Comment by belter
12 days ago
Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, Norway, Finland.
You don’t get world-class infrastructure, universal healthcare, and top-tier education without paying for it. High taxes are the price of a civilized society. Get over it!
Life isn’t meant to be a Squid Game.
While I agree those are great things, don’t fool yourself - someone IS paying for it
Those countries have a population that is a fraction of the US. I’m sure they make more effective use of their taxes too. In the US, taxes continue to rise and health care and education costs rise even more. There are many things that are broken. Painting all billionaires as the problem and thinking that confiscating their wealth via taxes will solve the issues… is a popular rallying cry but is not an actual solution
Dont pretend capital = productivity and wealth = wisdom. That’s how you end up with a system where work is taxed more than ownership, and basic rights like healthcare stay out of reach. U.S. exceptionalism is only notable on it's exceptional inability to do what 150 other countries already figured out.
> Painting all billionaires as the problem
Strongly encourage you to learn about their favorite money making concepts of passive income and compound interest. And other various "financial engineering" techniques corporations are engaging in.
These guys make more money taking a dump than 1000 US workers doing hard labor. I'm sure they are like 1000x more genius that most people but I doubt you could make an argument where a system that rewards this sort of behavior, while contributing absolutely 0 net value to society can also coexist in harmony with the rest of us.
When the most efficient methods of accruing wealth are literally predicated on profiting from doing nothing, they are not the signs of a healthy society.
I’d encourage you to do some research on the history of charging interest. It does indeed make for a large wealth gap and that is indeed a significant social problem.
However it isn’t a problem limited to capitalism or the US. And “billionaires” have been around for quite a long time - I find it strange that some are placed on a pedestal for some reason
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