Posted on 05/29/2009 10:41:17 PM PDT by george76
Sweden's high tax regime is counterproductive: rather than focusing on the improvement of core services, it has led to a bloated bureaucracy and an inefficient welfare state...
Sweden is a nation with extraordinarily high tax rates. The average worker not only pays 30 percent of income in visible taxes, but also close to 30 percent in hidden taxes...
Some level of taxation is of course required to fund the public sector. At the same time, a high level of taxation does not necessarily translate into an equally high level of welfare:
- High taxes do not always mean high tax revenues since taxes discourage work and encourage tax avoidance. There is strong evidence that the highest rates of individual and capital taxation in Sweden are so distortive that they reduce public revenue. For this reason, some taxes, such as the wealth tax, have recently been reduced, with the net result estimated to increase tax revenues.
There are two important reasons for why the average Swedish worker pays the majority of his or her income in taxes, without necessarily receiving an equally high level of welfare.
Firstly, much of the money is spent on administrative costs in various levels of government. Although a small nation, Sweden has over a hundred public authorities.
Secondly, the combination of high taxes, a rigid labour market and generous welfare benefits has led to a large fraction of the population living off benefits rather than working. Even before the economic crisis hit Sweden for example, almost one out of five children in Sweden's third largest city, Malmö, were living in a family supported by social welfare.
(Excerpt) Read more at thelocal.se ...
Ronald Reagan noticed this too!
That's a Laffer... Art Laffer. ;-)
And Arthur Laffer and Jack Kemp.
But, when Obama was asked this in the campaign, he said he didn’t care about optimizing revenue, but achieving “fairness” — IOW, screw the “rich” and redistribute their wealth to its rightful owners.
Works every time.
>rather than focusing on the improvement of core services, it has led to a bloated bureaucracy and an inefficient welfare state...
Gee, who would have guessed that most governmental employees are not concerned with efficiency OR effectiveness?
[/sarc][/cynic]
Well this is all well and good if Obama’s intention was to actually increase tax revenue. He wants to spread the wealth around.
Who is John Galt?
The article was interesting, but it was the discussion posted after the article that was most enlightening. Apparently, socialism is much better than capitalism, we just haven’t implemented it correctly, yet.
Makes my head want to explode.
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