Please do your darndest to legally pay the least amount taxes possible and find every opportunity to change the system so taxes are lowered: you tax money will, in the vast majority of the cases, be wasted

Stop feeding the beast.

Starve it every opportunity you have.

How about paying your taxes and "doing your darndest" to change the system so that tax revenue is spent wisely for the benefit of the whole of your society?

I prefer not to play games that I know are rigged against me.

Both opposites of this tax debate spectrum are flawed. Most important thing is to enjoy life. If you focus too much on avoiding taxes, or pay them too much, you are losing. Pay what you pay and only spend resources on tax planning if it makes sense.

I prefer to support Swedish's society and just pay my due taxes, thank you. The beast here is responsible for a lot of the quality of life we enjoy, public services included.

Very much the same here, I've been paying taxes on crypto for years now and I'm in the Netherlands.

Sweden isn't socialist (quite far from it, one of the freest markets in the world), and I wasn't born nor raised here.

So the two core assumptions of your comment are dead in the water.

> Sweden isn't socialist

The transition from the system described in the 19thC as “capitalism” to the modern mixed economy was an adoption of socialism (while it wasn't mostly adopted as a coherent program but instead a series compromises between different factions, as a deliberate program it would have been a form of what Marx described—and opposed—as “bourgeois socialism”. And the Nordic .model, including the form in Sweden, leans into some of the socialized elements more heavily than is typical, with notably strong social safety nets and public pensions.

>Sweden isn't socialist

Say you make the yearly local equivalent of 150k USD, what is your income tax rate in Sweden?

Tax rate doesn't have any relationship to socialism, what's your point?

The point is, like a sheep on a farm, you're being milked and sheared by your government, like in most socialist countries.

Sure, like sheep on a farm, you're well tended to, but you basically live in a society where people exist to serve their government rather than the opposite.

That may not be your definition of the word "socialism".

Call it "collectivism" if that fits your definition better.

That won't change the fact that you're living in hell AFAIC.

Hell is a funny word for a place that has one of the greatest quality of life of any OECD country. Yes, their tax rates are high, but not vastly higher than one might pay in California. I'll say this for them, at least they pay for their spending. Sweden's national debt is 35% of GDP, while ours was over 100% even before Covid-19.

Basically, if sweden is 'tax and spend' we're 'spend and future financial crisis'. I know which country I'd rather live in long term if I did not have a life to uproot here in the US.

I surely don't want to enter into this discussion, it seems baseless and meritless. Talking about sheep in a farm being tended to while disregarding upsides, without leaving room to discuss different models of social contracts and trade-offs. And worse, while you conceal what is your vision of a good model for society.

There is a lot to unpack here and I surely don't want to keep going when the rhetorics is so loaded, calling others sheep and misusing terms won't lead to a healthy discussion.

Can I ask where you choose to live right now that isn’t a socialist society or on the way to one? Genuine question because I am thinking of emigrating after this pandemic is over and that would definitely make my shortlist.