re: UK family travels to Colorado and is stunned at how rich everyone is compared to U.K.

England has always had a massive income disparity.

However, Franklin Roosevelt and Henry Morgenthau’s desire to break the empire by requiring the Brits to make the pound fully convertible in exchange for the lend lease program of WW2 broke their economy. They were almost bankrupt in 1948 saved only by the Marshall Plan aid. Their overall standard of living just stagnated and that’s what we see today. The rich Brits still get theirs, the middle class is akin to what we’d call poor.

Post WWII England was still rationing until nine years after the war ended. Arguably the Empire was the biggest loser.

But they get free health care with doctors who make less than $100k per year so, yeah.

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People like to shite on this country, but those assholes don’t realize how good we have it here.

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Preach!

We have our issues but this is the greatest goddamned country that's ever existed and we should all thank God everyday that he blessed us enough to live here.

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He felt like you bought the car you could afford by saving and paying cash or it was a bad idea to get one that cost that much

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Depending on what interest rates and the markets were like back then, he might have been right. We got so used to these insanely low rates where it didn’t make sense to pay cash or even pay back your debts because even if you had the money, you could invest it in the market for a higher rate. And not a little bit higher, over triple the interest rate on average.

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In the US, the bottom 50% of income earners pay effectively no federal taxes and the next 25% pay a very small amount. The top economic classes and effectively pay for everything.

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The top quintile of earners pay for nearly everything. At least that’s true if you are a doctor, lawyer, athlete … anyone who garners the bulk of their yearly income from their jobs. Now if your income comes from investments via your wealth, you pay much less in taxes (despite never lifting a finger) than an oilfield baw does for busting his arse all year. And if you are really, really, really wealthy, you just continually borrow against your wealth and run out the clock on taxes until you die. So you’re correct that the top economic classes pay for everything, but the tippy top, I’m not sure they pay for all that much, unless you factor in all those campaign contributions, they have to pay to maintain the status quo. I suppose that’s a tax of sorts as well.

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Are the incomes in Spain and Italy lower than the US? Yes. Is the COL there about 60% of what is is in the US? Yes.

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that’s hilarious. I love all the cost of living comparisons that don’t take into account what we have access to that literally no one in the world has aside from the ultra wealthy. and frankly they don’t care about cost of living anyway because it doesn’t affect them. the median Spaniard lives like a fricking New Orleans welfare queen

I think it is funny when some people talk about how great countries in Europe are compared to America. I am not saying that there are not good aspects to life in some European countries, but in comparison people are poorer in Europe than the US. There is a major difference between vacation in Europe and actually living on the economy (also with no logistical support from the military). People in the UK especially get their pockets raided and many live barely making it. I can confirm German taxes are high, and it would suck to be poor in this country. The last figure I have seen is if you net 7K Euros a month than you are in the 1% of income earners (with the exchange rate that is just under 8K dollars a month after taxes). You have more Americans who make way more than most people in European countries.

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Now if your income comes from investments via your wealth, you pay much less in taxes (despite never lifting a finger) than an oilfield baw does for busting his arse all year. And if you are really, really, really wealthy, you just continually borrow against your wealth and run out the clock on taxes until you die. So you’re correct that the top economic classes pay for everything, but the tippy top,

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The nonsense some of you believe …

The Super Rich Pay a Super Amount of Taxes


TLDR: When classifying by wealth instead of income, the top 1%, top 0.1%, Top 0.01%, and top 0.001% all pay a fantastic amount of taxes.