Re:Streaming subtitled box sets is the new Eurovision
by rsynnott on Monday April 05, 2021 @07:52AM
(#26697825)
While there are obviously major problems, if you rank countries by the social mobility indexes, or by GINI (income inequality) indexes, the top ten or so are all high-tax European countries.
Mind you, there's more to it than that; just setting the high-income-band taxes high won't do it. Efficacy of taxation and control of corruption is also important. Ireland's an interesting case; in the 80s its income tax was quite high (and it was a substantial net beneficiary of EU funding) but its GINI index was the worst in the EU (it was actually worse than the US for part of the decade). Today, income tax is still quite high (though not as high), and it's a donor of EU funding, but the GINI index is middle of the road European, far better than it used to be. The main thing that changed, beyond overall economic development, is reduction of corruption; there's no point in having big high-income-band taxes if no-one pays them.
Mind you, there's more to it than that; just setting the high-income-band taxes high won't do it. Efficacy of taxation and control of corruption is also important. Ireland's an interesting case; in the 80s its income tax was quite high (and it was a substantial net beneficiary of EU funding) but its GINI index was the worst in the EU (it was actually worse than the US for part of the decade). Today, income tax is still quite high (though not as high), and it's a donor of EU funding, but the GINI index is middle of the road European, far better than it used to be. The main thing that changed, beyond overall economic development, is reduction of corruption; there's no point in having big high-income-band taxes if no-one pays them.