I wrote about this last May. In Denmark, most workers pay 40% to 70% of their annual income as taxes; those are not marginal tax rates but the percent of your income paid as taxes.
And here we are: Top earning New Yorkers could face 61.2% combined tax rate under House plan (that would be a marginal tax rate). And that is just taxes on income and capital gains. Add in Social Security, Medicare “contributions”, and local property and sales taxes and the U.S. will be on par with the most taxed nations in the world.
The approach has been to spend first on “social benefit” programs modeled on Denmark, and then discuss how these are paid for, in the future. By spending first, the proponents essentially require higher taxes in the future – but it is simplest to talk about “free stuff” to get support, and then talk about how to pay for it later.
Read my original post to see the details. It may open your eyes to what is being done since the media has largely ignored this.
