Bill Maher, keepin' it real, as always. All of the countries ahead of the US on the world happiness index have more "socialism," not less. Truth hurts, snowflakes.
good for them! BTW if socialism isn't happening fast enough for you here in the US, remember DELTA is ready when you are! I wouldn't want you to be unhappy. Fuck getting a passport, just declare yourself seeking asylum based on fleeing a tyrannical regime.
Time to start tax cheating? Not yet. But keep hiking taxes, it's a solid policy with only smiley faces ahead. It's not so bad to become poorer together, as long as we get to hold hands and drag others down with us. There's a bright side ahead - eventually if we get to be shithole enough, then we'll attract fewer migrants already trained to have grabbing hands by their socialist home countries. No reason to build your own pile, just wait it out and vote left until you get some from piles others have built.
Why are you under the impression that taxes are going up? Are you not aware of the bill passed last year, just the latest in a trend going back decades now?
Not yet. Bolded for emphasis. Meanwhile, always have an eye out to reduce my income (began in NY, even before I resigned my last suit job); hopefully by the time higher taxes become needed to pay the bills I'll be at break-even or a net taker. But you're accurate about US taxes from 2017 to 2018, in my case anyway, my effective fed inc. tax rate dropped from 20% to 16%.
What the fuck are you talking about then? "Not yet" and "keep hiking taxes" indicates that you believe that taxes are increasing and that there's some point of inflection being approached.
Gotta starve the beast at every turn, Hank, including in the deranged minds of my countrymen. And NY's been slamming new taxes every other month, so I'm vicariously representing the experience of many close family members who still live there. Don't want them all moving to Texas.
I'm convinced I'll see the top US corporate tax rate drop below 5% in my lifetime (due to the structural problems that keep many Republicans in power). All of the tax burden will be shouldered by individuals. And all of that freedom will drive us farther down the happiness index.
If you want to "starve the beast", then you should say that. It seems to me to be the done thing to lie about taxes being high, or the deficit being unsustainable to achieve that same end rather than just being honest about your goals.
Let's just take the time to recap. Countries with a top end quality of life are more likely to be socialist. Try saying it out loud once you get past the horror of looking at the numbers. If that sounds unfair I'm sorry, but I know where you stand and that you really aren't a fan of having the bubble burst. I know you love hanging onto the mantra that socialism equates to poverty and human rights abuses but Venezuela isn't representative here any more than Democratic Republic of Congo is representative of life under capitalism. The best nations in the world to live in turn out to be by and large what you would call "socialist". What's more all of the ones which perform better than the US turn out to be socialist by your measure. Incidentally I just did some quick calculations, apparently like @Spaceturkey I'm paying slightly less tax than I would in the US. Not by much, but less nonetheless and I get free healthcare thrown in which not only matches but on most measures outperforms what you get paying extra for insurance.
Those countries aren't really socialist; they're the conservative scare-word version of socialist. They combine market economies with robust protections for workers and consumers, and an array of publically funded social services. Socialism involves public ownership of all major industries and a centrally planned economy.
Spaceturk's estimate of what income he thinks generated a 16% effective tax in US in 2018 rate is wrong by a factor of approx. 300-400%. If I lived in any of your countries and had time to waste sharing my opinion about how other countries should live their lives, just like you I'd lie about how sweet it is too - sensible way to try to talk weak-minded citizens of US into bad policies, the competitive environment being what it is. It's a transparent trick, but at least you guys still have some mercenary sensibilities, so there's hope for you yet. Those yellow vests in France are sure shiny happy people. Things are pretty good here, so much so that I don't wish for any of you to fail, thus continue to recommend leaner public spending if you want to survive for the long haul.
yeah.. my federal rate was 20.5 last year, and then another 5.5-9.5% for provincial. Factor in various rebates like rent, HST and Trillium, I'm back to under 20%.
Well, you found it on teh webz so it must be true. It's ok, for the record it's my sister's (did her taxes for her; I'm not dumb enough to put my data here), but your info is way off from RL. Bear in mind I also used actual total income, not AGI, not taxable income. She does pretty well. Forbes must be shit, or perhaps your understanding of what it claimed.
I'm sure that Canada Revenue Agency site exists to sell me supplements and provide inaccurate numbers of how much of my money they want to play with... Likewise, the collusion between Forbes and the IRS to similarly hoodwink taxpayers with unreliable info is well known. try again... or better yet, provide a corrected set of numbers. Option three, of course, is to just admit that you're talking out of your ass.
Oldfella and Tuttletard jump right on this like flies on shit. As usual, their drivel is so full of red herrings, ad-hominem, and lacking in any serious rebuttals, it's not even worth responding to.
yeah... I guess it just gets sad with Oldfella because I occasionally feel we have stuff in common-like we would've hung out in high school or something.
Here you go, pal. Did my cousin's taxes, he's a PT (lots of hours) court reporter in NY. Made US$140k total, paid 13.2k fed inc. taxes, an effective rate of less than 10% of his TOTAL income, and 13% of his TAXABLE income. As you can see, a person making enough to pay 16% of their total income (effective fed inc tax rate) is doing quite well in the US. Top 10% percentile probably.
1. None of the countries ranking above us on the World Happiness scale are socialist. The vast majority of their economic output is from entrepreneurs producing goods and services for profit. That is, they are all capitalist economies. The truly socialist countries all rank very, very low. 2. Comparing the U.S. to single, small, homogeneous, prosperous countries is not really an apt comparison. Compare the U.S. to the EU as a whole. Or rank U.S. states individually. 3. Happiness is a highly subjective quality to rank, and, like all such rankings, is very dependent on what criteria one chooses and how each is weighted. 4. Happiness is a single dimension of well-being. 5. One might wonder why, for all the problems it seems to have, the U.S. (#18 in 2018) ranks so closely to Germany (#15) and above European heavyweights like the United Kingdom (#19), France (#23), Spain (#36), and Italy (#47). Of Europe's biggest countries, we rank higher than 4 out of 5 of them, and the only one that "beats" us does so narrowly.
See, @Tuttle tard. This is what a good rebuttal looks like. None of these points are knockouts, but they're all fair and decent, and they all address directly what the OP put on the table. You should try to be more like Paladin and less like MAGA Forest Gump.
sorry - I'm not the one who rams various illicit drugs into my body. You might want to look in the mirror.
writing a children's book? Don't give away too much of the plot! Garamet can probably give you technical advice.
