France
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I've heard that sentiment my whole life as have we all.
It was taxpayers who paid dedicated taxes per the Social Security Act. It was taxpayers who funded the science that industry used, who paid for the infrastructure, who paid for the creation of the public utilities, and who paid for the public education system.
It was taxpayers who paid for every asset Thatcher and Reagan stole and sold back to the people at terms that have led to the ruination if the middle and working classes.
We weren't "living off of other people" in any sense of the word. My parents worked a combined 50 years. My mother's parents worked a combined 55 years.
Full time. Year round. For 30 years, 20 years, 33 years, and 22 years, respectively.
Not from these quotes, demonstrating your point, but where did you actually get the idea that when people had a functional government they at the same time lived off each other like a bunch of grifters?
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I don't think it's that simple, jon.
"What they can afford."
France is doing things right and are paying for it because the rest of the world dilly-dallies. France rates way above the US when it comes to addressing climate change. It has strict business regulations. It has a recycling rate of 50% (the US is a meager 6%). France cares for it's citizens by providing them with healthcare (we all know the situation in the US). None of this is cheap. But it is right.
Then there are the peculiarities of being in the EU. Their debt is not in their own currency (I don't exactly know why this matters, but I've read from several sources that it makes a difference.). As a ratio to the GDP, their debt numbers are lower than the US. There is also wealth inequality that has risen fast. High unemployment at around 8% that doesn't budge.
It seems to me that when wealth is transfered to private hands as it has done so grotesquely in the past 40 years, that wealth is not invested in the well-being of a country. It is used by the wealthy to get more wealth. If the government taxed at appropriate levels, that wealth would go into societal investment, and it would benefit everyone, not just the wealthy who continue to get wealthier. It's a bad cycle and one that needs to be halted in it's tracks. Citizens of society create wealth and it's been getting scooped up beyond the limits of decency for too long.
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No sooner had I posted above, then I see a new video today from Richard Murphy ...
Link to video -
I think the tax for high earners is already close to 60%. That may well be on the other side of the laffer curve. More than half don’t pay income tax at all.
They famously tried a wealth tax and rolled it back because the wealthy were leaving.
Those protesters/looters/nihilists are in for a surprise.
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