If you make $60,000 here in the USA, you can expect to pay about 22% in taxes (https://www.bankrate.com/finance/taxes/tax-brackets.aspx) so ~$12,600.
You move to Sweden and make that same $60K USD equivalent. Their tax rate is 61.85 percent (https://tradingeconomics.com/sweden/personal-income-tax-rate) so ~$37,110.
I bet you can stay here and buy some pretty great healthcare (plus a lot of other stuff) with that $24,510 difference.
There's no such thing as a free lunch (or free healthcare). Not only are your taxes covering your "free" healthcare, but they're also covering "free" healthcare for several people who aren't working while you are.
If you were to be consistent, you could use the figure for America's marginal tax rate listed in your second article, which is 37%. So apples to apples comparison would be that the US pays $22,000 in taxes at the highest marginal rate on 60k.
Keep in mind that the US also has state income tax, which can be upwards of an additional 15%.
Anyway, these figures are all kinds of wrong. You need to account for the progressive tax rate for each country, the state taxes you might be subject to, and the tax benefits / write offs that are available to you for your tax bracket.
Also, let’s look at what that 24k gets you in Swedish healthcare:
* Automatic paid sick leave for any duration that your physician orders you not to work.
* Capped payments on drugs per year, after which the government pays for you
* Cheap visits to generalists or specialists, capped at a low level, after which the government pays.
On top of all of that, they have lower infant mortality rates, lower rates of preventable deaths, higher average lifespans, and employ _more_ nurses and physicians per patient despite spending HALF of what we do as a percentage of GDP.
The most revealing statistic however, is that Sweden dedicates a lower percentage of government revenue to healthcare than we do. They get much more than the average American citizen while spending much less percentage wise.
Free healthcare isn’t free, but it’s sure as hell better than what we have.
Sources: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_system#International_... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Sweden
If you look at a tax calculator you will see that for a Swedish salary equivalent to $60K, the effective tax rate is actually ~27%.
$60K USD == ~540K SEK, which is 45K SEK a month.
Plugging 45,000 into [1] and choosing the municipality of Stockholm results in a net monthly income of 32,587 SEK.
That's a tax rate of ~27%...
Then on most goods there is a 25% tax, additional taxes other categories of goods such as gas, cars, alcohol and so forth.
So if the company pays you 60k SEK, you'll see ~45k on your payroll slip. The 61% percentage is the average total tax burden on a individual from all of these taxes.
(Would they pay you more if that tax wasn't due? Well, possibly, I suppose. Or they might just pay you the same, and then buy more stuff, employ more people, pay the company owners more money, that sort of thing.)
However, you are just presenting numbers in misleading ways that do not accurately reflect the actual taxes paid. Please stop.
If you actually wanted to make a factual argument about high taxes in Sweden the tax you're better off looking at payroll taxes.
https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2...
[Anecdote from the Canadian socialized healthcare system]
For instance, when my brother was 11 he was diagnosed with an advanced brain tumour the size of an average naval orange. He was admitted to one of the country's leading children's hospitals (McMaster in Hamilton) one day and was in surgery the next. He spent a week in recovery, half of that week in a private room, then shared with two others. He received follow up appointments there for the following year or two. They were able to remove the entire tumour in one session, with no remaining traces, and without the [temporary or permanent] paralysis they supposed could occur (they gave it a 50% chance he would lose all feeling and motor ability on his left side). He was in hospital, and they accomplished this all in inside of 36 hours.
The cost out-of-pocket to my family was the gas to drive there, and the parking in Hamilton over a couple of days.
Oh yeah, and we bought the doctors a Tim Hortons coffee and donuts...
edited to add: The mentioned visits included a large number of MRI and CAT scans, among other tests.
I'd like you to compare that situation with a like American anecdote: https://www.thebillfold.com/2015/06/the-cost-of-things-a-bra...
Nobody lives in a vacuum, my friend. Wouldn't that be nice if we could account for all cases as you have?
I strongly doubt that someone winning $60K pays 61.85% in Sweden. Your source seems strongly geared towards rich people.
The number is closer to 16k USD if you make 60k USD, see: https://statsskuld.se/en-sv/jobs/berakna-nettolon
This "free" in quotes is such a stale talking point. No one thinks it's literally free, it's free AT THE POINT OF USE, which is assumed anyone knows, but apparently not.
