Sweden is infamous for having some of the highest taxes in the world, and yet the country’s tax agency is still one of Sweden’s most trusted institutions.
The Swedish attitude towards tax contrasts sharply with many countries where taxes can be a deeply divisive issue. We investigate what this says about Swedish society and how the popularity of the welfare state might survive growing challenges in the future.
Downvoted for shitty title.
Americans have been taught to hate taxes. They have been sold the idea that the original concept of “no taxation without representation” didn’t include the latter two words. Decades of Republicans demonizing taxes have done it.
You can see it in the way they display prices in shops.
Always without taxes, to make sure the customer can blame the taxes for the high prices. Even though the tax directly relates to the cost of the product.
There is absolutely no reason why a shop couldn’t show the total prices with taxes included. Because those taxes don’t change daily, nor does the shop move.
Agreed. And it should be considered false advertising. Just like how gas stations in the U.S. have all of their prices end in .9, so gas isn’t $3.00, it’s $3.009. Which you can’t pay because you can’t pay in cent fractions. It just makes the gas look slightly cheaper.
well swedes also get value for their taxes. I remember one who would talk about how it drove him nuts coming across pot holes and various broken infrastructure as it would be unacceptable for it to be like that for weeks were he was from.
Right, but there’s a reason we don’t get value for our taxes and that reason is also Republicans. Especially Reagan.
oh yeah and we end up paying more in local taxes than any reduction we ever got on federal ones.
Yeah, re-paving happens all the time here. I visited Massachusetts back in 2019 and was shocked at the abysmal state of the roads.
But Massachusetts has snowy winters and icy conditions which means they need to salt the roads. This is not something that they have to contend with in check notes Sweden?
/S
This year in particular has been frustrating when it comes to snow. I live pretty far south, about two hours south of Stockholm, and we’ve had snow for like half of April. It all melted at the end of March, there were spring flowers, and then we had a shit tonne of snow again, which melted, followed by more snow. So many false starts. 😩
It’s been snow free for a week now, I hope it holds.
Oh cool you live in old Denmark?
yeah and that was a place with pretty good infrastructure and upkeep for the us.
I’ve heard that MA is a pretty solid place overall. To be fair I loved my stay, but I think the main reason for that was meeting up with a very close friend of mine. I recall this crossing in particular leaving me rather exasperated.
It seems like they’ve since paved over it, however. It is a bit baffling to me that it looks the same in 2012 as it did to me in 2019.
Exactly. We’re also taught not to see the value we receive from our tax paying. And to fear and hate the IRS (especially since we have to file our tsxes
It’s more like a lot of people don’t feel like they are being represented. I wouldn’t complain if my taxes were housing homeless people or funding space exploration, but instead they’re funding 37 wars.
Plenty of people would complain if their taxes were housing homeless people or funding space exploration though.
they’re funding 37 wars.
Do you have a source for this? I only see 28 global conflicts and 16 wars involving the United States marked as “Ongoing conflict” or “Another result”.
Radiation is theft seems to be far more popular. They demonize it all in all cases. Entirely brainwashed without thinking about the services that benefit them. sigh
Pair that with the GOP systematically destroying public institutions by gutting public funding as much as possible while simultaneously eroding public trust. Our public education system? It used to be the best in the world until Regan and Bush I and II tore it to shreds. Same with our healthcare system. All in the name of privatization.
If it actually did result in republicans being crushed under a giant domino, at least we’d have that going for us.
Donald and his Trumpanzee cult are the giant domino, it is crushing us alongside the conservatives who pushed the smallest one.
A lot of voters were. But the grifters running the party just got richer and richer and richer, enabling them to keep regurgitating the same “You’re unhappy because the Big Woke Government Is Too Communist” line ad nauseum.
Certain Republicans did get crushed. The Bush and Cheney families used to be at the center of GOP politics and now they’ve been forced out to the periphery. But others have profited immensely from their fall and risen to take their place. The Christian Dominionist Wing is rapidly consolidating control of the party under the Trump banner, with guys like Mike Johnson and Ted Cruz and Kristi Noem rising into the top ranks of the party while the Bloombergs have had to back away or jump ship to Team D.
That and the growing unrest due to wage gaps and our taxes not benefitting our society.
Which is also due to Republicans cutting all social services and resisting new ones.
Maybe people wouldn’t hate taxes if they were put to good use, not squandered on shit we don’t want and corruption. We have to watch as all our taxes go to pay corrupt politicians hundreds of thousands of dollars and cover all their expenses, meanwhile this year our elementary and middle schools are getting their sports/music/art classes cut because there isn’t enough budget.
That’s a surprise. In most US schools they’ll cut STEM and language and have rolling blackouts before they cut sports.
You’re thinking high school and college.
Pretty sure they’d be fine with it if trillions and trillions didn’t disappear into military and black budgets (ie transferring money to their friends)
I never had any real issues with taxes back when groceries, rent and insurance were affordable.
The issues came to light when life started to cost 1.5 times our income, while still having to pay 40% on income and an extra 20% on expenses. I’d rather pay less taxes and eat, when taxes don’t do anything. I also learned that our safety nets are a scam, they set up so many bullshit rules that when i needed it they literally went: “you have the right to receive €800 but you won’t get it, no matter how hard you try”. I tried for a year until i realised our money is just being stolen under the cover of “taxes”.
Yep, if taxes are preventing you from having a minimum of a comfortable standard of living then what is the point? That money should be coming out of the pockets of those that can afford it.
This is why taxes need to be progressive and based on wealth rather than earnings.
I find it funny that people are saying “well my taxes go to things I don’t want to support like oil companies and football teams”
Meanwhile in Texas, the most tax-hating state in the US, they love oil companies and private business eating up public funds.
Ironic.
Perhaps, just maybe, those two things are said by different people.
Its almost as though efficient utilization of tax revenue offsets the hatred of paying taxes. I just threatened my 1st cousins into pitching in $100 each to buy a 2nd cousin of ours a cello after I asker if she planned on continuing to play thru college and she said no she can’t afford school, dorms and instrument rental. I looked for programs that actually helped students like her but found nothing of actual use. You can do more help with your own money than giving it to the government or charities.
It also helps if paying taxes isn’t overly convoluted. The way doing taxes works for me is
- The tax agency sends out their calculations
- I complete with any complementary information (there’s never been any)
- I sign off on the bank ID app
We’re talking a couple of button clicks and it’s done entirely online.
Because Americans let movie stars and reality show con-men drive the train and idolize their asinine tomfoolery like it’s a goddamn team sport. Garbage in garbage out. Why is this even a question, what the fuck. This shit is as obvious as hot pink wallpaper.
I think the question is stupid, and I’m not sure why we need to bring the Swedes in. Why not just say Why do Americans Hate Taxes? You’ll get a variety of answers, some in the vein you’ve described.
Me, I live in Jersey (New), and we pay a lot in taxes. I’m pro tax, but at the same time I’m also critical about how my taxes are wasted, and I say that because they certainly are. So it’s a love hate relationship I guess. I say this just because I don’t think it’s fair to assume everyone is all hurr durr small government (when it’s convenient) nonsense. I just want smarter spending. And I live in a state that’s as blue as they come, I vote for them, but our mediocre transit system is on the brink of disaster (like, every election it seems), despite me sending a bunch of my money to NJ, as an example.
American culture is mentally ill.
Random clicknait by video “journalists” isn’t world news.
Why are they only pseudo-journalists to you?
Maddy Savage is, apparently, a BBC staff journalist who specializes in Nordic issues.
Benoît Derrier is a videographer (a form of journalism) who has captured a lot of footage in Sweden.
https://www.benoitderrier.com/
Did you even bother to look up their credentials before using those sarcasm quotes?
Sweden has historically been ethnically close to homogeneous (until the 20th century, life in Scandinavia was hard, and few wanted to move there) and has a relatively flat social hierarchy, meaning that redistributive taxation to fund services is popular (after all, if everyone needs a specific service, having the government provide it through taxes is an economy of scale). America, meanwhile, was founded on racial slavery, which resulted in a racial hierarchy (i.e., the definition of who counts as “white” shifting over time), and there’s a non-negligible proportion of voters who would resent being taxed extra to help lift those below them in this hierarchy closer to their level.
When the term “That’s your tax dollars at work” doesn’t need a /s because it’s just assumed – there’s your problem.
Because here in America, when they take my money, it’s to give away to oil companies and weapons dealers. Not to give us all health care and affordable housing.
55% of tax dollars in the united states goes to social programs, social security, and healthcare.
Difficult considering social security isn’t a tax. Without looking it up my guess is that number rolls up the 14-15% of SS and Medicare taxes so the real number is lower.
It’s considered a tax by the social security administration.
Source?
Handy Infographic from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO):
.- Total Federal outlays: $6.1 Trillion
- Federal Social Spending
- Social Security: $1.3T
- Medicare: $0.839T
- Medicaid: $0.616T
- Income Security Programs: $0.448T
- Total Social Spending: $3.203T
Math warning:
(3.203T / $6.1T) * 100% = 52.5%So, not quite the previous poster’s 55%, but pretty close. There is also an “Other” column which likely includes other social spending and may have gotten us to that number. But, it’s enough of a mixed bag, and way too much work, to try and pick it all out.
While the US could certainly adjust it’s spending in a lot of good ways, the idea that the US spends “nothing” on social programs is provably false. These numbers also get weird and much harder to pin down when we look at State level taxes and spending. Many years ago, I dug into education spending in the US. And while Federal Education spending is a drop in the bucket, the actual number is pretty large, because it’s considered a State responsibility and each State spends large amounts of money on it.
For example, my home State of Virginia budgets $29.9 Billion for “Health and Human Services” this Fiscal Year 2024 and $25.0 Billion for “Education”, those two line items eating up about 62% of the State budget.
Thanks, and your math makes sense, but I think this is a misinterpretation by op. It’s fair to say that as a percentage of expenditure… But not tax dollars.
Social security gets complicated because it’s set up as a trust fund and has investments that grow to support disbursement rates. It also means that the expenditures should be carved out, same as the inbound tax. This should shift the calculations meaningfully.
I saw them give trillions of free dollars to companies that had just received three years of extremely vigorous tax cuts.
Yeah, the military spending is actually pretty loosely connected to the shitty safety net. It’s basically hostile to the poor just because. Historically, racial resentment drove a lot of it.
And tax dollars from the US are funding Palestinian genocide through ISRAHELL.
Americans actually pay more per capita towards public healthcare than most Europeans, but it just covers so much less (Medicaid and Medicare) because of insane healthcare prices.
Two word to solve this: Public Healthcare.
Iinm medicaid/medicare is a government health insurance scheme that only given to selected individuals, and care is provided by private owned hospital, while Europe(and a lot of other place in the world) practice universal public healthcare, where the hospital is owned and run by government. This way, the government wouldn’t get squeezed dry by the exorbitant cost of private healthcare, while at the same time wouldn’t need to pick and choose who is eligible. Private hospital is there to provide value added service for people who can afford it.
In many places in Europe, they have a so-called “treatment guarantee,” which means that if the wait is longer than 30 days for non-emergency treatment and procedures referred by a doctor, you can elect treatment at the private hospital instead of a public hospital. No charge.
For emergencies, you are always treated immediately at either a public or private hospital.
E: I’m mentioning this because I’ve encountered a large number of uninformed Americans who always start crying about “people dying on wait-lists in Europe and Canada unlike in America.” No.
What country is that? Definitely not the UK.
E.g. Denmark.
American’s hate when the tax payer money is being wasted. Everyone hates that. Awful rage bait and pretentious title.
