The Czech Republic is at the low end for Europe. You’d be wrong about the taxes paid in other European countries:
https://www.chicagofed.org/publications/chicago-fed-letter/2017/382#ftn7
They pay significantly more than your estimate. The estimated cost for a true “Medicare for All” program is almost as much as the US government collects in federal revenue now. If we’re going to actually pay for it, and not accelerate our decent into bankruptcy, federal taxes collected will have to be nearly doubled. That would put us around France and Belgium, or higher, for taxation.
Setting aside MFA for a minute...What other countries pay in taxes tells you nothing about their quality of life, or lifestyle. What you as an individual pay in taxes tells you/us nothing about your lifestyle. It's possible that your taxes could be lowered and you have a much worse lifestyle. Likewise, your taxes could be raised and you could have a better lifestyle. And I'm not talking about your lifestyle improving because your tax money went towards purchasing something that made you better off.
If you receive $100, you're only $100 better off, if no one else receives $100. If everyone receives $100, you gained relatively nothing, because of supply and demand, the costs of products will increase, devaluing your purchasing power. Does that make sense? So, if your taxes are raised or lowered, it has much less affect to you personally, because it's not just your taxes that are raised or lowered.
In your link, it didn't matter what the corporate rates were, only that ours were higher than Germany's. The same competitive advantage would have went away if they would have raised their rates to match ours. The rate itself didn't matter, it only mattered relative to something else. But when you talk about personal taxes(income, VAT, ect.), those are paid inside an autonomous economy. The point being, an average German might pay 38% and an average American might pay 30% in taxes, but what's important is how much purchasing power they have, but even more importantly, how much purchasing power they have relative to other Germans. Who cares what rate you pay, if when it's all said and done, you both can afford the same amount of Snickers bars(whatever item you want to place here, Snickers is what came to mind).
Anecdotally: In this country we just had another tax cut, and what happened? Inflation. The purchasing power of the money that was given in the form of a lower tax bill was negated by rising prices/less purchasing power. The middle class have been given tax cuts for 40 years. Are they better off? No. Because some people got $100, some people got $1000, and some people got $1,000,000. It's relative. Millions of Americans don't pay taxes because of the EITC, but a similar result could have been achieved by increasing the taxes at the top vs decreasing the taxes at the bottom. What all 3 of these anecdotal examples have in common is that they raised our debt/deficit, and for no good reason other than people think taxes are bad. If you were offered two jobs, with Job A resulting in a tax liability of zero, and Job B resulting in a tax liability of one million dollars, which one would you choose?
Now to MFA. The healthcare sector has grown 480% over inflation since 1965. Once again it's relative. If our income had grown at that rate, we would be able to pay our medical bills and still be able to afford the same amount of Snickers bars, as we did in 1965. But we can't and it's getting worse, because nothing(including wages/income) has increased to that level relatively. They were afforded CPI +1-2% in perpetuity across the board in the Medicare reimbursement schedule. The link below enables you to see what effect compounding interest makes over a long period of time. We are at 480% in year 54. We will be at 600% in year 60, and 800% around year 70. If I could post my chart, along with the FRED chart, you would see how they mirror one another.
https://www.investor.gov/additional...l-planning-tools/compound-interest-calculator
In the aggregate, there is little difference between paying a tax, or paying a premium. The most important thing is bending the cost curve, and fast. Because we all have more to buy than healthcare and Snickers bars.
Sorry to ramble
Edit: I couldn't figure out how to post the graph I made using the attached link, and now my FRED chart won't load. I'm sorry about that, because I really feel like it helps illustrate my point.
