If I asked you which country has the most progressive tax system in the developed world — where high earners hand over an especially large share of their income relative to the average worker — what would your answer be? Perhaps Sweden? Denmark?
"The answer is in fact Britain."
EXCELLENT summary:
The UK has the worst of both worlds: it collects much less tax revenue from the middle of the income distribution than its European neighbours with better-quality public services, while at the top the combination of high and rising taxes with the abrupt withdrawal of public goods creates bad incentives and resentment all round. The UK’s curious experiment in eating the rich while shrinking the state has left Britons less satisfied with their public services than not only Scandinavians but most Americans, and poorer than not only Americans but most Scandinavians.
I learned this a decade ago when studying the redistributive element of Britain vs Scandinavian welfare systems.
Scandis tax their populations a lot, it's true, but the proceeds are mostly recycled value to the same individuals across their lifespans. Britain doesn't as much; it just, sort of, squanders the stolen goods, achieving neither the free market paradise envisioned by, well, free marketeers, nor the socialist welfare utopia by the left. (years ago I wrote a short thing about this: https://authory.com/JoakimBook/win-the-Nordic-model-for-the-UK-ad99b9a6f92b44feabe512af6add440f5)
JBM draws on OECD numbers instead, showing that the top-to-middle gap of taxation is higher for Brits than for Scandis.
Northern Europe’s social democracies tax everyone from bottom to top at a moderately high rate. In Britain, taxes at the top are comparable to Denmark and Norway but the average Briton is taxed less than the average American.
Everyone pays their way and everyone reaps the benefits in the form of high-quality and well-funded public services, fostering socio-economic solidarity with buy-in from the top and bottom alike
that's the idea anyway (doesn't, emphatically, work v well in the Nordics).
One thing dude misses is that the income threshold before which people start paying any tax is WAAAY higher in the UK than in e.g., Sweden (4x higher, at over $16,000 vs $4,500). I.e., life at the bottom in the UK is cheaper than in Sweden, at least from a tax perspective.
You should also just stop eating the rich, it's a bad thing to do (#1043377)
"Whether Britain wants to be more like Scandinavia or America, getting there will mean less reliance on the rich to pay the bills."
archive: https://archive.md/a7CWE