Why do countries like Germany and Japan have such a high quality of life AND high productivity?
Remember that their unemployed have free medical care, education, and unemployment benefits...
- http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/germany
- http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/japan
- http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/united-states
Are they just smarter than Americans?
(While the US has the "highest average income" it comes at the price of the lower tiers not having the same opportunities for medical care and education, so maybe it's an active choice of American inequality?)
"The economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty examined tax returns from 1913 to 2008. They discovered an interesting pattern. In the late 1970s, the richest 1 percent of American families took in about 9 percent of the nation’s total income; by 2007, the top 1 percent took in 23.5 percent of total income."
Lower income taxes encourages risk taking and short term "me first now" gains.
Higher income taxes motivates creating methods of long term wealth accrual, e.g. businesses with continual steady profits.
Corporations and Wealthy Individuals do not have geographic or political boundaries.
It is the mainstream and poor of a society that cannot simply pack up and move some place sunnier with low taxes (Monaco).
So don't worry about the "wealth moving away because of high taxes"... it's already done so (e.g. Microsoft Ireland and Offshore bank accounts etc.)
- http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-110shrg45575/html/CHRG-110shrg45575.htm
- http://ctj.org/ctjreports/2014/05/dozens_of_companies_admit_using_tax_havens
- http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2010-05-13/american-companies-dodge-60-billion-in-taxes-even-tea-party-would-condemn
What's left? Businesses and Organizations that bring people together and give them a common purpose.
They receive money for their time and work which is then spent in the local economies. I call it the Exponential Spending Effect of capitalism (as opposed to the failed Trickle Down Economic Policy).
There's a lie that "businesses are made for profit" - If you own and work in a business (the quintessential small business) and you pay your employees, suppliers, contractors regularly and you receive a salary of $100,000 but your business doesn't show a profit...
You can still have a wonderful life! and everyone in that interconnected ecology is healthy and stable. In fact, you're even contributing to the mythical GDP.
Yet if policemen, firemen, nurses, teachers, etc. aren't able to work and spend then the quality of life for everyone will degrade into misery.
The wealth gap will drive America's great experiment, a Democratic Capitalist Republic, into Depression and Oligarchy... http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_United_States
Enrich your mind: Your vote makes a difference!