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All the engineers I know retired with health insurance, either pensions or buyouts, SS, Medicare. I'm not defending ditch diggers but their work is just as dignified as any others as long as its useful. There are plenty of make work engineering projects and ditch digging projects.
NASA, the Grand Cooley Dam both employed a lot of both, both had make-work aspects, both accomplished some good. Like the Panama Canal and the Trans-continental RR, neither needed an income tax to finance them.
I don't personally know one retired engineer who has either a pension or any health benefits beyond Medicare. That's a few hundred. I've worked my whole career in the private sector. The private sector big tech companies killed off their pensions in the 1980's. No tech company started after 1980 has ever offered a pension.
Once I flew with a Norwegian school teacher. Her 50% tax rate buys her "free" higher education, "free" healthcare, retirement, superb infrastructure etc.. My total tax burden pushes 40% of my income (this doesnt include healthcare), and I get a relative SQUAT in return.
Once I flew with a Norwegian school teacher. Her 50% tax rate buys her "free" higher education, "free" healthcare, retirement, superb infrastructure etc.. My total tax burden pushes 40% of my income (this doesnt include healthcare), and I get a relative SQUAT in return.
They have a national investment fund. It collected profits from North Sea oil and invested it in companies. Lately the profits haven't been so hot but it still probably contributes something.
Once I flew with a Norwegian school teacher. Her 50% tax rate buys her "free" higher education, "free" healthcare, retirement, superb infrastructure etc.. My total tax burden pushes 40% of my income (this doesnt include healthcare), and I get a relative SQUAT in return.
You might be comparing her income tax rate with your total tax rate.
Norway has one of the highest VATs in the world at 25% general, 15% food, 8% services.
You say you don't get squat, did you go to a public school for 18 years? Will you receive social security? What about medicare? Do you enjoy driving on the highways? Ever had foreign occupiers invade and take your stuff?
They have a national investment fund. It collected profits from North Sea oil and invested it in companies. Lately the profits haven't been so hot but it still probably contributes something.
Norway has an enormous sovereign fund from those decades of North Sea oil and has a mostly homogeneous population of 5 million. It's pretty easy to opt for a utopian socialist enclave in those circumstances. All the people your tax money is funding are just like you. They don't have a permanent African-American underclass with 70% of those children living in single parent households ensuring that underclass will be permanent for yet another generation. They don't have the massive wave of immigration, both legal and illegal, from Latin America and the poor Caribbean nations. Norway is united with a common race, a common language, a common culture, and a common set of values. Norway is paying the Syrian refugees who land in the country $20,000 to GTFO.
Once I flew with a Norwegian school teacher. Her 50% tax rate buys her "free" higher education, "free" healthcare, retirement, superb infrastructure etc.. My total tax burden pushes 40% of my income (this doesnt include healthcare), and I get a relative SQUAT in return.
My total tax burden pushes 40% of my income (this doesnt include healthcare), and I get a relative SQUAT in return.
Same here, I pay a hell of a lot of taxes but don't get squat in return. Even when I'm old, even though I paid to help fund medicaid (paying for the poor), I won't qualify for help and I'll be on my own.
That doesn't mean I support higher taxes or socialism. In fact the opposite. Government income limits will still be too low and the people who pay for everything will get squat the same as is true today.
The value of government help is a hell of a lot but only the poor qualify and the rest of us middle class are screwed and on our own. That's why a poor person crying the blues is like fingernails on the chalk board. What they get for free, we work all our lives and then pay full ticket price.
If you don't believe it, learn about medicare and medicaid, you'll see.
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