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https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/07/canada-america-taxes/533847/ The United States is falling apart because ... the American public sector simply doesn’t have the funds required to keep the nation stitched together. A country where impoverished citizens rely on crowdfunding to finance medical operations isn’t a country that can protect the health of its citizens. A country that can’t ensure the daily operation of Penn Station isn’t a country that can prevent transportation gridlock. A country that contracts out the operations of prisons to the lowest private bidder isn’t a country that can rehabilitate its criminals.
The Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), a group of 35 wealthy countries, ranks its members by overall tax burden—that is, total tax revenues at every level of government, added together and then expressed as a percentage of GDP—and in latest year for which data is available, 2014, the United States came in fourth to last. Its tax burden was 25.9 percent—substantially less than the OECD average, 34.2 percent. If the United States followed that mean OECD rate, there would be about an extra $1.5 trillion annually for governments to spend on better schools, safer roads, better-trained police, and more accessible health care.
I just got back from a three week "holiday" down under. It's always an eye opener to see how some of the other 95% live.
Universal health care in Australia (Trump praised it) and New Zealand. (They even take gluten free seriously - no problem at all for me eating there.) There's infrastructure construction everywhere. They care about their roads and like most developed nations, are willing to pay high petrol (gasoline) taxes to keep them maintained. (We hired [rented] a car in NZ, so we contributed our fair share.)
There's a strong interest in conservation (though that impression may have been biased by my selection of places to visit), as opposed to selling off national lands to keep taxes low.
I'm in strong agreement with your statements @msf however it is not all OZ down under especially in Sydney (with which I am most familiar) where the rich v. poor and political divides are as wicked as the US.
Curious why you chose winter for your holiday rather than summer although I can't truly imagine a bad time for being there.
@msf, hope you got to Tasmania; beautiful, friendly, great parks and reserves. But since it's winter there, and more temperate than subtropical/tropical like the rest of the country, you may not have; if not, it's definitely worth another trip.
Right now reading an older Tim Flannery book about Oz's deep continental past/geology and the relationships with its evolution, ecology, and human past: 'The Future Eaters.'
We went to a wedding reception in Taipei. Having already crossed the Pacific, and little desire to hang around in humid. 35C weather, we looked for more comfortable climes. Northern Japan was a thought. However, since we'd been to Japan but never below the equator, NZ/Australia seemed a better choice. And we finally had the miles accumulated to do it.
With a limited amount of time, we needed to make some choices. Tasmania was definitely on my wish list, but we couldn't fit it in, at least once we decided to make a side trip to Uluru. We did make it down to Queenstown NZ though, so it's not as though the winter weather would have been an issue.
We had the good fortune in Queenstown to be staying in a lovely B&B where at breakfast we met two people from Sydney (each traveling separately). They discovered they lived a couple of blocks from each other, in what they described as a very nice neighborhood. One noted that he was fortunate to be able to do so, as there is the economic divide you mentioned.
I didn't get the sense of the same sort of polarized political divide, though that may simply have been the result of watching more BBC than ABC while there. Taiwan is a different matter - there I know enough to keep my mouth shut (DPP vs. KMT).
Comments
Universal health care in Australia (Trump praised it) and New Zealand. (They even take gluten free seriously - no problem at all for me eating there.) There's infrastructure construction everywhere. They care about their roads and like most developed nations, are willing to pay high petrol (gasoline) taxes to keep them maintained. (We hired [rented] a car in NZ, so we contributed our fair share.)
There's a strong interest in conservation (though that impression may have been biased by my selection of places to visit), as opposed to selling off national lands to keep taxes low.
Curious why you chose winter for your holiday rather than summer although I can't truly imagine a bad time for being there.
Right now reading an older Tim Flannery book about Oz's deep continental past/geology and the relationships with its evolution, ecology, and human past: 'The Future Eaters.'
With a limited amount of time, we needed to make some choices. Tasmania was definitely on my wish list, but we couldn't fit it in, at least once we decided to make a side trip to Uluru. We did make it down to Queenstown NZ though, so it's not as though the winter weather would have been an issue.
We had the good fortune in Queenstown to be staying in a lovely B&B where at breakfast we met two people from Sydney (each traveling separately). They discovered they lived a couple of blocks from each other, in what they described as a very nice neighborhood. One noted that he was fortunate to be able to do so, as there is the economic divide you mentioned.
I didn't get the sense of the same sort of polarized political divide, though that may simply have been the result of watching more BBC than ABC while there. Taiwan is a different matter - there I know enough to keep my mouth shut (DPP vs. KMT).