The overwhelming majority of a person's expenditures (Housing, education, medical, most of the food you buy at the grocery, many forms of transportation) are not covered by VAT. Many forms of energy (residential electricity, gas) are covered at a vastly reduced VAT.

And, again, the giant bugbear that is health insurance rears its ugly head on the US side. See the overall 'Taxes as a % of GDP' comparisons.

Edit: I stand corrected about taxes as % of GDP. You are right, that the UK is at 33.5%. [1] Unfortunately, again, that doesn't include the percentage of US spending on healthcare - which is 17.8% of its GDP, with much of it coming out of after-tax dollars, instead of pre-tax ones. (Medicaid and Medicare make up about a third of that - and are, obviously, financed by taxes.)

[1] https://www.oecd.org/tax/revenue-statistics-united-kingdom.p...

> And, again, the giant bugbear that is health insurance rears its ugly head on the US side

Sure, yes, that's a bigger non-tax expense for individuals in the US. The US having by far the least efficient healthcare system in the world is a huge problem.

> See the overall ‘Taxes as a % of GDP’ comparisons.

Yes, I’ve updated my post to address your wildly inaccurate “Taxes as a % of GDP” comparison, using the most recently published OECD data which shows that you were close for the US, and way low for the UK.

And I've updated my post to point out the mountain of US post-tax healthcare spending, that in the UK, largely comes out of pre-tax pounds.

At the end of the day, Americans still pay, and pay more. 26% in taxes, and then another ~11% in non-government-covered (non-Medicare/Medicaid) healthcare spending.

> At the end of the day, Americans still pay, and pay more

They pay less in taxes, by a wide margin.

They also get less for them, by a wide margin, particularly (but not exclusively) in healthcare.

I've been corrected (my initial data was wrong, I've updated my post), and I agree on both points.

I do, however, posit that when it comes to determining whether an economy/society/??? is healthy (which is the conversation in this sub-thread), we need to look at all of these 'costs of life/business'. So, yes, the sticker price on the UK looks rough, but add it all up... And it comes out to be pretty similar. As it turns out, providing similar forms of services costs... About the same, across the developed world.

Really? I have top of the line healthcare through my employer in the US, which also covers my wife and teenage daughters, which costs me essentially nothing. NHS in the UK is collapsing, but even if it didn't, qualitatively it's orders of magnitude worse than what one would receive in the US through one's employer:

Months to years for an appointment, incompetent doctors and a bureaucracy that puts Kafka to shame.

https://www.economist.com/britain/2022/04/30/the-nhs-is-in-s...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/01/02/collapse-nhs-tra...

Yes US healthcare has issues but it's nowhere near as bad as UK.

So you have an employer paying tens of thousands a year to get you health insurance, leading to a situation where only the most well off can have access to healthcare. The NHS is struggling because there's a shit load of people to treat with very little means. The US healthcare system is doing well because it leeches money off of the most well off and lets the poorest die.

The NHS is struggling because the Tory government is deliberately running it down. You didn’t see the many crises it faces under Labour.

Also yes, starving the beast is their favourite activity.

I think

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location...

combined with ever increasing inequality offers a much better explanation. Inequality is high in the US too but at least they have a lot of growth which means that the bottom 80% or so are at least not getting poorer.

And who's been in power since 2010 in the UK, overseeing all of the growing issues?

This has been the case throughout most Europe. UK seems to be below average though, then again nobody forced them to vote for Brexit…

> money off of the most well off and lets the poorest die.

A very significant proportion of US population is covered by Medicaid and if more if you add Medicare. In fact the US government spends almost 50% more on healthcare than Britain does (and that’s only public spending..). The problem is that the system is simply extremely inefficient.

Just look at Switzerland healthcare is privatized to a much higher degree than in the US yet still more accessible…

That may be the reality that some experience, I obviously couldn't say they are wrong.

But it isn't always the case. Where we live the NHS is excellent, appointments are fine, doctors are competent, and we've had no issues with bureaucracy. There is literally nothing I'd complain about, and we have double-digit interactions with the NHS each year.

The only fly in the ointment is the recent nurse strike happened on a day the wife was scheduled for some surgery, so that was cancelled. But I support them in that, and the rescheduled date is less than a month later.

There are issues everywhere, but there's no way I'd swap any of it for the US version. And always bear in mind that negative talk sells more papers/gets more eyeballs than positive.

> Really? I have top of the line healthcare through my employer in the US, which also covers my wife and teenage daughters, which costs me essentially nothing.

Very few people in the US have top of the line healthcare (hence, why its “top of the line” and not “typical”), and if you do it costs a lot per covered person, even if it is less visible because instead of a salary deduction instead a large chunk of money that the company is willing to pay for your labor just goes straight to an insurer without being part of your nominal pay.

(I, too, as I suspect is fairly common for HN readers given the demographic tendencies, have excellent healthcare in the US, abd most of the cost isn’t a salary deeuction, but the cost is nontrivial.)

> NHS in the UK is collapsing, but even if it didn't, qualitatively it's orders of magnitude worse than what one would receive in the US through one's employer:

Over 1/5th of US workers (not residents, people actually employed) aren’t eligible for any employer health insurance, and for many of the rest it is quite bad, with very high out of pocket costs if you actually need any non-preventice care. NHS may be worse than what you or I have through our employers, but “top of the line” isn’t the usual experience.

> Yes US healthcare has issues but it's nowhere near as bad as UK.

...if you are part of the relatively narrow elite in the US with top of the line coverage, and for that the US pays more than a time and a half what the UK does as a share of GDP, and more than double what the UK does per capita...while leaving over 12% of adults and 5% of children uninsured.

That’s a specific issue caused by the Tories deliberately running it down. Pre-2010, the situation was very different. You didn’t have things like the Annual Winter Crisis (which now extends through to autumn).

Luckily, Labour will win the next GE, so they can start to turn this around.

Pre 2010 (well pre 2008 to be fair) UK had a higher or similar per capita GDP as the US, now it’s not even close. If the current trend continues it will be almost double in a few years.. Other European countries have been doing a bit better but it has clearly been a ‘lost decade’ in most of Western Europe and you can’t really blame the tortes for that.

> Other European countries have been doing a bit better

The UK has had the worst pandemic recovery almost anywhere in the developed world. How many other countries have an annual "Winter Crisis" in their healthcare that's extending into autumn and summer?

The Tories have been in power since 2010. They're the common factor in the many issues the UK is currently facing.

Everything that happened since Brexit is a disaster and it’s mainly the fault of conservative party and their voters (also labor picking comrade Corbyn to be its leader meaning there weren’t really any reasonable alternatives..). Combine that with the overall trend of decline/stagnation across Western Europe and you’ve got something…

Look at Switzerland. Fully privatized (too a much higher degree that the US in fact) very high quality yet significantly cheaper (still much higher total spending than any other European country). Yet the US government alone (so excluding private spending) spends about the same on healthcare (as % of GDP) as Britain but without even basic universal coverage…

> And there is also a 20% VAT impacting the cost of pretty much anything you might use your after-tax income to

Except stuff like food, rent, utilities, small stuff like that.

I'll give you the rest though. The UK is a low-tax country by European standards, and even by developed-world standards, but is above the US quite significantly.

> The UK is a low-tax country by European standards, and even by developed-world standards,

The UK is a bit above average tax burden as share of GDP for the OECD. It is not particularly “low tax by developed world standards”.

The OECD includes countries like Mexico, Turkey, and Colombia that are definitely less developed than the rest of the list. Hell, looking at the IMF figures, half the European countries on that list count as "developing" too, especially the less-taxing ones. Don't think I agree with them, but I'm not an economist so hey.

> > ‘Americans pay less taxes’ is largely a meme with no basis in reality.

> No, the UK has a much higher tax burden; the US is significantly below OECD average, the UK a bit above.

> [0] https://www.oecd.org/tax/tax-policy/revenue-statistics-highl...

Rather than contradict the OP's statement, the above document reinforces it. The document only covers taxes identifies as "taxes", which makes the comparison with US apples to organges.

The two huge elephants in the room in the US are health care and higher education both of which are very high cost in the US and both of which have to be paid separately in the US. Whereas in most other countries these are either fully or partially funded by taxes.

For an apples-apples comparison of out of required pocket expenses in the US vs. other countries you need to include health care and education costs.

If we’re talking about the UK, college has got a lot more expensive there. Cost to run a university is getting more expensive everywhere, the Baumol effect doesn’t discriminate. Some countries subsidize more aggressively than others, but it’s getting harder.

Add pensions to that. Many countries have mandatory state run pension funds (for lack of a better translation, it's late at night here.) People can add their own private pension fund.

Pretending that the employer is paying taxes for the employees is doublespeak popularized by large companies to justify why they want to stop paying it.

It is not taxes. It's a contribution to a functioning society. Otherwise, employers would get access to employees with NHS without putting a penny in.

It is taxes. Taxes are a contribution to a functioning society, though! There's nothing wrong with them when they are used well!

> Otherwise, employers would get access to employees with NHS without putting a penny in.

It doesn't matter how you slice it, the penny still comes out of payroll. It makes zero difference to me if I get paid 50,000, and 10,000 of that goes to taxes, or if I get paid 40,000 and my employer pays 10,000 in taxes. But it sure causes a lot of spilled ink about whether or not its 'really a tax' and 'who pays'.

> It is not taxes. It's a contribution to a functioning society

That’s what taxes in general are, so the second half does not support the first.

> Otherwise, employers would get access to employees with NHS without putting a penny in.

The idea that payroll taxes are a fee that employers pay the State for “access” to workers and that this is a defense rather than a criticism of the scheme is... interesting.

Nope. Words have a meaning. Contributions are dedicated to a specific thing. Nobody can take the money of the Build-Hospitals contribution and use it to Build-Death-Star. Taxes however can go anywhere.

Once again, "payroll tax" is language invented by employers to make it feel like they're being unjustly taxed. Additionally, in the case of Europe, most of these contributions were set up after WW2 because employers were happy enough to collaborate with the occupiers and kept wanting cheap labour without participating in rebuilding nations. So, sorry, I won't cry about them having to pay their fair share.