Funny! Here in Cyprus in spite of totally car-centric culture, parking is free almost everywhere or at the very worst, 4 EUR per DAY in a few spots, but even there it's usually possible to find a spot for free.
Sometimes i wonder how our nation works. Low taxes, effectively no poverty among locals (and a foreigner can only be poor if they are an illegal immigrant, otherwise they lose their rights of residence and kicked out), almost no crime, and a budget surplus! And nothing seems to be a ridiculous overcharge: even healthcare is dirt cheap, funded by a really low tax of 2.4-4% if income.
All issues we have seem to be a product of culture/poor education, rather than economical - such as some trash in the streets or very poor quality of building and car maintenance. Also no Schengen but again, only foreigners care about it.
You should be proud, but you should also lobby for better spend of the tax money.
Regardless, a well functioning nation should target some level of equality. This does not necesarrily happen through taxes, but taxes have just shown to be incredibly effective.
Regardless of your status, you still suffer from high inequality. If you are poor it is self explanatory. But even rich people need to shield them from ceo killers, use incredibly bad infrastructure, etc.
In that view I do understand why you are not a proud US person - but taxes would likely safe you - like it did in the 60s.
>But even rich people need to shield them from ceo killers, use incredibly bad infrastructure, etc.
CEO killers are not a result of inequality. The only recent example of a CEO killer was a result of being the head of a health insurance company and the motivation was not his comp.
Bad infrastructure is also not a good example. That’s just a result of gov choices on spending.
At least in the US, pulling levers on taxing the middle and upper middle class produces far more revenue than hitting the 0.1%. This is why Democrats nor Republicans will ever provide meaningful cuts for people making $90k-$500k/year.
Inequality causes issues, but infrastructure failures is not one of them.
That's natural, upper class makes money from assets, not from work - it's hard and also probably morally impossible to tax these (do it and they sell and buy assets abroad where assets aren't taxed, and just throw country into shit, leaving generations without pensions and without profits from their consumption). Only something that has no way to run away, can be taxed. Labor is that thing: for all the bad things about America, you have to build walls to keep people out not keep them in.
The ceo killing was not a result of inequality. Both the assailant and the CEO were rich and the motivation was entirely the nature of health insurance as an industry.
So given that the only recent CEO killing was not a result of inequality, what evidence do you have to support the notion than increased inequality would increase CEO killings?
Exactly my thought. It is not based on 'ability to hide money from taxation' or anything like that. Just in lower corporate tax rate (even then, it's lower still in Bulgaria and Hungary and yet those countries don't have much to show for that). Also we have tax exemption on dividend income for individuals, but again, plenty of countries have that, it's more of a norm than an exception (no country could hope to attract any high middle class or rich immigrants unless it provides that, it's a baseline expectation).
Sometimes i wonder how our nation works. Low taxes, effectively no poverty among locals (and a foreigner can only be poor if they are an illegal immigrant, otherwise they lose their rights of residence and kicked out), almost no crime, and a budget surplus! And nothing seems to be a ridiculous overcharge: even healthcare is dirt cheap, funded by a really low tax of 2.4-4% if income.
All issues we have seem to be a product of culture/poor education, rather than economical - such as some trash in the streets or very poor quality of building and car maintenance. Also no Schengen but again, only foreigners care about it.