[gruez]

>Organizing your country with more sustainable growth where income disparities aren't so high means you don't have this problem to this extent.

Sounds like US vs Europe. Having redistributive policies funded by taxes works well until your most productive people flee for a country that doesn't, and you steadily lose ground to competitors economically.

[ozlikethewizard]

Americans like to act like they've beaten European nations in some kind of battle, but is the purpose of a state not to provide the highest quality of life, safety and health to its citizens? Not try to make the biggest corporations? In which case, even taking the whole of Europe as an average (which you shouldn't), by every metric beyond GDP its ahead.

[gruez]

>but is the purpose of a state not to provide the highest quality of life, safety and health to its citizens?

It's going to be hard to provide all of that when you don't have the money for it (eg. fiscal crisis in France right now), or if you get invaded by your neighbor (or any other competitor) eclipses you economically and then uses that to subjugate you. The european model of reaping the peace dividend and using it to fund a more generous welfare state worked from 1990s to 2010s, but is breaking down with the rise of china and russia, and is further exacerbated by sluggish growth and the demographic/pension crisis.

[disgruntledphd2]

> the demographic/pension crisis.

This is the actual issue, which we often avoid talking about because it's grim. Like, health care is expensive, old people health care is really expensive, and the proportion of old people in many Western countries is increasing over time (because of a fall in birth rates). I believe the FT had a good article about this recently, where they showed that the vast majority of extra spending from government was on old people.

Now, clearly, society doesn't want to just shoot old people when they get sick, but I'm not sure how taxation is gonna look as the proportion of old people increases. Obviously increasing retirement ages helps here, but that's mostly just a massive tax on blue collar workers, who are much less likely to be able to continue working into their 70s, whereas for many cubicle jockeys, it's a lot more plausible.

[arjie]

Everyone has their own objectives for life, but I actually don't think that the purpose of a state is to provide the instantaneous highest quality of life, safety and health to its citizens. Some might argue that it is to provide those things not at a sampled time but over a duration, but if so which generation should experience that? And if optimized over generations then surely some people must lose so that future others must gain, or the future others must lose to that the present ones may gain.

Personally, I think a higher goal for the state is to provide a substrate of sufficient physical safety, law and order, and infrastructure so that its citizens may have the ability to pursue their aspirations. I think human thriving is very important. And I want the ability to try at a ridiculous thing and achieve commensurate reward. In many ways, I don't even want that for me. I want that for others. When I see someone take a crack at something that most thought impossible and make it happen, I love it.

It isn't that those of us who have this opinion are temporarily embarrassed billionaires. It's that we like that someone took a crack at something absurd and became billionaires for it. People who don't get it always say these things out of misunderstanding: "Why do the poor in the US vote so often against their own interests?". The obvious answer is "because they are principled and not purely self-interested".

[Yizahi]

The thing is that Europe doesn't have much redistribute policies. Everyone at around lower rank manager or middle developer are landing in the highest tax bracket in most of the countries, and pay as much tax as rich people. And almost every tax raise is usually targeted at these barely middle-class people.

[dns_snek]

Except for the fact that despite popular belief, this doesn't actually happen. Not even among millionaires.

https://taxjustice.net/press/millionaire-exodus-did-not-occu...