| This sounds like a terrible deal. In the US - your effective income tax rate could be as low as ~24% on $60k. There is nowhere it would be higher than ~33%. So your tax rate is AT LEAST 22% higher - and all you're getting is "free" education and healthcare. =FV(0.075, 40, -13200, 0). That's $3M by the time you would retire if you invested the difference in taxes in a total market index fund and got average returns. Adjusted for inflation - that's $822k. You could reliably drawdown the equivalent of ~$3.5k per month forever. That's 50% more than you make after taxes now... And in the US - you would already be getting $3k+ from social security... Plus you'd have free healthcare via Medicare... Individually, you are unquestionably better off with the lower tax rate in the US. Unless you went to Princeton to study underwater basketweaving without a scholarship. Even if you had ridiculously expensive chronic conditions - there's plans you can get cheaper than $13k per year. And as a whole you are also worse off. The cost of "free" education is estimated at $47Bn in the US. That would increase taxes by about 1.1%. The cost of "free" healthcare is estimated at an additional $1.6Tn. If evenly distributed - that would increase everyone's taxes by about 43%. That means your tax rate would be as low as ~31% or as high as ~41% -- depending on which state you lived in. |