Relative to other countries, tax rates in the U.S. are relatively low, even when you throw in local and state taxes and add them to federal levies. Overall, according to the Tax Policy Center and Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which supplied the graph above, taxes in the U.S. are among the lowest in the developed world. The average for countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, an organization of rich countries, is higher. And in countries like Sweden, Norway, and the Netherlands countries, the average is much higher. In those nations, taxes account for more than half of total national income.
That level may sound scary but, as many of us have written before, you could make a good case that the people of Scandinavia and
Northern Europe know what they are doing. They are far more secure,
thanks not only to national health insurance but also to generous
provision of child care and unemployment benefits. And despite the high
tax burden, their economies have historically been strong—in part,
because the combination of investment and a secure safety net makes
people more comfortable with a dynamic, ever-changing economy. The wonks
used to call this economic model “flexicurity.”
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