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In reply to the discussion: Do Americans Know What a Massive Ripoff American Life Really Is? [View all]CaptainTruth
(6,612 posts)"Heating, electricity, gas, water? These things can easily add up to $500 to $1000 dollars per month."
My monthly total for all that is around $100 or less, depending on the season.
And wow, this: "Now you need healthcare. In Europe and Canada and even Australia, with its crazy climate change denying PM, thats free."
Dude, when you pay half of your income in taxes that's NOT FREE. And yes I have friends in Europe who pay 51% of their income in taxes so that "free healthcare" gets paid for.
I'm not saying everything is better in the US, far from it, some things like cell phone & TV seem way too expensive, but this guy should look at things like the financial consequences of self-employment in the EU vs US. I can only speak to Italy on this point because my wife is from there. She's a legal translator (translates court documents, mostly for cases in Italy) & she's successfully self-employed working out of our home office making quite a good profit. She's run the numbers & if she tried to do the exact same thing in Italy with all the taxes & fees involved she would only make about 1/3 the profit, & it would not be enough for her to live on. She concluded it would just be impossible for her to do it there, but she can do it easily & lucratively here. Any thorough analysis has to take situations like that into account, or it's an incomplete picture.
And "When a nation is paying enough every decade in credit card interest alone to have funded good healthcare and education and retirement for everyone
forever
"
I know math isn't everyone's strong suit but the amount paid in credit card interest in one decade is a finite number. The amount of money required to pay for "good healthcare and education and retirement for everyone
forever
" is by definition an infinite number because it literally goes on "forever." There's no way a finite number of dollars can pay an infinite expense. The guy makes a lot of good points but to me it gets lost/ruined by logical & mathematical fallacies. Maybe it's the engineer/geek in me, so sue me.