Most countries in Europe provide that don’t they? Also, Sweden has the number 8 highest income tax in Europe and has in fact very low taxes on investments (the ISK accounts).
“Pretty bad healthcare system honestly”? That’s a big exaggeration… both public and private healthcare has worked great in my experience. Sounds like you have some kind of beef with Scandinavia.
1) Most countries in Europe provide [healthcare, education and economic support]
Varies state to state, in some countries there is "mandatory health insurance" which is subsidised, NHS is free at point of sale in the UK.
Education is also dubious, as in some of Europe there's subsidies for childcare under school age, but it's nearly universal to have free healthcare for standard ages (school years 0 - 11); and very few countries offer higher education (university) for free (and even fewer pay you) -- Sweden/Denmark do all of that.
When it comes to income support, if you lose your job then you're really taken care of, it's not really as binary as "do they offer support", in Sweden you can have 80% of your pay for the first year in most cases, only 20% of that is paid by your employer; which is a bit unprecedented in Europe.
2) Sweden has the number 8 highest income tax
Such things are not so easy to quantify, Sweden has 2 tax rates;
a) Municipal tax rate, (usually around 32%~)
b) Federal tax rate (20%)
Municipal tax applies to everything you earn, Federal tax only applies to everything after 45,000 SEK (4.500 EUR/mo); that's for income tax, there's also social contribution tax that your employer pays (19-30% depending on how they operate in the country) and the highest VAT in Europe.
You'd have to try to understand how that applies for you. My salary is higher than average but not absurdly high and I'd earn more money in my pocket in every single other country in Europe, I think that's because there's an "absurdly high earner" tax in most countries and a lot of those comparisons take "maximum effective tax" as their only reporting metric, UK has 4 tax bands for example, one of which only kicks in at 150.000gbp p/a; which is 4x the national average and the tax rate then is still lower than Swedens.
So it being "8th highest" is dubious. I'd be interested to see the citation; though I would agree that websites are not doing a real analysis about what they're saying and just stating an "effective top tax"
3) Private healthcare works for me
Private healthcare through my insurance is actually great, but nothing is better than a fully working properly socialised healthcare service; they have tremendous buying power, even operate their own supply chains and can provide services which don't just bring them profit.
My childhood in the UK without the NHS would have been positively miserable, it's hard to imagine how it was because of what it has become now though.
"if you lose your job then you're really taken care of" only if you've paid into insurance: to get taken care of you need to pay into both an a-kassa and an inkomstförsäkring. Ie, two insurances. The money you get from the government is usually capped, and capped low (considering all salaries in Sweden).
Also, remember the ISK accounts. By paying 0.375% on your account assets annually, you don't pay any capital gains tax. This is imo a big enabler for the "common person" to build up capital.
Your source (tax foundation) is incorrect in the way I mentioned, it takes "top personal income tax" as its only metric without consideration about where that tax rate begins to be applied.
It's also completely wrong about Denmark, where the top tax rate is actually capped at 52.07%
> Altogether, the marginal tax rate cannot exceed 52.07%
