Sorry, but this has to be the dumbest comment in HN.

The parent post was saying how living in a country with a generous welfare system can make a lot easier to have more free time and easier to take risks, and you're worried that if you take advantage of that, you might need to help pay that off if you're successful?

The fact of the matter is that, in countries where the state gives you a lot, they generally take a lot as well. The money needs to come from somewhere.

Most decent entrepreneurs manage to sustain themselves and find a way to build out something regardless of whether the state is handing out money. If I manage to get a win, I want to keep most of my winnings.

I'm European but wouldn't want to live in a country with high income taxes, high capital gains taxes, various hidden levies (luxury cars costing hundreds of thousands, gas being super expensive), high corporate and dividend taxes, and to top it off a nice annual wealth tax. Why even bother trying to achieve more than your fellow citizen in that kind of setting?

> The fact of the matter is that, in countries where the state gives you a lot, they generally take a lot as well. The money needs to come from somewhere.

The state gives a lot to you, when you're poor, and it takes a lot from you, later on after you're not poor anymore. Why do you think you should get to live in a nice place full of nice things paid for by other people, and not pay your own share? How is that morally different from spending the night in a hotel and then skipping out on the bill?

Spending a night in a hotel and then skipping out on the bill will land you jail (or at least it will get the police involved). Avoiding tax is legal and does not.

> Why do you think you should get to live in a nice place full of nice things paid for by other people, and not pay your own share?

By definition, if you pay everything you owe, aren't you paying your share?

I said "morally different".

edit:

> By definition, if you pay everything you owe, aren't you paying your share?

The line between tax avoidance and freeloading is debatable. Maybe you use less tax-funded things than most people. Maybe you refuse to drive on streets, cross rivers in a rowboat instead of walking on bridges, and resolutely close your eyes when walking by a beautiful piece of taxpayer-funded art. But morally, if you're enjoying nice things that other people paid for, you're freeloading (which is emphatically not a political stance, or an "unpopular opinion").

> This has a flipside though. If you do manage to find success (and say, own a profitable business or have an exit), you'll be taxed into oblivion.

Ok, but if I'm already living the life I want to live... who cares?

Then it doesn't matter. But what if you're halfway there, and would be there if you could legally avoid the tax?

Some people care about this, others don't.

Can you provide examples? I can only think of a counter-example: Ingvar Kamprad, the (Swedish) founder of Ikea, and by some accounts at times the richest man on earth.

Literally every businessman who lives in Monaco. Most aren't very well known, however.

If you make sure, for example, your intellectual rights (if we're talking a software company) aren't held in a country with a super high corporate tax rate, that would be a good start.

I guess it might slow you down from getting surpr super rich, but in the end it's surely worth it.

No. It slows you down just getting rich as well. If I want to make €5 or €10m and retire, it's inefficient to pay a lot of tax if you can legally get around it.

It's one thing to pay on gains you make after you've gotten rich, i.e. if you're making 5% a year on €10m, than on the initial capital you're building up.

But if the tax goes into something like education, it also has an accelerating effect.

I think this is an issue that just isn't that black and white as you want to portray it.

And you'll still be driving a Tesla.