General Discussion

Well, today, anyway. My work usually takes me to one of the neighboring countries every day, except for Luxembourg, Poland, and the Czech Republic. Spain, too, though I haven't been back down there since June.

Everyone does indeed pay. Here, the max (on paper 42%, but with add-ons it's in reality around 50%) tax kicks in at less than $100,000 of gross income, and there is a 19% value-added-tax on most everything to boot. When people tell you everything is free in Germany, the answer is that NOTHING is free. It is just paid for differently here. There are billionaires here, too, of course, an estimated 114 of the at last count (Germany has a little less than ¼ of the population of the USA). I saw an updated figure of 705 for the USA. Since I will never be joining their ranks in this lifetime, it's not a number I check on daily, if you know what I mean.

It would be easy to call for an NSDAP-style "Enteignung" of all of America's wealthy people (stopping with just the Jews is SO last century), but when you consider that even if you go full tilt on Bill Gates and take every cent he has, his estimated net worth of $115.6 billion will net every man, woman and child in the USA, say 340 million people, exactly $340 per person, since 34 is the square root of 1156. One off payment. Not even a dollar a day for a year. If we could wipe out need and misery THAT cheaply, I'll bet even Bill Gates would say, sure, here, take it all.