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In Europe those services pay for a huge welfare and pension system, and healthcare which is mostly used by the elderly. Very little benefit will be received by

In Europe those services pay for a huge welfare and pension system, and healthcare which is mostly used by the elderly. Very little benefit will be received by a working-age expat.

Teever 6y ago
That's a great generalization about the entire continent of Europe but do you have any specific issues with how taxes in Finland are used?
purerandomness 6y ago
As a working-age expat, you might still have an ambulance called after an accident or a drug overdose after partying, having cancer surgery, a flu shot, a pregnancy or an IVF, all for free.
- emteycz 6y ago
  They have ambulances in the US too. Also, isn't Finland a country where you pay health insurance? If that is free, a lot of things in the US suddenly are free as well.
  - purerandomness 6y ago
    > They have ambulances in the US too. We were talking about costs. In the US, calling an ambulance is not guaranteed to be free. OP claimed that as a young, healthy expat, you don't benefit from a system where your tax payments finance health care. I showed examples where a young, healthy expat directy benefits from this system, by having medical emergencies that would potentially bankrupt you in the US. Not sure I followed your point here.
  - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
    > Also, isn't Finland a country where you pay health insurance? Not really. You pay income taxes in general, and some portion of that funds the public healthcare system, but healthcare isn’t something you ever have to think about in particular.
  - seanmcdirmid 6y ago
    You don’t have to pay to use most roads in the USA, on a usage basis at least. The use of the word free but not really isn’t foreign to Americans.
    - whitexn--g28h 6y ago
      You absolutely pay for roads on a usage basis [1] unless you drive an electric car. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_taxes_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_taxes_in_the_United_State...
      - ejolto 6y ago
        That's not paying for roads, that's paying for fuel. You would be paying those fuel taxes even if you were only driving on your own private roads.
      - seanmcdirmid 6y ago
        The gas tax hasn’t covered the cost of road maintenance since the 80s.
rtkwe 6y ago
It’s not strictly about getting more out of the system than you particularly put in. On top of that no one knows if their the average or the one who’s going to need expensive life saving intervention. It levels out some of the randomness of the world for everyone, it largely removes one of the big causes of bankruptcy in the US which is medical debt.
Mediterraneo10 6y ago
> In Europe those services pay for ... healthcare which is mostly used by the elderly. Finnish public healthcare encompasses things like regular dental visits that people of every age use. Also, those high taxes pay for world-class public libraries and child daycare which the broad public use, even expats in the IT sectors.
- eru 6y ago
  Private dental visits shouldn't cost you more than a few hundred quid per year on average. (In a sane country.) So they would only justify perhaps about 0.1% higher taxes?
  - astura 6y ago
    For just routine cleanings, sure. If you need work done it can get real expensive.
    - disabled 6y ago
      Worst case scenario, you go abroad within the EU for that, and pay out of pocket. You just make sure to vet out the dentists well. Italians often go to Croatia for dental care. But, Poland has good cheap dental care too.
    - eru 6y ago
      Hence me saying 'on average'. In a sane country, you can use insurance to convert variable payments into average payments (plus a bit of overhead). Or, you just self-insure for dental, if you make a reasonable amount of money or have some savings. (It's much more feasible for dental where the realistic maximum amounts are still quite small, compared to cancer treatment or similar.)
      - herbstein 6y ago
        > In a sane country, you can use insurance to convert variable payments into average payments Consider tax paid healthcare to be a public insurance plan that doesn't need to skim billion dollar profits from their "customers" then.
sellyme 6y ago
It also pays for education, and you don't need to look at the US for long to see why it's worth investing in having literate citizens.
- indecisive_user 6y ago
  Is this supposed to be an insult to the US? The literacy rate is 99%, and a higher % of the population has a tertiary education than finland, so I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_education_attainment https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiar...
  - sellyme 6y ago
    >Is this supposed to be an insult to the US? Yes, but it's one I hope I'll one day no longer be able to use. > The literacy rate is 99% So, there's a decent chance you Googled "US literacy rate" and copy-pasted it from there. I would recommend clicking the actual article and reading through it, because Google's quote is... not exactly representative of what's contained within. If you didn't do that, you're probably citing this from the World Factbook, who use a definition of literacy broadly encapsulated by "is capable of reading". By that definition, if you can look at some words and then say them out loud, you're literate. Useful for developing countries or historical contexts, but not exactly meaningful in a modern society with many resources. These days most literacy studies look at actually understanding content, and being able to reason about it. This typically includes some level of numerical literacy (not necessarily mathematics, but e.g., being able to understand the difference between a million and a billion), as well as things identifying internally contradictory statements. By those standards, the United States does abysmally. It's worth noting here that the U.S. does disproportionately suffer in some studies that look specifically at literacy in a small number of official languages (English for the U.S., occasionally also including Spanish), rather than counting literacy in any language as sufficient. My comments here are in regards to the latter. > and a higher % of the population has a tertiary education than finland The people who choose to go to tertiary education in the United States (or indeed any other country) are not usually the people in desperate need of better education. The problem is predominantly in insufficient primary and secondary schooling, combined with a cultural attitude of anti-intellectualism that leads to many people thinking they never need to learn a thing once they exit the school system. Not a uniquely American phenomenon (Michael Gove's "the people have had enough of experts" quote being a particularly flagrant European example), but one that's uncomfortably persistent there. For example, it takes a very unintelligent person to be in the middle of a global pandemic, yet think that the opinion of a reality TV host is more important than the professional advice of a doctor. Those people exist everywhere, but they exist in astonishing concentrations in the United States. > I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. My point is that, as someone who lives in neither North America or Europe, if I had to pick a random adult citizen from the population of either the United States or Finland to make a rational decision for me, I'm picking Finland.
spicyramen 6y ago
Agree, as a Bay Area SWE, health-care is not a problem as many companies give you very good insurance, HSA, dental and vision for free or with family (wife + 1 kid) 1K per month.
- crooked-v 6y ago
  'Bay Area SWE' is an outlier even for the tech industry.
- kaitai 6y ago
  1K per month = not a problem! hahahahaha! Ok, for a (male or lesbian, since you specify 'wife') Bay Area SWE, you're right. But do look at that election map and notice the scores of people living in the rest of the US, in large part voting against their own health-care interests but still. In Missouri the median income is around $55k. Putting $12k of that into health insurance (not health care, but insurance) is pretty hefty.
  - martinald 6y ago
    You do realise that $55k even with $12k insurance taken off ($43k "effective' median) is higher than any EU state, apart from maybe Luxembourg. And taxes will be significantly higher in EU states than MI (even if you are paying healthcare privately), which will further tilt it?
    - distances 6y ago
      But the US citizen will have to save for retirement and kids' potential university education out of the remaining part, correct? For such a middle class person Europe is likely to be better / more stable economically. Single software engineer will surely have it financially much better in the US though.
mattigames 6y ago
Yeah, as an expat I would love living next to an elderly dying because he can't afford treatment and is waiting his gofundme to work out, I also would love being 5 times more likely to be a robbery victim[0] thanks to lack of social welfare and social support for people in economic struggles, I would also love to have at least a few more veterans begging for money in the streets, and don't get me started on how much I would love to live with a poorly-funded educated system that raises people that end up becoming anti-vaxxers, flat-earthers among many other colorful irrational believes. [0] https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Crime/Robberies https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Crime/Robber...
- refurb 6y ago
  elderly dying because he can't afford treatment The US has universal Medical coverage for the elderly.
  - mattigames 6y ago
    Sure, that's great, now we just need the same for the rest: https://i.imgur.com/qRWoLg3.jpg https://i.imgur.com/qRWoLg3.jpg
jen20 6y ago
> Very little benefit will be received by a working-age expat. Speak for yourself: I've never paid a penny for healthcare in the UK, besides an effective tax rate lower than I now pay in the US and the occasional prescription charge where an OTC version of the relevant medicine was not available at lower cost.
fulafel 6y ago
In the big picture welfare pays for a society with decreased social strife. For a working age expat this means not having to harden yourself and your family against homeless people on the streets, be afraid of getting mugged, and having educated & skilled coworkers because free education doesn't waste the potential of the economically disadvantaged.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

In Europe those services pay for a huge welfare and pension system, and healthcare which is mostly used by the elderly. Very little benefit will be received by a working-age expat.

Teever 6y ago

That's a great generalization about the entire continent of Europe but do you have any specific issues with how taxes in Finland are used?

purerandomness 6y ago

As a working-age expat, you might still have an ambulance called after an accident or a drug overdose after partying, having cancer surgery, a flu shot, a pregnancy or an IVF, all for free.

emteycz 6y ago
They have ambulances in the US too. Also, isn't Finland a country where you pay health insurance? If that is free, a lot of things in the US suddenly are free as well.
- purerandomness 6y ago
  > They have ambulances in the US too. We were talking about costs. In the US, calling an ambulance is not guaranteed to be free. OP claimed that as a young, healthy expat, you don't benefit from a system where your tax payments finance health care. I showed examples where a young, healthy expat directy benefits from this system, by having medical emergencies that would potentially bankrupt you in the US. Not sure I followed your point here.
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  > Also, isn't Finland a country where you pay health insurance? Not really. You pay income taxes in general, and some portion of that funds the public healthcare system, but healthcare isn’t something you ever have to think about in particular.
- seanmcdirmid 6y ago
  You don’t have to pay to use most roads in the USA, on a usage basis at least. The use of the word free but not really isn’t foreign to Americans.
  - whitexn--g28h 6y ago
    You absolutely pay for roads on a usage basis [1] unless you drive an electric car. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_taxes_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_taxes_in_the_United_State...
    - ejolto 6y ago
      That's not paying for roads, that's paying for fuel. You would be paying those fuel taxes even if you were only driving on your own private roads.
    - seanmcdirmid 6y ago
      The gas tax hasn’t covered the cost of road maintenance since the 80s.

rtkwe 6y ago

It’s not strictly about getting more out of the system than you particularly put in. On top of that no one knows if their the average or the one who’s going to need expensive life saving intervention. It levels out some of the randomness of the world for everyone, it largely removes one of the big causes of bankruptcy in the US which is medical debt.

Mediterraneo10 6y ago

> In Europe those services pay for ... healthcare which is mostly used by the elderly. Finnish public healthcare encompasses things like regular dental visits that people of every age use. Also, those high taxes pay for world-class public libraries and child daycare which the broad public use, even expats in the IT sectors.

eru 6y ago
Private dental visits shouldn't cost you more than a few hundred quid per year on average. (In a sane country.) So they would only justify perhaps about 0.1% higher taxes?
- astura 6y ago
  For just routine cleanings, sure. If you need work done it can get real expensive.
  - disabled 6y ago
    Worst case scenario, you go abroad within the EU for that, and pay out of pocket. You just make sure to vet out the dentists well. Italians often go to Croatia for dental care. But, Poland has good cheap dental care too.
  - eru 6y ago
    Hence me saying 'on average'. In a sane country, you can use insurance to convert variable payments into average payments (plus a bit of overhead). Or, you just self-insure for dental, if you make a reasonable amount of money or have some savings. (It's much more feasible for dental where the realistic maximum amounts are still quite small, compared to cancer treatment or similar.)
    - herbstein 6y ago
      > In a sane country, you can use insurance to convert variable payments into average payments Consider tax paid healthcare to be a public insurance plan that doesn't need to skim billion dollar profits from their "customers" then.

sellyme 6y ago

It also pays for education, and you don't need to look at the US for long to see why it's worth investing in having literate citizens.

indecisive_user 6y ago
Is this supposed to be an insult to the US? The literacy rate is 99%, and a higher % of the population has a tertiary education than finland, so I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_education_attainment https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiar...
- sellyme 6y ago
  >Is this supposed to be an insult to the US? Yes, but it's one I hope I'll one day no longer be able to use. > The literacy rate is 99% So, there's a decent chance you Googled "US literacy rate" and copy-pasted it from there. I would recommend clicking the actual article and reading through it, because Google's quote is... not exactly representative of what's contained within. If you didn't do that, you're probably citing this from the World Factbook, who use a definition of literacy broadly encapsulated by "is capable of reading". By that definition, if you can look at some words and then say them out loud, you're literate. Useful for developing countries or historical contexts, but not exactly meaningful in a modern society with many resources. These days most literacy studies look at actually understanding content, and being able to reason about it. This typically includes some level of numerical literacy (not necessarily mathematics, but e.g., being able to understand the difference between a million and a billion), as well as things identifying internally contradictory statements. By those standards, the United States does abysmally. It's worth noting here that the U.S. does disproportionately suffer in some studies that look specifically at literacy in a small number of official languages (English for the U.S., occasionally also including Spanish), rather than counting literacy in any language as sufficient. My comments here are in regards to the latter. > and a higher % of the population has a tertiary education than finland The people who choose to go to tertiary education in the United States (or indeed any other country) are not usually the people in desperate need of better education. The problem is predominantly in insufficient primary and secondary schooling, combined with a cultural attitude of anti-intellectualism that leads to many people thinking they never need to learn a thing once they exit the school system. Not a uniquely American phenomenon (Michael Gove's "the people have had enough of experts" quote being a particularly flagrant European example), but one that's uncomfortably persistent there. For example, it takes a very unintelligent person to be in the middle of a global pandemic, yet think that the opinion of a reality TV host is more important than the professional advice of a doctor. Those people exist everywhere, but they exist in astonishing concentrations in the United States. > I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. My point is that, as someone who lives in neither North America or Europe, if I had to pick a random adult citizen from the population of either the United States or Finland to make a rational decision for me, I'm picking Finland.

spicyramen 6y ago

Agree, as a Bay Area SWE, health-care is not a problem as many companies give you very good insurance, HSA, dental and vision for free or with family (wife + 1 kid) 1K per month.

crooked-v 6y ago
'Bay Area SWE' is an outlier even for the tech industry.
kaitai 6y ago
1K per month = not a problem! hahahahaha! Ok, for a (male or lesbian, since you specify 'wife') Bay Area SWE, you're right. But do look at that election map and notice the scores of people living in the rest of the US, in large part voting against their own health-care interests but still. In Missouri the median income is around $55k. Putting $12k of that into health insurance (not health care, but insurance) is pretty hefty.
- martinald 6y ago
  You do realise that $55k even with $12k insurance taken off ($43k "effective' median) is higher than any EU state, apart from maybe Luxembourg. And taxes will be significantly higher in EU states than MI (even if you are paying healthcare privately), which will further tilt it?
  - distances 6y ago
    But the US citizen will have to save for retirement and kids' potential university education out of the remaining part, correct? For such a middle class person Europe is likely to be better / more stable economically. Single software engineer will surely have it financially much better in the US though.

mattigames 6y ago

Yeah, as an expat I would love living next to an elderly dying because he can't afford treatment and is waiting his gofundme to work out, I also would love being 5 times more likely to be a robbery victim[0] thanks to lack of social welfare and social support for people in economic struggles, I would also love to have at least a few more veterans begging for money in the streets, and don't get me started on how much I would love to live with a poorly-funded educated system that raises people that end up becoming anti-vaxxers, flat-earthers among many other colorful irrational believes. [0] https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Crime/Robberies https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Crime/Robber...

refurb 6y ago
elderly dying because he can't afford treatment The US has universal Medical coverage for the elderly.
- mattigames 6y ago
  Sure, that's great, now we just need the same for the rest: https://i.imgur.com/qRWoLg3.jpg https://i.imgur.com/qRWoLg3.jpg

jen20 6y ago

> Very little benefit will be received by a working-age expat. Speak for yourself: I've never paid a penny for healthcare in the UK, besides an effective tax rate lower than I now pay in the US and the occasional prescription charge where an OTC version of the relevant medicine was not available at lower cost.

fulafel 6y ago

In the big picture welfare pays for a society with decreased social strife. For a working age expat this means not having to harden yourself and your family against homeless people on the streets, be afraid of getting mugged, and having educated & skilled coworkers because free education doesn't waste the potential of the economically disadvantaged.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]