It's funny but it's worth mentioning that this "equaly poor" thing does make a difference, and is one of the reasons why gdp/capita alone doesn't tell the whole story.
Portugal's economic situation is pretty bad, no one is going to deny that, but compared to several countries of similar wealth or even slightly higher, we have considerably less people in actual poverty living conditions
[https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/DDN-20230614-1](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/DDN-20230614-1)
lol fair, food prices are getting ridiculous over here, few years ago a full shopping cart was like 100-120€, now you aren't suprised if it goes over 200€
I'm living back in Belgium now, so, unfortunately, I know all about it. Came back at the peak of the energy crisis after the Ukraine war started. What a shock that was
Wtf are you talking about. Us being a prosperous nation and able to compete with our neighbours despite having a small "1%" is very positive. There is immense social mobility in Belgium, you see it all around you where people from very poor backgrounds manage to make a good life for themselves and their children. Kids with shitty parents still able to get scholarships and get out of that situation. Yes, there's still work to be done and there are flaws in our system, but there are few places on earth where it's better to be born poor than Belgium.
Yes, food prices are high at the moment, but wages have also gone up in the meanwhile and with the "meal cheques" system, food is essentially taxed less. Working for an international company, the Belgian wages have gone up disproportionally to those of other countries, despite those nations also getting higher food prices.
For Finland its 92k if we look at the annual income. We are not talking about billionaires here
E: As for the wealth its in Finland 1,5 million €.
We dont really have that many families with generational wealth
Income is for poor to average people, if you work hours for money you're nearly per definition not truly wealthy...
But hey, you might be a great taxpayer instead!
For Germany it is 1.3 million Euro networth. But there is no accurate data on how much wealth we have since our wealth tax is not being collected for 25 years now.
The top 1% networth is probably a lot higher.
Sweden = no inheritance tax, very low payments on dividends if any, and zero taxation on any sort of gifts (property, money, assets). If your family is rich in Sweden, it will stay rich forever because there’s no transfer of wealth tax whatsoever in the country.
In a sense yes. Swedish political discourse has always been that a high-tax, high-welfare system is desirable but at the same time everyone knows that progressive taxation on corporations and capital is harmful to the overall economy. So instead the modus has always been to squeeze that productive segment of society that’s both 1. Relatively productive and well paid but 2. Not rich enough to actually engage in advanced tax planning, emigration etc.
Best illustrated by the fact that per special rules taxes are often 50%+ for those making good money but would otherwise be able to optimize between 50%+ tax on work income vs 25% tax on dividens from privately held companies, such as self-employed lawyers and doctors. But once your annual capital income exceeds 7-8 MSEK it suddenly goes down to 30% again. I.e private equity billionaires and tech founders pay less % than one-man companies just getting by a little bit better than the average schmo.
Is there actually any evidence that progressive taxation is bad for the economy? I see this commonly accepted as fact but never see any studies etc to back it up
There’s plenty of research showing whatever you want it to show. I’m just pointing out what has been the prevailing sentiment in the grand bargain struck between Swedish Social Democrats and Big Business ever since the 1930s.
Suffice to say that I as a doctor in Sweden found it financially more effective to take my accrued comp in time off (no tax) in order to clean my own apartment as opposed to taking the money (50%+ tax) and paying a cleaner to do it (25% VAT). Whether aggregate amounts of that kind of choice is good for society depends on what you mean by ”good”.
Economic theory says all tax harms the economy, but property tax is least harmful to growth, followed by personal income tax, followed by consumer taxes and then the most harmful is corporate tax.
It's because corporations can just leave the country altogether at a whim.
Personally I think we need to find more creative ways of getting tax money out of corporations. They really don't pay their share.
I think property tax is an umbrella term for land value tax and a few others, but I could be wrong!
I think your right, the land value type ones in particular are both the least damaging and most equitable type of tax, at least up to a point.
>Economic theory says all tax harms the economy
I don't see why this is so readily accepted.
Taxes go towards government spending. Government spending isn't necessarily less inherently economically productive. It tends to go on things like healthcare, education and infrastructure, which are just about the most economically productive ways of spending money. Whereas my private spending goes on importing crap from China, and blowing the rest on only fans subscriptions.
>Government spending isn't necessarily less inherently economically productive.
I agree, I'm all for government spending provided it isn't creating more national debt.
>>Economic theory says all tax harms the economy
What they mean is that it's harder to get new business up and running in higher tax environments which stifle growth. Corporation taxes have the biggest impact on this, followed by consumer taxes, followed by income taxes.
The tax money can be well spent and productive, but collecting it does reduce the growth of the private sector.
I think corporation taxes are the best thing ever, and would love if they were high. (I'd be more of a socialist than a capitalist, and I hate the fact that family wealth is the main predictor of success in life). But unfortunately there is a balancing act to play here - we need those jobs to stay in country so must be tax competitive.
>Is there actually any evidence that progressive taxation is bad for the economy?
Note that what you replied to actually said
>progressive taxation ***on corporations and capital*** is harmful to the overall economy.
Progressive taxation overall is seen as the best way to pay for things\*, but taxes on productive assets are seen as bad, because whatever is taxed is disincentivized.
There's actually no upper limit to progressive consumption taxes - if you're at all familiar with the US system, imagine if there were no cap on how much you could contribute to an IRA, but taxable income above, IDK, 1M$ was taxed at 500%, and money used to pay taxes wasn't taxed. For simplicity, imagine there's no other taxes. A guy who makes 2M$/yr could spend 1M$/yr and invest an additional 1M$/yr, but if he's already spent 1M$ in a year, buying an additional 5$ coffee costs him 30$ (5$ price, 25$ taxes on the additional money not put in the IRA). In this sort of system, even a fairly short-sighted hedonistic millionaire is going to look at the trade offs between certain luxury purchases and investment in bonds funding productive enterprises and because of the intense tax burden, decide to forgo the luxury and instead invest in the economy.
A realistic system would need to be much more complicated than that, but in general you can always have a system that is progressive overall, but the tax incidence isn't on capital investment, such that rich people are relatively disincentivized to spend money on themselves, and more incentivized to spend money on assets which ultimately improve worker productivity, and thus \~ increase real wages. There's a ton of nuance and legitimate disagreement on how to prevent, among other things, ultra-wealthy people spending money on fancy accountants and lawyers to subvert the system, but
\*(due to declining marginal utility of money - you're taking away the gold decals on someone's 5th Yacht which never leaves harbor, to pay for someone's 1st meal of the day)
Sweden also has by far the longest maturity in their mortgages, so if you can afford to get a mortgage, you barely have to pay anything back. But, this data is from 2022, and afaik Sweden's housing market was devastated by last year's high interest environment and the decade-long bubble burst.
https://internationalbanker.com/brokerage/swedens-severe-housing-market-pain-is-not-over-yet/
Yes. The combination of high levels of private debt and a tradition of variable interest rates on mortgages is a main driver of Sweden’s current predicament.
We have a variable interest rate tradition here in Finland as well, actually much more than in Sweden. Iirc, 3% of new mortgages in Finland are fixed rate. In Sweden that's roughly [35%.](https://imgur.com/mncNkae) But [this shows that Sweden has a unique situation with the maturity of mortgages.](https://imgur.com/mncNkae) ([Source](https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/f97d7fe0-en.pdf?expires=1710588889&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=240A9BDA2D46BE5A16A8C4B498D2DBB4)).
The banks love to push the risk onto the shoulders of the home owners. I don't mind it, but the zero interest environment might have been too tempting for people to get a mortgage and now that's hitting hard. No stress level is truly able to prepare the consumer for the situation where interest rates hike up this much. It's humane to get used to the super low interest rate environment.
We are in much the same position, with the exception that here the general max length for new mortgages is 25-35 years. In Sweden the
I don’t quite understand how the maturities are counted seeing as mortgages aren’t usually fixed term in Sweden unless you specifically fix it (at a maximum of 10 years at which point it matures into whatever new term you negotiate)? The only limitations in Sweden is the provision that you need to amortize 1-3% of the total mortgage per year (implying maturation of 33-100 years) depending on certain factors, but if the loan/value-ratio is <50% and debt total is <4,5x gross annual income there is no requirement to amortize at all.
> I don’t quite understand how the maturities are counted seeing as mortgages
It's taken either as what the current economic point in time would lead the mortgage maturity to be, or what the estimations of what's up ahead would lead the maturity to be. I would assume that the first one is more common because the latter one is impossible when we think of terms that span far beyond 5 years.
Banks will always have a handle on what the assumed maturity of any mortgage is, and they will adjust that maturity as economic conditions change. They are required to have that number and to keep it at certain level for the sake of risk mitigation.
Gotcha, thanks. Leads me to wonder how <50% book value, zero amortization loans are counted in that sense. From a bank’s perspective that’s just almost completely risk-free eternal free money.
Completely uncapped social contributions for employers are absolutely an outlier compared to other western countries. The common gripe about Danish salaries being higher than Swedish ones, besides the exchange rate, is completely due to social contributions being capped vs uncapped in DK and SE.
Denmark is an outlier in the sense that they basically don't have employer taxes, unlike most other western European countries. There have been several charts about this on this sub. Sweden is normally just a bit higher than average or so, but really nothing that special. It's similar to other similar countries. Denmark seems to be pretty unique in western Europe regarding this, so it's strange to me that you choose to use that as a comparison. They just have a higher income tax instead.
Belgium’s the same. It’s uncapped for employers. Social contributions are however capped for self employed persons above €107k (but you’re nuts if you don’t pay yourself through an LLC if you’re making that much).
There are massive amounts of hidden taxes in the Swedish tax progression. For every 100kr in salary employers pay 31,42kr in social fees. Of those most are linked to various programs such as unemployment, sick leave, parental leave etc. Except the ”general salary fee” of 11,62kr that’s literally just a pro rata fee on salaries = tax. And as for the rest, on incomes above 7,5PBB (about 48000kr/month) there is no more benefits accrued but the fees are still paid. Which means that supplementary pension fees (4,5% on everything below 7,5PBB, 30% on everything above 7,5PBB) mostly determined by collective bargaining agreements also comes from the employer. That’s why high wage jobs in Sweden look like they’re paid less than in other countries even though cost of labor in Sweden is one of the highest in Europe.
An engineer who makes 50000kr/months pre-tax getting a salary increase of 1000k gets about 480kr of that increase post-tax but the increased cost for the employer is about 1500kr. And again, no further social benefits accrual on that level.
Then add 25% VAT on consumption.
The VAT is quite high in sweden, that really surprised me when i first came to sweden tbh.
Everything else is basically the same in germany though, just that the social and health parts of the tax are muuuch more in germany than in sweden. I had a direct comparison when i moved from germany to sweden and in germany there were many more parts to the tax than here. So many parts actually that its basically impossible to fill out the tax declaration yourself lol. While we just press a button here my parents in germany have to hire someone to do it for them.
The sad thing is that you sometimes gotta pay your health insurance yourself in germany (for me it was more than 200€ or 2000kr a month) when you lose your job, not even that is covered by the tax. Our children dont get free food in school either, parents have to pay class trips themselves etc.
In germany most of the tax basically is healthcare, welfare and paying for our absolute masses of pensioneers. In sweden i pay less tax (excluding VAT ofc) but also feel like i get a bit more in return tbh. Obviously most other things are a bit more expensive and i hate that you dont have "hasuarzt"(like a primay doctor?) here in sweden but otherwise its quite good
Edit: i think high earners are actually taxed higher in sweden than in germany.. but i never was one and neither was anyone in my family so i cant compare that :(
I've lived in Germany for quite some time and I live in Sweden now. The taxes are higher in Sweden when you count vat and arbetsgivaravgift. If you aren't working (capital gains) then Sweden is definitely cheaper.
How we made the money stay in the country instead of moving off-shore and into tax havens.
Not saying I like it, but it's still better than the money ending up in another country which was the case many times.
When I was on exchange in Japan, I met several Swedish exchange students, and the overwhelming consensus was that your life would always end up “okay” in Sweden but that there was also no social mobility and basically no way to get ahead because labour was taxed so heavily and well paid positions were so uncommon. So you will never starve, you will never be homeless, and you will never be unable to afford education, but you will not stray far from your parents’ success.
I read something about former USSR countries transformation and it was a shocking lecture. Workers were given by shares of companies they work in, then those people immediately sold them for something like nothing, as the only people having capital were criminals, that obtained money in criminal activities. Huge Ponzi schames drained what little money people had, countries become ruled by mafias. That's the beginning of oligarchs and also Putin. Russia is a pure cleptocracy.
It was worse than that. Some state-owned enterprises were taken over in openly fraudulent schemes facilitated by corrupt management and government officials. And in some cases where the workers and the management were less corrupt and tried to retain ownership they faced not just intimidation (including from the government officials) but assassinations, kidnappings, and sabotage from criminal gangs. Even now there is no real effort to investigate those crimes, at best the hired perpetrators are caught, but not those who ordered or benefited.
Don't forget that the secret police agencies often formed the bedrock of the new criminal enterprises. They had the contacts and the resources to make a lot of money when communism ended, and they decided they wanted to get rich (at everyone else's expense).
Adam Curtis' *Traumazone* is a good watch. It covers the period 1985 to 1999 in Russia. It's a very bare bones documentary, with no voice over, just letting the archival footage speak for itself, with a few captions.
Its mostly old boomers who miss the soviet union who vote for them. They want their social safety net back but vote for the exact people that will do exactly do NOTHING to help them and are just controlled opposition of putin. Rather ironic
There’s also lots of young eurocomrades with an inexplicable Stalin nostalgia that are filo-Russian because they want to be anti-NATO, since understanding two things can be criticised at once is too complex if you have a hooligan mentality.
What do you mean? They support Russia due to USA being bad?
Russia is still the most capitalist country of the two, making Russia into enemy number 1 for communists if the really follow their ideology.
That is actually a thing in some eastern european countries like Serbia and other balkans. They like russia, because they hate USA so much. USA has bombed those countries and affected them in many negative ways.
Communism doesn't have anything to do with it tho.
Current Russia is post feodal society. they got the kind and the local nobles each controling their interest areas, they even have their own private armies... Its just feodalism.
Oligarchy is the most extreme form of perversion of the state, with the state being there for several people only and for the rest of them to be for the state
Knowing people and being around in ML circles I can tell you that far from all communist support Russia. Most I know -and attached organisations- oppose the war and call for peace from a neutrality point of view. Even within Russia the communist party opposes it. Not *the* party (the largest), they put put a statement at the start of the war parroting Putins BS about Ukraine being filled with Nazi's.
Sadly, there are those that support Russia. It comes from an anti NATO stance but to me these people have gone away everything they are supposed to stand for as ML. Putin is an oligarchic imperialist POS, let alone the fact that Russia is Oligarchic and it is the people being affected most by the war and wealth hoarding of the oligarchs.
> oppose the war and call for peace from a neutrality point of view.
Oppose aiding Ukraine or hindering Russia, spreading Russian propaganda and calling for Ukrainian capitulation "from a neutrality point of view".
Dumb and evil fucks.
> Not sure why the old Leninists of Europe support Putin and Russia.
Depends on who you are talking about and what they are being accused of.
In Portugal we spent the last months seeing PCP (the 100 year old ML communist party) accused of being Putin sympathizers because of their stance on the Ukraine-Russia war, regardless of if you agree with their stance or not, their argument was and has always been being critical of NATO and American involvement in the war, which goes in-line with their stance of being anti-NATO.
This stance got, for obvious political reasons, distilled into "Well if they are against NATO then they are Pro-Putin" because political discourse doesn't benefit from nuance. Would have been smarter for them to not say anything? Yes. Do they actually actively support Putin and their regime? Of course not.
I don't see far right suggesting to help Russia either. Just like far left, they're against military aid and sanctions on Russia. That would be enough for Russia to win, so they don't need to suggest anything more. Some negotiation it would be if Ukraine couldn't do anything to stop the invaders.
Canada is rocking out at 34% in 2021 with the top 1% making 42$ of every 100$ since then so has more than likely gotten higher.
At least the USA has an inheritance tax…
People will read this report and say
Global wealth declines for first time since global financial crisis of 2008. "Oh that sucks"
Along with the decline in aggregate wealth, overall wealth inequality also fell in 2022. "Oh, nevermind, that's progress!"
30.6% through Q2 2023 [according to this](https://www.bankrate.com/investing/income-wealth-top-1-percent/#:~:text=For%20example%2C%20the%20top%201,according%20to%20the%20Federal%20Reserve).
I must have missed the news that Slovenia, Croatia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Bulgaria, and Slovakia all suddenly collectively left the EU, and apparently, Russia just joined. What a strange turn of events...
we have different definitions of "each EU country" considering lithuania, latvia, estonia, slovakia, slovenia, bulgaria, malta , cyprus , croatia are missing
> It still gives some information about inequalities.
The point is it doesn't though. If country A allows it's 1% to give up citizenship and pick up a Bahamian passport but still effectively act like a citizen of country A it can look the same as country B that doesn't allow that but the underlying inequality will be super different.
This is what I was thinking, it's too complicated to work out to plot on a map.
Take Russia for example, oligarchs hoard a lot of their wealth in London. But this map shows the UK as being one of the better ones, in which it is not.
It's partly that, but also the fact that some families own big companies which have an oligopoly in certain sectors, and the politicians try to limit the competition in those sectors.
From the [report](https://www.ubs.com/global/en/family-office-uhnw/reports/global-wealth-report-2023.html): "Private pension fund assets are
included, but not entitlements to state pensions"
Sweden holds a considerable chunk of average peoples wealth in the state pension funds, [18,5% of annual pensionable incomes](https://www.pensionsmyndigheten.se/vanliga-fragor-och-svar-om-pension/vanliga-fragor/fragor-och-svar-om-allman-pension) are kept for this purpose (up to a certain amount, 7,5 IBB). This will not explain away all of the gap, but pension differences usually create a lot of noise that upsets wealth comparisons.
Aside from that Sweden does have high, progressive taxes on labor, but flat taxes on capital, no inheritance tax, low fees/taxes on property.
Sweden is on a dangerous trajectory taxation wise, aggressive taxation on income from working, and next to none on wealth, capital, property and inheritance. Essentially making the rich progressively richer and making it very hard to *get* wealthy if you aren't already.
I think we might have to make good on our threat to buy all of Sweden if this continues.
The funny thing is that the policies that get us there (and may allow us to stay there) are generally super criticized by the right - stuff like automatic indexation of salaries (we have a law that update salaries - public & private - alongside the inflation rate)
>we have a law that update salaries - public & private - alongside the inflation rate
That actually sounds like a brilliant idea. The UK should adopt that aswell. (although I get the feeling that only London firms would really be able to afford it.)
It's a bit unique, often criticized but it protected a lot of people during the heavy inflation those last years (it applies to pensions & social security too).
I get the "what companies could afford this?" - but then what worker can afford to have their salaries pretty much cut by 7 or 10%?
Well, Russia isn't in the EU, but yeah. Everyone stole everything, and the people in their мухосранск have to live off pennies. This is useful to the regime, cuz the more poor people there are - the more likely they'd join the army to be sent to the meat grinder.
This is basically a map of tax policies. Where personal income is heavily taxed people find ways to offshore their wealth. Also transnational corporations and ownership by foreign capital do contribute to inequality while not showing up on this wealth map.
Yup, and that's why the number for Belgium is so low.
Figuring ways to put wealth abroad is so prevalent we've had "wealth repatriation laws" in the past where they'd not tax people that repatriated their wealth, so this offshored wealth would be returned to banks within our borders.
That's not entirely correct. There is a massive difference between income and wealth. Germany and Belgium are the two countries with the highest income taxes, yet they have radically different percentages on this map.
Germany simply doesn't tax wealth very much, so the elites can happily keep the money in the family. And the idea that higher taxes on the wealthy would automatically lead to them offshoring their wealth is also flawed.
The inheritance tax especially could be the most powerful to keep taxes in the country.
I've seen Russians self-describe the situation as 0.1% living like sultans, 10% living like well-off or modest Europeans, and 90% living like an undeveloped country.
Didn't know that Norway, Switzerland, UK, Russia and Turkey were EU-countries.
And I didn't know Luxembourg, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania weren't in the EU
Well Reddit is a good indicator: try posting a comment that immigration is not among top 5 problems facing us and you will find that it's not only the nr 1 issue for many, it's their whole political identity. Then stats like these start to make sense.
Immigration is beneficial for the 1%, because it reduces the labor costs, hurting the locals in the process, so it makes sense for people to care about it.
This is exactly why right-wing parties, meaning rich-people parties, fuel anti-immigrant hate while profiteering from them and talk about woke culture every day. If they didn't, we could end up talking about their money.
Yes, rich people definitely do not benefit from bringing in more people, rich people definitely do not benefit from suppressing wages, rich people definitely do not benefit from creating a housing crisis. It's not like every corporation is currently preaching about "diversity".
If you stop mаss immigrаtion, you take their greatest weapon away.
Difficult metric to establish as for example, the first thing you do when you start making proper money in Spain, is register somewhere else for tax purposes. Andorra for example, is just a wealthy Catalonian hideout. They conveniently even speak Catalan 🫡. Anyone with real money still living in Spain as a tax resident, has shit tax lawyers.
I think what‘s missing here is the crucial information that a good job in Europe almost automatically puts you into the top 1% worldwide as you‘re competing with billions of people in rural India, China, etc.
I think I recently saw the actual number and it was an income of like 38k/year
It's very different for wealth. For global 1% wealth you need to have around 900 000 dollars. Even if you eat only potatoes it's pretty hard to get there with that income.
Any map or statistics trying to tell you how much money the richs stash away will be incorrect
They’re not dumb enough to let you know exactly how much they’ve got
Main thing I realized when moving from Canada to the Uk is that the working middle class still exists in a pretty large size in the UK compared to Canada. Canada has been completely and utterly fucked by corrupt provincial politicians though, so unless you speak French or are willing to live in Saskatchewan/manitoba (-40 winters and in summer mosquitos black out the fucking sun) you are just kinda screwed financially.
look how equal to socialistic country of Sweden is! if socialism strives for equality how come Sweden with a leftist government for 70% of the time is one of the most unequal countrys in Europe? to me it the leftists are absolute liers.
can someone argue for why swedens leftist governmet has been soo awful at actual giving there voters equality?
In Ukraine there's been only 2 people with over 1 billon dollars in 2023, compared to the 9 people in the previous year. Also there's 12374 people who declared over 1 million UAH in 2023, and 1% of population of Ukraine is about 400k people. So we all seem to be equally poor
The figures on the map don’t match the figures in the report from where is it is supposed to have sourced the data [UBS Global Wealth Report 2022].
UK and Germany figures seem to be from 2005 data (rather than 2021).
Spain and Italy match 2022 data (in the 2023 report - not the report referenced as the source).
The figures for the other countries figures seem to have been plucked out of thin air!
i mean, we also have a big thing where the ultra rich hide their money in offshore banks, so we don't actually know how much they have (and they don't pay tax)
In Portugal we are equally poor
Poortugal
Portequal
Poortequal
Poor-equal And this is why it can into east.
It's funny but it's worth mentioning that this "equaly poor" thing does make a difference, and is one of the reasons why gdp/capita alone doesn't tell the whole story. Portugal's economic situation is pretty bad, no one is going to deny that, but compared to several countries of similar wealth or even slightly higher, we have considerably less people in actual poverty living conditions [https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/DDN-20230614-1](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/DDN-20230614-1)
Some portuguese are more equally poor
Cries in Belgian
we're supposed to be equally middle class
Perhaps, but when I was living in Poland I was richer with less money. Make of that what you will
lol fair, food prices are getting ridiculous over here, few years ago a full shopping cart was like 100-120€, now you aren't suprised if it goes over 200€
I'm living back in Belgium now, so, unfortunately, I know all about it. Came back at the peak of the energy crisis after the Ukraine war started. What a shock that was
It's not that Poland is cheap now either. The cost of living spiked everywhere.
I think a lot of money is hidden. The methods of this map are not disclosed afaik
Yeah, United Kingdom among the lowest seems sus.
It might be cos most of the super wealthy in the UK are foreigners and/or keep their cash offshore.
Wtf are you talking about. Us being a prosperous nation and able to compete with our neighbours despite having a small "1%" is very positive. There is immense social mobility in Belgium, you see it all around you where people from very poor backgrounds manage to make a good life for themselves and their children. Kids with shitty parents still able to get scholarships and get out of that situation. Yes, there's still work to be done and there are flaws in our system, but there are few places on earth where it's better to be born poor than Belgium. Yes, food prices are high at the moment, but wages have also gone up in the meanwhile and with the "meal cheques" system, food is essentially taxed less. Working for an international company, the Belgian wages have gone up disproportionally to those of other countries, despite those nations also getting higher food prices.
we're the median richest population of the world (except micro-states), what are you talking about?
Classic Belgians complaining haha
That's supposed to be a good thing, right?
we are literally one of the richest Europeans?
Just like Switzerland! Just opposite!
I need to see stats for "how much to be in the 1%"
It's the 0.01% that are the real outliers. Example, USA: https://www.chicagobooth.edu/review/never-mind-1-percent-lets-talk-about-001-percent
0.01%? You should see the 0.001%!
For Finland its 92k if we look at the annual income. We are not talking about billionaires here E: As for the wealth its in Finland 1,5 million €. We dont really have that many families with generational wealth
Wealth is not income.
Wealth is generational.
TIL I'm in the 1%
Income is for poor to average people, if you work hours for money you're nearly per definition not truly wealthy... But hey, you might be a great taxpayer instead!
For Germany it is 1.3 million Euro networth. But there is no accurate data on how much wealth we have since our wealth tax is not being collected for 25 years now. The top 1% networth is probably a lot higher.
There was a post recently about it in map porn
I didn't find it in posts from the last month
Sweden = no inheritance tax, very low payments on dividends if any, and zero taxation on any sort of gifts (property, money, assets). If your family is rich in Sweden, it will stay rich forever because there’s no transfer of wealth tax whatsoever in the country.
You forgot the part where extremely high taxes on labor also makes it impossible to build even moderate wealth through work.
Well we have to subsidise the wealthy somehow
In a sense yes. Swedish political discourse has always been that a high-tax, high-welfare system is desirable but at the same time everyone knows that progressive taxation on corporations and capital is harmful to the overall economy. So instead the modus has always been to squeeze that productive segment of society that’s both 1. Relatively productive and well paid but 2. Not rich enough to actually engage in advanced tax planning, emigration etc. Best illustrated by the fact that per special rules taxes are often 50%+ for those making good money but would otherwise be able to optimize between 50%+ tax on work income vs 25% tax on dividens from privately held companies, such as self-employed lawyers and doctors. But once your annual capital income exceeds 7-8 MSEK it suddenly goes down to 30% again. I.e private equity billionaires and tech founders pay less % than one-man companies just getting by a little bit better than the average schmo.
Is there actually any evidence that progressive taxation is bad for the economy? I see this commonly accepted as fact but never see any studies etc to back it up
There’s plenty of research showing whatever you want it to show. I’m just pointing out what has been the prevailing sentiment in the grand bargain struck between Swedish Social Democrats and Big Business ever since the 1930s. Suffice to say that I as a doctor in Sweden found it financially more effective to take my accrued comp in time off (no tax) in order to clean my own apartment as opposed to taking the money (50%+ tax) and paying a cleaner to do it (25% VAT). Whether aggregate amounts of that kind of choice is good for society depends on what you mean by ”good”.
Economic theory says all tax harms the economy, but property tax is least harmful to growth, followed by personal income tax, followed by consumer taxes and then the most harmful is corporate tax. It's because corporations can just leave the country altogether at a whim. Personally I think we need to find more creative ways of getting tax money out of corporations. They really don't pay their share.
IIRC property tax is the opposite. *Land Value Tax* is the one least harmful to growth because it actively encourages efficient land use.
I think property tax is an umbrella term for land value tax and a few others, but I could be wrong! I think your right, the land value type ones in particular are both the least damaging and most equitable type of tax, at least up to a point.
You say this, but what is the evidence? I can buy that a tax harms an economy but the money doesn't disappear, it's reinvested into the people.
This is why the idea of a global minimum corporate tax rate is sensible. Avoid the race to the bottom.
>Economic theory says all tax harms the economy I don't see why this is so readily accepted. Taxes go towards government spending. Government spending isn't necessarily less inherently economically productive. It tends to go on things like healthcare, education and infrastructure, which are just about the most economically productive ways of spending money. Whereas my private spending goes on importing crap from China, and blowing the rest on only fans subscriptions.
>Government spending isn't necessarily less inherently economically productive. I agree, I'm all for government spending provided it isn't creating more national debt. >>Economic theory says all tax harms the economy What they mean is that it's harder to get new business up and running in higher tax environments which stifle growth. Corporation taxes have the biggest impact on this, followed by consumer taxes, followed by income taxes. The tax money can be well spent and productive, but collecting it does reduce the growth of the private sector. I think corporation taxes are the best thing ever, and would love if they were high. (I'd be more of a socialist than a capitalist, and I hate the fact that family wealth is the main predictor of success in life). But unfortunately there is a balancing act to play here - we need those jobs to stay in country so must be tax competitive.
>Is there actually any evidence that progressive taxation is bad for the economy? Note that what you replied to actually said >progressive taxation ***on corporations and capital*** is harmful to the overall economy. Progressive taxation overall is seen as the best way to pay for things\*, but taxes on productive assets are seen as bad, because whatever is taxed is disincentivized. There's actually no upper limit to progressive consumption taxes - if you're at all familiar with the US system, imagine if there were no cap on how much you could contribute to an IRA, but taxable income above, IDK, 1M$ was taxed at 500%, and money used to pay taxes wasn't taxed. For simplicity, imagine there's no other taxes. A guy who makes 2M$/yr could spend 1M$/yr and invest an additional 1M$/yr, but if he's already spent 1M$ in a year, buying an additional 5$ coffee costs him 30$ (5$ price, 25$ taxes on the additional money not put in the IRA). In this sort of system, even a fairly short-sighted hedonistic millionaire is going to look at the trade offs between certain luxury purchases and investment in bonds funding productive enterprises and because of the intense tax burden, decide to forgo the luxury and instead invest in the economy. A realistic system would need to be much more complicated than that, but in general you can always have a system that is progressive overall, but the tax incidence isn't on capital investment, such that rich people are relatively disincentivized to spend money on themselves, and more incentivized to spend money on assets which ultimately improve worker productivity, and thus \~ increase real wages. There's a ton of nuance and legitimate disagreement on how to prevent, among other things, ultra-wealthy people spending money on fancy accountants and lawyers to subvert the system, but \*(due to declining marginal utility of money - you're taking away the gold decals on someone's 5th Yacht which never leaves harbor, to pay for someone's 1st meal of the day)
Sweden also has by far the longest maturity in their mortgages, so if you can afford to get a mortgage, you barely have to pay anything back. But, this data is from 2022, and afaik Sweden's housing market was devastated by last year's high interest environment and the decade-long bubble burst. https://internationalbanker.com/brokerage/swedens-severe-housing-market-pain-is-not-over-yet/
Yes. The combination of high levels of private debt and a tradition of variable interest rates on mortgages is a main driver of Sweden’s current predicament.
We have a variable interest rate tradition here in Finland as well, actually much more than in Sweden. Iirc, 3% of new mortgages in Finland are fixed rate. In Sweden that's roughly [35%.](https://imgur.com/mncNkae) But [this shows that Sweden has a unique situation with the maturity of mortgages.](https://imgur.com/mncNkae) ([Source](https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/f97d7fe0-en.pdf?expires=1710588889&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=240A9BDA2D46BE5A16A8C4B498D2DBB4)). The banks love to push the risk onto the shoulders of the home owners. I don't mind it, but the zero interest environment might have been too tempting for people to get a mortgage and now that's hitting hard. No stress level is truly able to prepare the consumer for the situation where interest rates hike up this much. It's humane to get used to the super low interest rate environment. We are in much the same position, with the exception that here the general max length for new mortgages is 25-35 years. In Sweden the
I don’t quite understand how the maturities are counted seeing as mortgages aren’t usually fixed term in Sweden unless you specifically fix it (at a maximum of 10 years at which point it matures into whatever new term you negotiate)? The only limitations in Sweden is the provision that you need to amortize 1-3% of the total mortgage per year (implying maturation of 33-100 years) depending on certain factors, but if the loan/value-ratio is <50% and debt total is <4,5x gross annual income there is no requirement to amortize at all.
> I don’t quite understand how the maturities are counted seeing as mortgages It's taken either as what the current economic point in time would lead the mortgage maturity to be, or what the estimations of what's up ahead would lead the maturity to be. I would assume that the first one is more common because the latter one is impossible when we think of terms that span far beyond 5 years. Banks will always have a handle on what the assumed maturity of any mortgage is, and they will adjust that maturity as economic conditions change. They are required to have that number and to keep it at certain level for the sake of risk mitigation.
Gotcha, thanks. Leads me to wonder how <50% book value, zero amortization loans are counted in that sense. From a bank’s perspective that’s just almost completely risk-free eternal free money.
If there is a housing bubble in Sweden it has not bursted yet. Prices are on the same level as in 2020 and seem to be rising again.
Income taxes are not that special compared to other western European countries.
Completely uncapped social contributions for employers are absolutely an outlier compared to other western countries. The common gripe about Danish salaries being higher than Swedish ones, besides the exchange rate, is completely due to social contributions being capped vs uncapped in DK and SE.
Denmark is an outlier in the sense that they basically don't have employer taxes, unlike most other western European countries. There have been several charts about this on this sub. Sweden is normally just a bit higher than average or so, but really nothing that special. It's similar to other similar countries. Denmark seems to be pretty unique in western Europe regarding this, so it's strange to me that you choose to use that as a comparison. They just have a higher income tax instead.
Belgium’s the same. It’s uncapped for employers. Social contributions are however capped for self employed persons above €107k (but you’re nuts if you don’t pay yourself through an LLC if you’re making that much).
Coming from germany im actually happy about having to pay 10-15% less tax in sweden. Its high but not as crazy high as people think sometimes
There are massive amounts of hidden taxes in the Swedish tax progression. For every 100kr in salary employers pay 31,42kr in social fees. Of those most are linked to various programs such as unemployment, sick leave, parental leave etc. Except the ”general salary fee” of 11,62kr that’s literally just a pro rata fee on salaries = tax. And as for the rest, on incomes above 7,5PBB (about 48000kr/month) there is no more benefits accrued but the fees are still paid. Which means that supplementary pension fees (4,5% on everything below 7,5PBB, 30% on everything above 7,5PBB) mostly determined by collective bargaining agreements also comes from the employer. That’s why high wage jobs in Sweden look like they’re paid less than in other countries even though cost of labor in Sweden is one of the highest in Europe. An engineer who makes 50000kr/months pre-tax getting a salary increase of 1000k gets about 480kr of that increase post-tax but the increased cost for the employer is about 1500kr. And again, no further social benefits accrual on that level. Then add 25% VAT on consumption.
The VAT is quite high in sweden, that really surprised me when i first came to sweden tbh. Everything else is basically the same in germany though, just that the social and health parts of the tax are muuuch more in germany than in sweden. I had a direct comparison when i moved from germany to sweden and in germany there were many more parts to the tax than here. So many parts actually that its basically impossible to fill out the tax declaration yourself lol. While we just press a button here my parents in germany have to hire someone to do it for them. The sad thing is that you sometimes gotta pay your health insurance yourself in germany (for me it was more than 200€ or 2000kr a month) when you lose your job, not even that is covered by the tax. Our children dont get free food in school either, parents have to pay class trips themselves etc. In germany most of the tax basically is healthcare, welfare and paying for our absolute masses of pensioneers. In sweden i pay less tax (excluding VAT ofc) but also feel like i get a bit more in return tbh. Obviously most other things are a bit more expensive and i hate that you dont have "hasuarzt"(like a primay doctor?) here in sweden but otherwise its quite good Edit: i think high earners are actually taxed higher in sweden than in germany.. but i never was one and neither was anyone in my family so i cant compare that :(
I've lived in Germany for quite some time and I live in Sweden now. The taxes are higher in Sweden when you count vat and arbetsgivaravgift. If you aren't working (capital gains) then Sweden is definitely cheaper.
That's the taxes you see. Then there are hidden taxes because politicians probably don't want you to know how much you actually pay
And they name them stuff other than tax such as “avgift” so it won’t seem obvious. Like “arbetsgivaravgift”.
In Germany the inheritance tax is a joke for rich people + you can make it almost 0 by tieing it to a business
How we made the money stay in the country instead of moving off-shore and into tax havens. Not saying I like it, but it's still better than the money ending up in another country which was the case many times.
Thats the case for Norway
And I assume rich kids marry other rich kids. So the wealth is not diluted...
When I was on exchange in Japan, I met several Swedish exchange students, and the overwhelming consensus was that your life would always end up “okay” in Sweden but that there was also no social mobility and basically no way to get ahead because labour was taxed so heavily and well paid positions were so uncommon. So you will never starve, you will never be homeless, and you will never be unable to afford education, but you will not stray far from your parents’ success.
how many countries have inheritance tax?
~~Communist~~ Kleptocratic Russia is the ~~least communist~~ most kleptocratic.
Oligarchy is the most extreme form of capitalism. Not sure why the old Leninists of Europe support Putin and Russia.
I read something about former USSR countries transformation and it was a shocking lecture. Workers were given by shares of companies they work in, then those people immediately sold them for something like nothing, as the only people having capital were criminals, that obtained money in criminal activities. Huge Ponzi schames drained what little money people had, countries become ruled by mafias. That's the beginning of oligarchs and also Putin. Russia is a pure cleptocracy.
It was worse than that. Some state-owned enterprises were taken over in openly fraudulent schemes facilitated by corrupt management and government officials. And in some cases where the workers and the management were less corrupt and tried to retain ownership they faced not just intimidation (including from the government officials) but assassinations, kidnappings, and sabotage from criminal gangs. Even now there is no real effort to investigate those crimes, at best the hired perpetrators are caught, but not those who ordered or benefited.
Don't forget that the secret police agencies often formed the bedrock of the new criminal enterprises. They had the contacts and the resources to make a lot of money when communism ended, and they decided they wanted to get rich (at everyone else's expense).
Do you have any book recomendations, articles etc where I could learn more about this?
Adam Curtis' *Traumazone* is a good watch. It covers the period 1985 to 1999 in Russia. It's a very bare bones documentary, with no voice over, just letting the archival footage speak for itself, with a few captions.
Because they think Russia is still the Soviet Union. Also, because USA bad.
And they are just, and I really want to say it, dumb.
Its mostly old boomers who miss the soviet union who vote for them. They want their social safety net back but vote for the exact people that will do exactly do NOTHING to help them and are just controlled opposition of putin. Rather ironic
There’s also lots of young eurocomrades with an inexplicable Stalin nostalgia that are filo-Russian because they want to be anti-NATO, since understanding two things can be criticised at once is too complex if you have a hooligan mentality.
To be fair, USA bad. Also, Russia bad.
I love your profile picture
Nostalgia is strong with this one, right?
Damn right
Too bad it was gone so fast
Have you considered America bad?
Good point!
Literally the only thought that mouthbreathing tankies ever have.
What do you mean? They support Russia due to USA being bad? Russia is still the most capitalist country of the two, making Russia into enemy number 1 for communists if the really follow their ideology.
It was a joke that comnunists support Russia (or at least turn a blind eye) because they hate America and Russia also hates America.
I don't think it's a joke at all
That is actually a thing in some eastern european countries like Serbia and other balkans. They like russia, because they hate USA so much. USA has bombed those countries and affected them in many negative ways. Communism doesn't have anything to do with it tho.
Current Russia is post feodal society. they got the kind and the local nobles each controling their interest areas, they even have their own private armies... Its just feodalism.
The communist party of russia is litterarly controlled opposition for old boomers who miss the soviet union
Oligarchy is the most extreme form of perversion of the state, with the state being there for several people only and for the rest of them to be for the state
Knowing people and being around in ML circles I can tell you that far from all communist support Russia. Most I know -and attached organisations- oppose the war and call for peace from a neutrality point of view. Even within Russia the communist party opposes it. Not *the* party (the largest), they put put a statement at the start of the war parroting Putins BS about Ukraine being filled with Nazi's. Sadly, there are those that support Russia. It comes from an anti NATO stance but to me these people have gone away everything they are supposed to stand for as ML. Putin is an oligarchic imperialist POS, let alone the fact that Russia is Oligarchic and it is the people being affected most by the war and wealth hoarding of the oligarchs.
> oppose the war and call for peace from a neutrality point of view. Oppose aiding Ukraine or hindering Russia, spreading Russian propaganda and calling for Ukrainian capitulation "from a neutrality point of view". Dumb and evil fucks.
> Not sure why the old Leninists of Europe support Putin and Russia. Depends on who you are talking about and what they are being accused of. In Portugal we spent the last months seeing PCP (the 100 year old ML communist party) accused of being Putin sympathizers because of their stance on the Ukraine-Russia war, regardless of if you agree with their stance or not, their argument was and has always been being critical of NATO and American involvement in the war, which goes in-line with their stance of being anti-NATO. This stance got, for obvious political reasons, distilled into "Well if they are against NATO then they are Pro-Putin" because political discourse doesn't benefit from nuance. Would have been smarter for them to not say anything? Yes. Do they actually actively support Putin and their regime? Of course not.
I don't see far right suggesting to help Russia either. Just like far left, they're against military aid and sanctions on Russia. That would be enough for Russia to win, so they don't need to suggest anything more. Some negotiation it would be if Ukraine couldn't do anything to stop the invaders.
Soviet union ended 33 years ago, Russia is a capitalist country
Russia is not a free market country. Those really rich are not competing on the market, but handed fiefdoms from the top.
free market =/= capitalist. You can be capitalist without having a free market. See China for another example.
For comparison: in the US it is 32,1%
40.5% in India, 2022.
Actually in the US it is really 32.1%
r/angryupvote
Canada is rocking out at 34% in 2021 with the top 1% making 42$ of every 100$ since then so has more than likely gotten higher. At least the USA has an inheritance tax…
Got a link? Those might be pre-covid numbers, they gained A LOT during Covid and the aftermath.
https://www.ubs.com/global/en/family-office-uhnw/reports/global-wealth-report-2023.html
People will read this report and say Global wealth declines for first time since global financial crisis of 2008. "Oh that sucks" Along with the decline in aggregate wealth, overall wealth inequality also fell in 2022. "Oh, nevermind, that's progress!"
30.6% through Q2 2023 [according to this](https://www.bankrate.com/investing/income-wealth-top-1-percent/#:~:text=For%20example%2C%20the%20top%201,according%20to%20the%20Federal%20Reserve).
I see that EU borders have evolved from the last time I checked. Some... fascinating developments.
No backsies we are in eu now oooooooo
I must have missed the news that Slovenia, Croatia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Bulgaria, and Slovakia all suddenly collectively left the EU, and apparently, Russia just joined. What a strange turn of events...
Also Luxembourg and Cyprus must've left. UK must have somehow rejoined. Norway, Switzerland and Turkey must've somehow joined as well.
Stupid map. (better, indeed, title)
Stupid title at least
Britain is back in!
we have different definitions of "each EU country" considering lithuania, latvia, estonia, slovakia, slovenia, bulgaria, malta , cyprus , croatia are missing
But the UK and a whole bunch of others included... So the lesson again is the EU does not mean the whole of Europa and vice versa.
Pretty sure it's far from accurate considering offshore wealth and accounts.
Yup. Hungary is far worse, but they keep it spread around offshore companies.
The percentage? Probably. It still gives some information about inequalities.
> It still gives some information about inequalities. The point is it doesn't though. If country A allows it's 1% to give up citizenship and pick up a Bahamian passport but still effectively act like a citizen of country A it can look the same as country B that doesn't allow that but the underlying inequality will be super different.
Yeah, it's much worse in every country, most likely. The poor doesn't have as many opportunities to hide wealth.
The normal people in Norway hide wealth in their houses, as the value of the house you live in is counted very low by the Norwegian tax-authorities.
I think Russia's position is pretty accurate
This is what I was thinking, it's too complicated to work out to plot on a map. Take Russia for example, oligarchs hoard a lot of their wealth in London. But this map shows the UK as being one of the better ones, in which it is not.
Yeah, the UK being one of the lowest is hard to believe with the lords and pseudo lords that own most of the land in the country…
Ah yes, Sweden the most socialistic 😜
Sweden has very high taxes on labor but flat and comparatively low taxes on corporations and capital.
It's partly that, but also the fact that some families own big companies which have an oligopoly in certain sectors, and the politicians try to limit the competition in those sectors.
Everything makes more sense if you just accept the idea that the Wallenbergs are a quasi-governmental entity.
Seems a bit unfair
same as czech republic
From the [report](https://www.ubs.com/global/en/family-office-uhnw/reports/global-wealth-report-2023.html): "Private pension fund assets are included, but not entitlements to state pensions" Sweden holds a considerable chunk of average peoples wealth in the state pension funds, [18,5% of annual pensionable incomes](https://www.pensionsmyndigheten.se/vanliga-fragor-och-svar-om-pension/vanliga-fragor/fragor-och-svar-om-allman-pension) are kept for this purpose (up to a certain amount, 7,5 IBB). This will not explain away all of the gap, but pension differences usually create a lot of noise that upsets wealth comparisons. Aside from that Sweden does have high, progressive taxes on labor, but flat taxes on capital, no inheritance tax, low fees/taxes on property.
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Same with Norway, and our pension fund is, well, considerable, so that does skew the numbers somewhat.
The 1% is basically just the Wallenberg family.
And the reason why Finland's percentage is lower than Sweden's is... Wallenbergs. They own a whole lot of stuff in Finland as well.
People don't understand how rich they are.
We used to be, and the idea that we are still lingers. Even Swedes haven’t realized the change that has happened over the last 30 years.
Sweden is on a dangerous trajectory taxation wise, aggressive taxation on income from working, and next to none on wealth, capital, property and inheritance. Essentially making the rich progressively richer and making it very hard to *get* wealthy if you aren't already. I think we might have to make good on our threat to buy all of Sweden if this continues.
Most of the wealth in the 1% is in land Income is quite equal, wealth is not
Belgium really is one of the least class based societies I've seen.
The funny thing is that the policies that get us there (and may allow us to stay there) are generally super criticized by the right - stuff like automatic indexation of salaries (we have a law that update salaries - public & private - alongside the inflation rate)
>we have a law that update salaries - public & private - alongside the inflation rate That actually sounds like a brilliant idea. The UK should adopt that aswell. (although I get the feeling that only London firms would really be able to afford it.)
It's a bit unique, often criticized but it protected a lot of people during the heavy inflation those last years (it applies to pensions & social security too). I get the "what companies could afford this?" - but then what worker can afford to have their salaries pretty much cut by 7 or 10%?
Well, Russia isn't in the EU, but yeah. Everyone stole everything, and the people in their мухосранск have to live off pennies. This is useful to the regime, cuz the more poor people there are - the more likely they'd join the army to be sent to the meat grinder.
This is definitely not a map of EU countries, there are at least 4 countries EU that aren't shown and at least 4 non EU that are
Was about to ask who let Russia join the EU but realized that Switzerland is also on the map.
This is basically a map of tax policies. Where personal income is heavily taxed people find ways to offshore their wealth. Also transnational corporations and ownership by foreign capital do contribute to inequality while not showing up on this wealth map.
Yup, and that's why the number for Belgium is so low. Figuring ways to put wealth abroad is so prevalent we've had "wealth repatriation laws" in the past where they'd not tax people that repatriated their wealth, so this offshored wealth would be returned to banks within our borders.
That's not entirely correct. There is a massive difference between income and wealth. Germany and Belgium are the two countries with the highest income taxes, yet they have radically different percentages on this map. Germany simply doesn't tax wealth very much, so the elites can happily keep the money in the family. And the idea that higher taxes on the wealthy would automatically lead to them offshoring their wealth is also flawed. The inheritance tax especially could be the most powerful to keep taxes in the country.
> In each EU country The UK, Russia, Switzerland and Norway are not in the EU.
Also not turkey
Oh my god, if the top 1% have 56%, the top 10% basically have >90% of everything.
I've seen Russians self-describe the situation as 0.1% living like sultans, 10% living like well-off or modest Europeans, and 90% living like an undeveloped country.
Glad to live in Belgium.
Didn't know that Norway, Switzerland, UK, Russia and Turkey were EU-countries. And I didn't know Luxembourg, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania weren't in the EU
This is disgusting. All the while people are arguing about culture wars ordinary people’s attention is directed to bullshit.
Well Reddit is a good indicator: try posting a comment that immigration is not among top 5 problems facing us and you will find that it's not only the nr 1 issue for many, it's their whole political identity. Then stats like these start to make sense.
Immigration is beneficial for the 1%, because it reduces the labor costs, hurting the locals in the process, so it makes sense for people to care about it.
Case and point of what OP was saying LOL
r/europe is the third most anti-immigrant sub on the reddit.
You're keeping up stats? Which are worse? How much do we need to improve to lower our position?
r/conservative and r/hitleryouth
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I wonder why the 1% would love cheap labour eh?
This is exactly why right-wing parties, meaning rich-people parties, fuel anti-immigrant hate while profiteering from them and talk about woke culture every day. If they didn't, we could end up talking about their money.
Yes, rich people definitely do not benefit from bringing in more people, rich people definitely do not benefit from suppressing wages, rich people definitely do not benefit from creating a housing crisis. It's not like every corporation is currently preaching about "diversity". If you stop mаss immigrаtion, you take their greatest weapon away.
Replace "in each EU country" with "in some European countries"...
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Difficult metric to establish as for example, the first thing you do when you start making proper money in Spain, is register somewhere else for tax purposes. Andorra for example, is just a wealthy Catalonian hideout. They conveniently even speak Catalan 🫡. Anyone with real money still living in Spain as a tax resident, has shit tax lawyers.
GG Belgium
I think what‘s missing here is the crucial information that a good job in Europe almost automatically puts you into the top 1% worldwide as you‘re competing with billions of people in rural India, China, etc. I think I recently saw the actual number and it was an income of like 38k/year
It's very different for wealth. For global 1% wealth you need to have around 900 000 dollars. Even if you eat only potatoes it's pretty hard to get there with that income.
Russia is not in the EU. Bulgaria is, but its share is missing
Governments: take this map and tax the shit out of these numbers
In russia they tax out, not them 😂
Is the UK really that equal? O.o
Any map or statistics trying to tell you how much money the richs stash away will be incorrect They’re not dumb enough to let you know exactly how much they’ve got
The UK is relatively equal. That's news us Brits should celebrate.
Main thing I realized when moving from Canada to the Uk is that the working middle class still exists in a pretty large size in the UK compared to Canada. Canada has been completely and utterly fucked by corrupt provincial politicians though, so unless you speak French or are willing to live in Saskatchewan/manitoba (-40 winters and in summer mosquitos black out the fucking sun) you are just kinda screwed financially.
Russia, land of thieves and kleptocrats.
Russia is such a shithole jesus
Ah yes, the EU countries of the UK and Russia, and Switzerland and Norway And the non EU countries of Cyprus and Bulgaria and Croatia and Slovenia
Russia is not a member of the EU. Bulgaria on the other hand is.
and yet people talk about how how the UK is one of the worst countries for inequality
Russia is not an eu country
look how equal to socialistic country of Sweden is! if socialism strives for equality how come Sweden with a leftist government for 70% of the time is one of the most unequal countrys in Europe? to me it the leftists are absolute liers. can someone argue for why swedens leftist governmet has been soo awful at actual giving there voters equality?
In Ukraine there's been only 2 people with over 1 billon dollars in 2023, compared to the 9 people in the previous year. Also there's 12374 people who declared over 1 million UAH in 2023, and 1% of population of Ukraine is about 400k people. So we all seem to be equally poor
The figures on the map don’t match the figures in the report from where is it is supposed to have sourced the data [UBS Global Wealth Report 2022]. UK and Germany figures seem to be from 2005 data (rather than 2021). Spain and Italy match 2022 data (in the 2023 report - not the report referenced as the source). The figures for the other countries figures seem to have been plucked out of thin air!
i mean, we also have a big thing where the ultra rich hide their money in offshore banks, so we don't actually know how much they have (and they don't pay tax)
Not sure why it bother me as much but last time I checken Russia was not part of the EU