.4 percentage points from 12.7 percent in 2016. This is the third consecutive annual decline in poverty. Since 2014, the pov­erty rate has fallen 2.5 percent­age points, from 14.8 percent to 12.3 percent.

From 2016 to 2017 the number of people in poverty decreased for people in families; people living in the West; people living outside metropolitan statistical areas; all workers; workers who worked less than full-time, year-round; people with a disabil­ity; people with a high school diploma but no college degree; and people with some college but no degree.


More Danes are becoming poor, while more Americans are leaving poverty.

You were saying? Rolleyes
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#15
confused2 Offline
Syne Wrote:More Danes are becoming poor, while more Americans are leaving poverty.

Syne Wrote:...supposedly "socialist" Denmark has lower corporate taxes than the US ..

Could the two facts be related?
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#16
Syne Offline
(Aug 18, 2019 01:36 PM)confused2 Wrote:
Syne Wrote:More Danes are becoming poor, while more Americans are leaving poverty.

Syne Wrote:...supposedly "socialist" Denmark has lower corporate taxes than the US ..

Could the two facts be related?

Not really.

High taxes disproportionately hurt the poor either way. The poor have to spend most, if not all, their earnings, so anything that lowers their spending power is more keenly felt. Whether that's a VAT tax on everything they purchase (like Denmark) or corporate taxes (higher in the US) that stifle job creation and are passed on to the consumer, the poor are still hurt. The difference is that an economy less burdened with social welfare programs is still dynamic enough for people who work hard to get ahead...and get out of poverty. People often have the misguided notion that the upper 1% or the poor in the US are always the same people, but the fact is that people are entering and exiting both all the time. We have more economic mobility.

If you had to pay $1,200 a year on a vehicle you bought outright, owning a car would be more of a luxury the poor couldn't afford...limiting how far away they could take a job.
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