"People in highly taxed countries better off"

[Simon]

Just found this very interesting article:

People who live in countries with higher taxes enjoy lower rates of poverty, have more equal income distribution, more economic security for workers and can expect to live longer, suggests a new study from a left-leaning think tank.

Written by two Toronto tax law professors for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, the report released Wednesday, is blunt.

"Tax cuts are disastrous for the well-being of a nation's citizens," say authors Neil Brooks and Thaddeus Hwong.

http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2006/12/0 ... ml?ref=rss

[mountainhiker]

Just found this very interesting article:

http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2006/12/0 ... ml?ref=rss

The problem is that is an apples to oranges comparison. Take Finland, they do not have the number of illegal aliens (%) that the US or Canada does. Skews the numbers. In other words they are trying to justify taxing the crap out of the people using an invalid comparison.

When I was in school, I was on the debate team and one of our books was "How To Lie with Numbers". Example would be if I have 10 things to make a comparison on, I only choose the ones that line up with what I am trying to prove, even if it only 1 out of the 10 is in my favor. If they don't mention the other 9 points that prove the opposite, is that really lying?

[Simon]

I can agree with you but I still think this one is legit. Just take Sweden or Denmark as an example.

Sweden and Denmark actually have a relativitely high immigration and diversity compared to the countries actual size.

Sweden currently has a population of around 10 million. In 2005 around 16% of the swedish population was people born abroad. That is 1,6 million people.

Most of the Swedish immigrants comes from Finland (the majority came around WW2), the baltic countries and the middle-east. Today most immigrants comes from the middle-east, especially Iraq and Iran. In 2007 Sweden recieved more refugees from Iraq than all other developed countries, combined.

Immigration is not a major downside in creating a wealthy society, for everyone.

[mountainhiker]

Immigration is not a major downside in creating a wealthy society, for everyone.

True, however, illegal immigration is a major downside in creating a wealthy society. When you have undocumented aliens as the US and Canada, they consume resources without contributing taxes to the system. Services, ie, medical etc suffer since they are treating people who are not contributors to the system. Also, since they are undocumented, it is very hard for the system to determine if they are being served.

[online.education]

True, however, illegal immigration is a major downside in creating a wealthy society. When you have undocumented aliens as the US and Canada, they consume resources without contributing taxes to the system. Services, ie, medical etc suffer since they are treating people who are not contributors to the system. Also, since they are undocumented, it is very hard for the system to determine if they are being served.

There are so many illegal immigrants because US has such policies that harm economies of other countries. For example, US signed NAFTA in 90s. Since agriculture in US is heavily subsidized, Mexican farmers could not compete. So many farmers were forced to live in poverty, and they crossed the border to survive. It's really a problem that US created; this country cannot blame 'illegal immigrants' for variety of social problems. At the end of the day, US either created those problems or it triggered to create them.