[pembrook]

The USSR and Yugoslavia and Albania and Cuba and North Korea and Vietnam and China pre-2000s have all had far higher tax rates than Denmark during their worst times, so probably not a great correlation.

Denmark is like all the other Nordic countries culturally, except they have much easier direct geographic lines to Central Europe. So it’s basically what you get when you combine the Nordic model (tiny homogenous Lutheran population) with more advantageous geography. Finland is Denmark with extremely unfortunate geography.

[jampekka]

Cuba, Vietnam and Albania have way lower tax-to-GDP than Denmark. They are way below OECD average. Care to share your tax statistics on USSR, Yugoslavia, North Korea and pre-2000s China?

The Nordic model was created by socialist and labor movements in the 20th century. Finland, a tiny homogeneous Lutheran population, even had a brutal civil war over this. Nothing to do with religion or ethnicity.

[jq-r]

But it has all to do with corruption. Croatia has one of the world's highest tax burdens per 1000usd earned (or at least it had from a study done some years ago) and you would think that all is is great but this couldn't be further from the truth in reality. Corruption eats it all.

[pembrook]

The heydays of communism in those countries are long gone. Current tax-to-GDP stats are simply correctly reflecting those countries being poor and heavily black market driven.

And it’s everything to do with religion and history, why do you think all the Nordic countries had these same 20th century movements and all have extremely similar governance approaches.

[jampekka]

> The heydays of communism in those countries are long gone.

Marxist-Leninist countries typically don't have high taxes. Which is kind of obvious as the state doesn't rely on taxes for income. North Korea claims to have eradicated taxes.

> And it’s everything to do with religion and history, why do you think all the Nordic countries had these same 20th century movements and all have extremely similar governance approaches.

Shared history sure: they were geographically very close to each other, or even under shared rulers (e.g. Finland under Sweden for half a millenium), Scandinavian languages are essentially dialects of each other, they were all part of the wider European socialist and labor movements etc. The religion and Lutheran churches opposed development if anything.

The Nordic system is not very radically different from the continental Europe in general, more a matter of degree.

[pembrook]

Just because you rebrand it as something else (communism) doesn’t mean you aren’t taxing labor at 100%.

[jampekka]

If a worker gets paid working for a state owned company are they taxed 100%? 100% tax on labour clearly indicates the worker wouldn't get any remuneration.

Perhaps, with major conceptual gymnastics, state ownership can be seen as "taxing" potential private capital gains. But this is kind of the point of state socialism.