The Concept of Ownership

[Arragonis]

Originally Posted by euromodder

Talking taxes on a forum with Europeans ?...

+1.

I worked out last year that something approaching 70% of our family income went in tax - including income, council (property), social security and sales taxes - including the one where we pay a special tax on Diesel and Petrol, and then have to pay sales tax on the total price including that special tax.

[Patrick]

So how the hell do your governments go bankrupt when they've got so much money to work with?

[Frank Lee]

Probably the same way our schools were famously described by governor Jesse Ventura as "funding black holes"- their motto is "Too much is never enough!".

[rayjay]

Geeze Guys, my 2010 tax valuation was for 173,500, and this next year it is 83,900. Did the assessor office make a mistake, or did property values really drop here in Arizona?

[gone-ot]

Originally Posted by rayjay

Geeze Guys, my 2010 tax valuation was for 173,500, and this next year it is 83,900. Did the assessor office make a mistake, or did property values really drop here in Arizona?

...similar drop in valuation here, but our tax bill didn't go down anywhere near 2X.

[Frank Lee]

The only way you "get ahead" is if you can get the value down IN RELATION to other regional properties, otherwise they just jack the rate up to cancel out the lowered assessments.

[dcb]

I'm pretty good at reducing a properties value.

[Arragonis]

Originally Posted by Patrick

So how the hell do your governments go bankrupt when they've got so much money to work with?

They haven't. Or at least most of the Northern European one's haven't - the UK is still rated Triple A with no warnings, unlike Greece, Italy, Portugal, Ireland and Spain - or even the USA

European governments also spend more on nationalised healthcare systems and welfare than the US.

IMHO I like the NHS but it's spending could be more efficient, and the welfare system in the UK could do with some reform. When you have a system that even a hardline socialist calls evil then it needs changing.

[slowmover]

Be glad for a social safety net that works, despite the needs for reform. In the US the number of Americans now at the poverty and near-poverty level is 100-million of 310-million . . a paycheck from destitution. Fully 64% of Americans cannot come up with cash for a $1000 emergency. And fewer are employed now than in decades, plus at faltering wage levels. No family-level wage new jobs have been created since 1999 in the US.

Home ownership will always be more expensive than renting. Note that the burden of "property tax" does not extend to intangible property such as stocks, bonds, etc. A level playing field is long overdue. Otherwise the cost of homeownership -- among other expenses in life -- will continue to rise, inexorably. Expect to be squeezed by utilities, taxes, etc as time goes on.

The point of taxes is fairly simple: what is the outcome on the largest numbers of the citizenry? Northern Europe surpassed the USA quite a while ago on any measure of benefit-to-cost whether it be overall health, longevity, education, personal debt, social class movements, etc. The upper 10% of Americans are essentially exempt from competition, or have special arrangements with government otherwise (prominently, exemption from law enforcement) and thereby appear okay or better (thus the lie of gross data).

I wouldn't expect that layer of society to bulge, but to contract.

.

[Patrick]

Originally Posted by Arragonis

Greece, Italy, Portugal, Ireland and Spain

I thought some of these were in the EU.