All working class people who are opposed to formuesskatt need to visit the United States, so they can experience the brutal reality of a nation without a wealth tax.
No other Scandinavian country has a wealth tax. In the EU, Spain is the only country that officially has a wealth tax. In Spain it only kicks in if your assets are worth more than 3 million Euro (around 35 million NOK). In Norway, you start paying a yearly 1% wealth tax on all your assets, once your net worth reaches 140k Euro.
I am working class. I make basically an average wage here in Norway and I am strongly opposed to the wealth tax in its current form. The retirement age is raised constantly. (It’s been raised to 72 years starting next year for full benefits.) The publicly financed pension scheme is unsustainable, and already inadequate to live a decent life. If you’re lucky, your employer has a good pension scheme. If you don’t, you have to invest money yourself.
It is said that a sustainable withdrawal rate for retirement savings is around 3%. But if you live in Norway, capital gains are taxed at 40%. (The second highest rate in Europe.) Additionally you have to pay a wealth tax equivalent to 1% of all your assets every year. So you basically need to save twice as much as you would in most countries to achieve a sustainable withdrawal rate in retirement. This is not beneficial for the working class. It makes it more difficult to retire, and keeps the working class working.
They could increase the minimum deduction to 40 million NOK or something similar to what Spain does, and people could save for a decent retirement without incurring a wealth tax. Revenue wouldn’t even be affected that much, because most of the revenue from the wealth tax comes from the top anyway. Not to mention that our neighboring Scandinavian countries can deliver very similar public services without any wealth tax at all.
Thanks for your insights. Personally, I’d prefer to pay a wealth tax like that compared to a system where it’s up to the individual to save for their retirement.
A reasonable and nuanced take? Clearly, lemmy isn’t a very good reddit replacement.
140k euro/164k usd is a 20% payment on a fairly average single family home in a lot of of North America, or living expenses for 4-6 years.
The exclusion should not penalize working class; a retirement fund shouldn’t be hit with a wealth tax!
The exclusion should be indexed to inflation.
These discussions would’t be needed if money never had that much power over lives! Europe is not doing that much better than the imperialist US.
And the people have the power to change it it’s that simple! But they rather choose to fight each other. While the elite has all the time to cause more unfixable problems to society. Which can never be fixed and turn societies even more dangerous and violent for everyone the in future.
That why i have sympathy for robbers thieves and straight illegal money scheme crimes in general because at least these people are “morally” honest!
I’m Also “proud” myself i have never paid that much income taxes. If i just can avoid it (yes i’m a jerk/asshole etc) for most eyes i agree that too! But at least i don’t tell other people “what you must do while polishing my halo and holding a knife on other hand”
